The Independent View: Education or indoctrination?

A friend who owned a small, profitable business in Porterville told me about a young person who graduated from one of our schools, which by the way has an excellent reputation. They had to fire a new hire because he/she couldn’t fill out the necessary forms that were required to complete each transaction.

They first tried to educate the employee and provide practice sessions to improve performance as any competent employer would do. Still no improvement. The owner, out of frustration and empathy for the fired employee, called the teacher of the local school and asked if she was a good student. The teacher assured him the student was an outstanding student and would be an asset to his company.

He then told the teacher what had happened and asked how the student could pass an English class while not being able to write legibly. The teacher responded they were to grade on the content of the papers and not the readability.

He informed the teacher that this policy sets the students up for failure. The teacher again stated that’s not his/her problem. The they must grade on the content of the report, not its legibility.

Another school district principal/superintendent was investigated by the Tulare County 2009-2010 Grand Jury for complaints she changed STAR tests grades, intimidated parents with threats of calling immigration, stole computers from the school, and put a teacher on paid administrative leave who she accused of verbal and physical abuse of students. When the principal retired, the teacher was immediately asked to return to his job by the new principal.

The wrongdoing by the first principal was substantiated and the case forwarded to the District Attorney. Evidence of changing state test scores wasn’t found. The School Board never read proposed contracts, attended available free training sessions, had no knowledge of the reinstatement of the suspended teacher, and a petition signed by 253 parents was sent to the board requesting the removal of the principal and wasn’t read by any board member.

The above two examples show how a school district can be forced to overlook important educational outcomes and how a District can fail to educate by lack of oversight by the board.

These examples are small when compared to the woke movement and the indoctrination of our youth in the educational system. I use the word indoctrination instead of education because of the way these lessons are taught. It’s understandable when you consider the ratio of liberals to conservatives employed by the schools of all ages. There 8.5 registered Democrats to 1 Republican.

Let’s start at the top. Bill Ayers was a member of the famous Terrorist group The Weather Underground. His statements from the “Prairie Fire” (the manifesto of the Weather Underground) were “We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.”

Ayers wasn’t simply protesting against the Vietnam War. First, he wasn’t against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn’t against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in the Prairie Fire.

Where am I going with this? Mr. Ayers taught for years at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He mainly focuses on social justice, fixing education in urban areas, children who are in trouble with the law and related issues.

He began working as a teacher at the Children’s Community School (CCS). CCS was started by a group of students. After he left the underground, he earned a master’s in Education from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1983)), from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed. D. from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Now this is the man who started and led the Weathermen Underground who had claimed credit for more than 25 bombings — including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California Attorney General’s office, and a New York City police station. Did he change or did he follow the Communist plan to overthrow from within.

According to Standing Freedom.com, parents continue to confront school authorities over the introduction of Marxist and divisive, anti-american ideologies into school curricula, including Critical Race Theory, CRT, and other divisive ideologies, two teachers in California are in hot water after taking it upon themselves to indoctrinate their students with leftist ideology.

One AP government teacher named Gabriel Gipe was caught in an undercover Projec Vertas video discussing his attempts to indoctrinate students. “I have 180 days to turn them (students) into revolutionaries,” Gipe said, noting his tactics were to “scare the (expletive) out of them.”

The teacher was quite open about his intentions and views, noting he both shamed and rewarded students depending on how they responded to his views. “I have an Antifa flag on my (classroom) wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable…. Well, this Antifa flag is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this flag is antithetical to, Gipe” stated.

The teacher posted a calendar of events students could attend for extra credit, including left-wing protests. Gipe also advocated for a Communist overthrow of the government, saying, “Like, why aren’t people just taking up arms? Like why can’t we, you know — take up arms against the state? We have historical examples of that happening, and them getting crushed and being martyrs for a cause and it’s like — OK well, it’s slow going because it takes a massive amount of organization.”

He extolled the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the deaths of as many as two million Chinese, many of whom, ironically, were teachers. Mao Zedong, its architect, was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 65 million people during his 27-year reign, according to the Black Book of Communism, making him history’s most murderous ruler. Gipe also marked students’ papers with stamps of other Communist dictators, including Joseph Stalin, Kim Jung Un, and Fidel Castro, each responsible for their own series of sadistic policies and atrocities.

My advice is to ask your child what he/she learned today, every day, and attend as many board meetings as you can. Also ask for a copy of the schools curriculum. My grandchildren are home schooled and I still ask them what they’re studying .... often.