Indoctrination and filtering

The new system politically indoctrinates our children

The founders of our country saw that a well educated citizenry is essential to preserving Liberty. Yet they also knew that education ought not be centrally controlled. For no matter who is in power, those persons will inevitably impose their particular propaganda onto the schools. For this reason, the federal government was forbidden (by the Tenth Amendment) from involving itself in education. Rather, the fifty separate states (not the federal government) had to assure some means of education, and the control of education was left strictly to local school districts. In this way parents could exert an effective influence on what and how their children are taught. If worse came to worse, they could always ‘vote with their feet,’ and move to a different district. In this way, no central authority could easily use schools for indoctrination.

The new system casts all those warnings aside, and immediately shows its politics within state-required performance packages:

The New System
De-emphasizes	Emphasizes
U.S. Constitution Constitutionally limited government National sovereignty The foundations of our independence	Global government
De-centralized control	Centralized-control
Free-market economy	Government-controlled economy
De-centralized Rights: Rights of the 50 States Individual rights Private property rights Privacy rights	Collective Rights: Group rights Collective rights Government rights
Individual: individual thinking individual responsibility individual identity	Group: group consensus group responsibility group identity
Self-reliance	Dependency
Objective truth and knowledge	Subjectivity and opinion
Factual History	History by opinion
Unity	Multiculturalism & diversity training
	Radical environmentalism Militant feminism Homosexual rights Alternative lifestyles Controversial values on sex-ed

These various political themes are not taught once. Rather, they tend to be dispersed throughout all the course content, giving them a repetition into each learning area. (This is allowed because the learning areas are now defined in a vague and ambiguous manner.) For example, multiculturalism and diversity training are infused into the math curriculum, as well as the other subjects. (More) Also, the system minimizes classroom instruction (in which the teacher has some say), and mandates state-prescribed materials. This gives the state tight control over its political indoctrination in the schools.

The issue is not whether you agree or disagree with the above political views. The issue is that centralized control of education is unwise. It is dangerous for one centralized authority to impel its views onto all public schools. Such decisions are better made by parents through locally-elected schoolboards. We must reject state-controlled education for the same reasons we reject state-controlled religion.

Group-thinking and filtering of students

The new system requires students to work within groups, where they ‘learn’ together or teach each other. The ignorant – teach the ignorant – no doubt, in a social way. This mandate is abundant. The better students are required to ‘share’ their work with group-mates, who then tend to receive the same score for it. This is yet another way the Profile equalizes outcomes. The good student is punished, the bad student is rewarded.

But such repeatedly coerced ‘sharing’ is not the real thing, it does not cause genuine compassion. Rather, it is indoctrination into habitual acceptance of having one’s work-product arbitrarily re-distributed. It is also indoctrination into group-identity and relying on others, rather than on personal responsibility. Through the years, the system repeatedly and permanently scores students on their behavioral adherence to this indoctrination. This score is not given separately, say, as a score on ‘group-behavior.’ Instead it is repeatedly melded with other scores (such as the student’s math score, and English score, etc.) in a manner that cannot be easily separated later. In other words, the system indoctrinates and filters, so as to advance those students whose behavior conforms to a particular ideology.

Dependency

The new system has students make many excursions to various government offices and outlets, to see and experience for themselves. It has students closely experience an abundance of seemingly “free” services given with no negative stigma attached. This amounts to a highly seductive advertisement for the benefits of becoming dependent on government. Rather than teaching honest self-reliance, the system seduces our children into dependency.

Cat and Mouse

MrEdCo was at the forefront of exposing the political nature of the performance packages. In response, the DCFL began re-writing the performance packages, to slightly reduce its propaganda and help put the new system over on the public. Thus began a game of cat and mouse, where the DCFL re-wrote and re-issued its material, all the while claiming they were not mandating a particular course content. The ever-changing performance packages made a moving target. The performance packages (especially in their originally published form) are a monument to why centralized control ought not be allowed. Such evasive action is predictable, for the time-being. However, after the centralized-control is consolidated, a propagandized education is inevitable.