Friday, April 20, 2012

Teaching as a subversive activity redux

Most academicians are liberals.  Also librarians, journalists, lawyers.  They want to “save the world.” Not in the sense of open minded, fair, thoughtful,  more humane, examining all sides, and in line with the ancient principles of western civilization or the renaissance.  But liberal in the modern sense—leftists.  Socialists.  Progressives. That’s why I say, “Liberals aren’t.”  After saying, “We need to have a ‘conversation,’ ” they will then tell you that your share of the information is not “fair,” or “reasonable,” and therefore you need to shut up or or they will leave.

From Teaching as a Subversive Activity: [a talk based on a book of that title from 1969]

Professor Brown's talk focuses specifically on this problem: His basic thesis is that it is no longer sufficient to simply tell students to think for themselves, because then we lose the ability to influence them, and there's no guarantee that the students will then develop progressive worldviews. The "Revisited" part of the lecture's title means that these days, we must be more blunt and to the point: Since the good guys are now in charge, let's just dispense with all the experimentation and instead directly indoctrinate the students in leftist thought and ideals.  . .

Includes the transcript and audio of 6 questions/answers.

. . .

Code Phrases Alluding to Indoctrination
If you hear or read academics using any of these tell-tale terms, they are actually discussing how to indoctrinate students:
&bull Critical pedagogy
&bull Agent for change
&bull Moral imperative
&bull "Critical" anything
&bull Subversive
&bull Mandate

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