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Charlie Sykes: Sykes Writes

IT'S CALLED INDOCTRINATION

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Katherine Kersten reports on Minnesota's embrace of PC re-education.

The first step toward "cultural competence," says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize -- and confess -- their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the reeducation camps of China's Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi...

The task group recommends, for example, that prospective teachers be required to prepare an "autoethnography" report. They must describe their own prejudices and stereotypes, question their "cultural" motives for wishing to become teachers, and take a "cultural intelligence" assessment designed to ferret out their latent racism, classism and other "isms." They "earn points" for "demonstrating the ability to be self-critical."

The task group opens its report with a model for officially approved confessional statements: "As an Anglo teacher, I struggle to quiet voices from my own farm family, echoing as always from some unstated standard. ... How can we untangle our own deeply entrenched assumptions?"

The goal of these exercises, in the task group's words, is to ensure that "future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression."

Future teachers must also recognize and denounce the fundamental injustices at the heart of American society, says the task group. From a historical perspective, they must "understand that ... many groups are typically not included" within America's "celebrated cultural identity," and that "such exclusion is frequently a result of dissimilarities in power and influence." In particular, aspiring teachers must be able "to explain how institutional racism works in schools."

13 COMMENTS

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  1. There is a reason I pay for parochial school!
  2. And a reason why we homeschool!
  3. Unfortunately, I attend a private university that is quite wrapped up in this cultural indoctrination so it's not just public schools. The goal is to make us all "the same." Why can't I favor my own upbringing and culture? I, for one, am not going to be shamed into equating other cultures and beliefs to my own. There is nothing wrong with being proud of who you are.
  4. Exactly.

Storm Team 4

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