"Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!" - Pink Floyd, The Wall
The Vicious Cycle of Social Justice Indoctrination - Part 1
As discussed in my recent post "Frankenstein's Monster", higher education today has embraced the social justice belief system as a positive multi-generational force for achieving a just society, despite its internal inconsistencies and logical failings. This institutionalization is however not limited to higher education, indeed, it is permeating the entire educational system. A write-up at The Daily Westerner entitled "Columbia University Trains Future Teachers in Feminist and Neo-Marxist Theory" drives this point home.
I believe it goes without saying that if future teachers are mandated to learn the "advantages" of the social justice belief system, particularly for its applicability in educating future generations, it sets an escalating cascade of events into motion. I would contend the behavior we are seeing on campuses today by social justice advocates is just the manifestation of this and that it is too late to nip it in the bud. Now society as a whole must deal with a fatally wounded educational system that is not contributing to, but actively discouraging rational discourse and participation of the majority in civil society.
In the following two-part series, I will discuss how the embedding of social justice ideology in teaching degree programs has done three things: 1) created a systemic crisis for diversity of thought among faculty at all levels of education, 2) perpetuated the lack of critical and logical thinking skills, and 3) created a cyclically escalating and self-edifying dynamic for the social justice movement as a whole.
The (Anti-)Diversity of Ideas in Education and Why it Matters
Diversity of political thought in the liberal arts and sciences on campus is all but dead. Even the Washington Times' left leaning reporting couldn't make it sound much better "...at 40 leading universities...out of 7,243 professors, Democrats outnumber Republican 3,623 to 314, or by a ratio of 11 1/2 to 1... history (departments are) by far the least conservative-friendly department, where liberals outnumber conservatives by a 33 1/2-to-1 ratio." (How did that quote go again? Ah, yes: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who control the present controls the past" (Orwell, 1984)). It also appears this lack of diversity is more prevalent the higher the university sits in the academic rankings.
Further, while teachers of K-12 are generally believed to reflect their local communities, the numbers do not back this up, with the teaching community registered affiliations being at least 2/3 Democrat overall (see also Teachers Register Heavily as Democrats. I find this concerning for it potential to influence future generations - not in terms of the political orientation of students - but in terms of the philosophical underpinnings of their world view.
Why do I make this distinction that it is not the political orientation I am concerned about? Studies have been conducted that can reasonably refute the idea that educators' political views sway their students' political beliefs. Regardless of whether this is true or not, it does not actually speak to the problem that needs to be addressed.
Epistemological Approach is the Root Problem
Listening to a professor espouse their political beliefs as couched in the language of common political parlance, e.g. "I'm a Democrat/Republican and I think this and that", is sufficiently divisive at this juncture that it appears unlikely to sway previously held beliefs. It is when an ideology, in this case the social justice belief system, is taught as an objective truth that it becomes problematic. I have personally witnessed this behavior in seminars achieved through non-critical (or even distorting) references to legitimate (and therefore legitimizing) philosophical approaches and the unquestioned espousal of socially constructed truths that have little to no basis in objective facts.
Educators are trained to foster the adoption of information that is (presented as) factual and that is what is happening today with the social justice belief system, as the case of Columbia University mentioned in the introduction demonstrates. What difference does it make if students identify as Democrat or Republican if they accept the argument that truths, and thus facts, are or can be relativist constructions? This is the central tenant of social justice ideology and establishes an easily manipulable foundation for the longitudinal development of social and political thought. Simply stating that the political views of educators don't influence those of their students is a radical oversimplification of the problem to say the least. It is the epistemological framework of reference that is the critical issue.
When teachers trained are trained to examine "diversity", "inclusion", "multiculturalism", "to question, reframe, and interrupt dominant ideologies of schooling", to explore "ableism", "race and gender", the "construct of giftedness" and how "gender-sensitive curricula operates in the classroom" while they are at the university, it is clear we can expect these social justice concepts to be applied and adopted in their classrooms going forward, for that is the explicitly stated intent behind the educational program.
Interim Conclusion
And just to make the degree of social justice relativism clear, as TWD) points out, Columbia offers two teacher's programs which are described with the following catch phrases: "...there is no single truth in education... we ... interrogate and ... challenge the many sociocultural, institutional, bureaucratic, and interpersonal ways in which children and their families experience marginalization and exclusions (e.g., on the basis of race, ethnicity, social class, dis/ability, gender, nationality, sexuality, language, religious (non)affiliation, etc..." all with the explicit goal of simultaneously inquiring "into how... resistance can be translated into meaningful engagement with existing systems and schooling practices in order to effect change.") The intent to socially engineer society in keeping with their ideological platform could hardly be expressed any more clearly.
An entire generation of social justice teachers has been and is being unleashed on our schools from kindergarten to high school, where they set the functioning parameters of education for countless school children. They are also laying the foundation of future knowledge acquisition by the demographic in society least able to question their methods and goals. And the name of this paradigm is 'social justice'.
END OF PART 1 - See The Vicious Cycle of Social Justice Indoctrination - Part 2
It seems a cruel irony that Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" appears more appropriate now than ever. Is that Antifa at 4:10? Hmmm... they look a little young...
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tags: society politics education justice logic