Many parents and taxpayers know higher education has become a wasteland of political correctness, but few know this atmosphere also pervades K-12 education. In May, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held a symposium to discuss this reality.
“What were fringe ideas in the 1960s became mainstream in our education schools by the 1980s,” said panelist and retired teacher Larry Sand. “As such, we can’t be surprised that half our students consider socialism a viable system, while many think that corporations are inherently evil and that Che Guevara was a heroic freedom fighter.”
A video of the event has been embedded in this article. Thanks to CJHS for permission to post it. More information here, and below.
The panel included:
Kyle Olson — Author of Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism and publisher of EAGnews.org, a news service dedicated to education reform and school spending research, reporting, analysis, and commentary.
Larry Sand — Retired teacher, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, blogger and regular contributor to City Journal. Having taught for over 28 years, he has seen firsthand what Olson has written about.
Mary Grabar — Professor who’s forever battling the “re-educators,” and not coincidentally, forever battling for her continued employment in Georgia. She has written extensively about influence of radicals in our colleges, most notably chronicling the legacy of the late Howard Zinn whose politically charged and factually challenged “textbook,” A People’s History of the United States, is in wide usage in schools across the country. She is organizing the Resistance to the Re-Education of America at DissidentProf.com.
Bruce Thornton — Professor of classics and humanities at Fresno State University and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of eight books, a regular contributor to FrontPageMag.com and perhaps the most articulate and prolific conservative college professor working today.
Ben Boychuk, moderator — Currently an associate editor of City Journal, and a columnist for the Sacramento Bee and ScrippsHoward News Service, where he writes eloquently on a wide variety of topics. He has long been involved with education issues, including a recent stint at Heartland Institute where he was managing editor of School Reform News and remains a policy advisor on education issues.