By Steve Gunn

EAGnews.org

MILWAUKEE – We’ve warned our readers about this growing problem before, and we’ll continue to sound the alarm until more people understand the threat.



There’s a growing movement among a certain group of K-12 teachers, in Wisconsin and across the nation, to use public school classrooms as indoctrination centers for Marxist political ideology.

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Simply put, a lot of extremely liberal teachers believe it’s their responsibility to turn their K-12 students on to “the truth” as they understand it. They see nothing wrong with feeding their students a steady dose of their political beliefs without bothering to represent other points of view.

How do they manage to do this without school administrators stepping in? We have no idea.

Their goal is to turn kids into young socialists who reject the ideas of private ownership, personal accomplishment, the accumulation of wealth, and the concepts of hard work, personal responsibility and social mobility.

They want children to believe our society is hopelessly racist and rigged against people of color. They want kids to believe our nation is an oppressive militaristic power that abuses other populations on a routine basis.

They also want to make sure students become kneejerk supporters of organized labor in general, and public sector unions in particular, so that organizations like teachers unions can maintain their wealth and political power.

We’re not exaggerating. Do some research and learn more on your own.

As we’ve reported several times before, one of the leading proponents of the teacher/political activist model is Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. The outspoken union leader recently laid out his educational strategy during remarks to a gathering of the British Columbia Teacher Federation.

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His words are plain and his intentions are frighteningly clear. He wants schools to stop teaching kids how to think and start teaching them what to think.

“We do care about people,” Peterson told his audience near the end of his presentation. “We wouldn’t have gone into teaching if we didn’t care about people, especially children. But we also have to recognize that in the class-stratified and racially-divided world in which we live, we have to do more than care. We have to teach and organize for social justice.”

During his presentation, Peterson dismissed the idea of teachers sticking to traditional instruction, and stressed the importance of incorporating radical political messages into daily lesson plans.

He gave an example of how math teachers can use standard lessons to drive across their social activist points.

“Teachers will say ‘I can’t do social justice teaching.’ There’s sort of two main reasons. They say ‘Well I have so much scripted curriculum, I can’t … I just have to follow orders.’ Well, my attitude is, one, you really don’t have to follow the orders as much as you might think. And two, well then, work with your union, work with people that push against the scriptedness and let’s collectively say, ‘No this is inappropriate,’” Peterson told his audience.

“The other thing, though, is you can use standard curriculum and do a lot of stuff.

“Here’s an example – two story problems. It’s about teaching double-digit multiplication. So, story problem number one. A group of youth – ages 14, 15 and 16 – go to a store. Candy bars are on sale for 43 cents each. They buy a total of 14 candy bars. How much do they spend, not including tax?

“Here’s another problem. Factory workers – ages 14, 15 and 16 – in Honduras make McKid children’s clothing for Wal-Mart. Each worker earns 43 cents an hour and works a 14-hour shift each day. How much does each worker make in one day, excluding fees deducted by employers?

“It’s the exact same computation, it’s a different social context. They’ve both valid in terms of multi-digit computation. One has a subtext of consumerism – let’s buy candy. The other is, maybe, hmmm, there’s something going wrong in this world with child labor, and so on and so forth.

“It’s in the context of broader things. I show a picture of child labor, and I make sure it’s not just child labor in other countries. There’s child labor in the United States. So it’s not ‘them and us.”

The video can be seen by clicking here:

Pretty clever, Bob. Teachers can satisfy the requirement to teach the fundamentals while still incorporating political messages that kids couldn’t possibly miss.

We’re sure Peterson has similar suggestions for teachers of English, geography, drivers training and metal shop. Somehow it all comes back to the message that the U.S. is a greedy, discriminatory nation and the only cure is a healthy dose of government-imposed collectivism.

Perhaps we’re naïve, but we suspect that most parents still believe we live in a great nation that offers an unprecedented level of personal liberty, economic opportunity and freedom from government oppression.

And we believe most parents would strenuously object to the idea of having public school teachers convince their children to believe the exact opposite.

Yet somehow this left-wing recruitment continues in our classrooms and nobody seems to notice, or take it very seriously. Some parents across the nation have tried to complain, but in several instances we’re aware of, school administrators rejected their concerns.

There’s nothing wrong with teachers helping students gain a better grasp of the issues of the day or the problems plaguing our society and the world. We could actually use more of that type of learning. Today’s students are hopelessly ignorant about government and current affairs.

The problem comes when radical teachers present their anti-American point of view as the absolute truth, and dismiss other opinions as mere propaganda sponsored by evil corporations that want to keep the masses in their place.

For anybody who suspects that Peterson is just some random freak, or radical teacher activism is an isolated problem, think again.

This movement has caught on in school districts throughout the nation, particularly in inner city districts where underprivileged children are easily susceptible to the politics of jealousy, victimization and social division.

There’s a popular history textbook in use in many American high schools and middle schools called “A People’s History of the United States.” It was written by the late Howard Zinn, who was a left wing professor at Boston University.

Zinn presents our national experience as one of economic and racial oppression of the masses by the privileged white classes. There are reportedly more than 2 million copies of the book in print, and the text is reportedly used by more than 26,000 teachers across the country.

Meanwhile, teachers unions in Chicago, Oakland and many other cities openly embraced the radical “Occupy” movement that spread across America last year. And hundreds of K-12 educators reportedly attended the recent Midwest Marxist Conference at Northwestern University.

Parents and taxpayers would be wise to sit up, take notice, and act to address this dangerous plague if it exists in their community schools.