Social Justice: Indoctrination Pure and Simple

There has been a number of controversies lately over the injection of a politicized curriculum into the city's public schools. Most recently, the sojourn of Nat Turner's Beacon School students to Cuba caused some consternation, but the issue runs deeper than this one glaring example and Andrew Wolf has called attention to the larger concern.

What we are seeing is that there is a cadre (good word comrades) of self-styled radical retrogrades who feel that it is their duty to raise the consciousness of the city's school children. That's not, however, the major cause for worry in this regard. What's even more bothersome is the useful idiots over at DOE who has set up 15 "social justice" high schools all over town. In league with these dopeycrats is something called The New York Collective on Radical Education, a group that is looking to, among other things, teach math in such a way as to "prove" that Hurricane Katrina was less a natural disaster than a consequence of American racism.

All of this is reinforced in a letter that is published today in the NY Sun. The letter, written by someone named Sally Lee, who is with a group called Teachers Unite. Lee tells us that all teachers bring their ideologies into the classroom: "When educators declare themselves neutral or apolitical, but then proceed to teach one interpretation of history or one approach to problem solving, they inadvertently reinforce dominant ideologies about how the world works."

And do you know something?-she is absolutely right. All education is about socialization, and all socialization reflects the world views of the society that sponsors it. Ms. Lee's problem is that she just doesn't like the assumptions of the society that she lives in; the one that apparently pays her salary to teach as well.

Here's her worldview. Speaking of her radical cohort she tells the Sun's readers; "Many of these educators recognize that white supremacy, capitalism, misogyny, and imperialism, are forces that permeate the globe..." Interesting, and as an aside you notice that this radical wretch doesn't mention the permeation of jihadism as a force that might actually incinerate her charges on the subway or in their homes.

So we can see that Ms. Lee leans, well, leeward, if you're someone who "don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The point being that if Lee and her merry band of faux revolutionaries want to foment a radical reordering of this society they should do so on their own dime, and not expect to be paid by the fascist state for teaching their dangerous nonsense.

As to the idea of social justice, it really is "just us," revolutionary vanguard. It is the same tired themes that brought us the gulag, the forced collectivization of the kulaks, and the show trial. Not to mention the immiseration of millions through economic collapse and mass starvation. Chancellor Klein better wake up here. Our kids are doing badly enough with the standard curriculum, they don't need to be indoctrinated by half-baked revolutionary ideas that will cripple any chance they might have for academic success.