A Pennsylvania father objected when his daughter’s middle-school history teacher assigned a project about a New York Times article blaming Republicans for the government shutdown. His complaint apparently made him the target of an orchestrated response by faculty at Camp Hill Middle School, and an English teacher named Cydnee Cohen left a voicemail message for one of the parent’s Facebook friends:

“We’re having some problems with a parent in our school district and on his page you are one of his friends…but I would like to know, some of it seems like he is a neo-nazi…call me…”

Bonus absurdity: The allegedly “neo-Nazi” parent, Josh Barry, is Jewish. Cohen is president of the local teachers union. Barry told the Daily Caller, “Her method is to go after the concerned parent and discredit and slander them.” He called it “big-time union thuggery on display.”

What’s happening here? Well, for one thing, we have further confirmation of what every intelligent American already knew: Public schools are staffed by Democrats, who not only vote Democrat and contribute money to Democrats through their unions, but consider it their professional duty to teach children to be Democrats, too.

But what about Cohen’s tactics? What’s up with that?

What Cohen was doing is consistent with a method of consensus building known as the “Delphi technique.” Originally developed as a way of organized discussion among experts, this method has been adapted and taught to school administrators. It is used to quell criticism of school policy by isolating and marginalizing critics, while creating the appearance of consensus in support of the policy.

Here’s what happens: You, the concerned parent, raise a question about some element of the curriculum or pedagogy. You contact the teacher who will then tell you there’s nothing to worry about, and that you’re the only parent who has complained. (Isolation.)

Suppose you’re not satisfied with the teacher’s answer, so you arrange a meeting with the principal. By the time you get that meeting, the teacher has already briefed the principal, so that he has a prepared defense of whatever it is you’re complaining about. The principal’s goal for the meeting is to placate you by convincing you that you are over-reacting because, after all, you’re the only parent who has complained.

It’s at this point that you start feeling like you’re in the Monty Python sketch, trying to get a refund for your dead parrot and being told by the pet shop owner that the Norwegian Blue is “pining for the fjords.”

You will encounter variations of this tactic no matter how far up the chain of command you take your complaint — the superintendent’s office, the PTA, the school board, etc. — and no matter what it is that you are complaining about. If you persist in your criticism, you will be labeled a troublemaker, an extremist, a kook, because the bureaucratic imperative is to marginalize critics, so that the bureaucracy can operate without scrutiny or opposition. (About 10 years ago, a slightly eccentric lady named B.K. Eakman published a book about this, How to Counter Group Manipulation Tactics: The Techniques of Unethical Consensus-Building Unmasked, which you might wish to examine.)

What every concerned parent eventually learns is this: The American public education system is profoundly undemocratic. The system is organized for the benefit of those who run the system. It’s not about teaching kids, it’s about providing lifetime employment, generous benefits and extraordinary political influence for education majors.

Keep this in mind: Whatever it is you’re complaining about — whatever specific grievance you have with the system — is merely a symptom of the disease. The problems of public education are not episodic, but systemic in nature. Public schools are not about teaching facts and skills, but rather are about teaching attitudes and beliefs, and the most important lesson they teach your kids is that you, the parent, are an ignorant idiot who should be ignored. No matter how many degrees you have, no matter how competent and skilled you are in your own profession, if your opinion about what constitutes an appropriate education differs from what the education system wants to provide, you will find you are regarded as inferior to the credentialed “experts” whose job is to undermine your authority as a parent.

You are only a “good” parent if you agree with the experts. You can have no autonomous influence over your child’s education, because your child exists only for the benefit of the system.

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”

— William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

Why aren’t you homeschooling your children yet?





Share this: Share

Twitter

Facebook



Reddit



Comments