We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
You might be surprised to learn what the nation's preeminent college of education stands for.
As FIRE notes:
Teachers College’s Conceptual Framework, which represents the “philosophy for teacher education at Teachers College,” requires students to possess a “commitment to social justice.” Moreover, students are expected to recognize that “social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility.”
Somehow, they forgot to add intelligence, ability, energy, honor, determination, persistence, and character to their list of evil excuses for discrimination by The System, not doubt for the benefit of the "ruling class." (This is like entering a time machine to 1968.)
However, the point is that if you like the idea of merit, mobility, and individual responsibility, you are not cut out to be a graduate of Teacher's College. They actually assess their students on these political criteria. This is ridiculous politically-correct drivel worthy of the late 1960s - but if they really believe it, our kids are in trouble.
I am so grateful that I was taught "critical thinking" in school. I learned to see through this sort of nonsense.
.
Added comment from
Dr. Bliss, at the editor's request:
When they use the term "social justice," I get the creeps. It generally means quasi-totalitarian state control when people use it these days. But social justice can be seen in many different ways, depending on your reading of Plato, Montesquieu, Locke, Adam Smith, de Toqueville, etc; depending on your understanding of history and, perhaps most importantly, on your understanding of human nature. What is fascinating - if stereotypical - about the Teacher's College manifesto is that it is based on a vision of students - and people (except them, who get to make the rules) as victims of a "system," rather than free persons in the most free country in the world, with more abundant opportunity than has ever existed in history. Theirs is an oppressive message, designed to nurture blame, defeatism, dependency, resentment, and helplessness rather than to nurture optimistic, brave, energetic Americans with the can-do spirit.
.
Coment from The Barrister, of Maggie's Farm:
.
Ditto to the above. A couple of points: 1. This is warmed-over 60's stuff. I suspect the people who run the place are all in their 50s, and still fighting "the revolution" and seeing themselves as part of "the movement." Sheesh - you'd think they would have grown past that by now. 2. Who appointed teachers to be propagandizers? No-one would hire teachers to do that - that's the lowly, undignified job of politicians, journalists, and commentators! Don't they have to teach trig and calc and physics and chemistry and econ and music and all that? Isn't that enough to do? 3. The excuse-making angle: If kids don't learn much, it's not the teachers' fault or the schools' fault - it's the system. The system doesn't want them to succeed. Bad, bad system! The system should go sit in the corner for ten minutes. 4. But wait a minute - the public education system is already controlled by the Teacher's Unions. Woops. Oh, well, it must be the other system that wants the kids to be oppressed. Like, the kids' parents, who work and vote and pay the schools' bills and comprise the "American system"? This makes no sense. With these attitudes, it is no wonder that most Americans would quit the state schools if they had the choice to do so.
