The Vicious Cycle of Social Justice Indoctrination - Part 1
"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
That disease doesn't seem to have infected Canada yet. During my bachelor degrees, left-leaning professors seemed to be open-minded. In two classes I wrote strongly libertarian essays - although I had to tone down one to "get down from Mount Pelerin - and they both had As.
Fortunately not all liberals are on board and I hope it didn't come across that way in the text. Classical liberals are still very much a positive force for free speech and actual justice today. The SJ crowd however is very very vocal and very active which makes them appear far more prevalent than (I hope) they are. Thanks for the comment!
I'm in Canada, and I have a sister who works at Concordia University. While the problems are not as advanced here, it does seem to depend on the university department involved. The business departments doesn't seem to have this problem, while liberal arts is rife with problems of this nature. The differences became apparent during a 'student strike' four years ago, when liberal arts took to the streets (yes, in masks etc...) and threatened other students who attended classes, and workers doing deliveries to the buildings. I think that the discipline of a business program keeps the kids saner than whatever they're filling the heads of students in liberal arts with.
It doesn't surprise me business doesn't have this problem, nor most of the natural sciences, it really is the "social construction of the truth" that has crept into the liberal arts and sciences that lays the groundwork for this kind of behavior. You're lucky it isn't that bad in Canada (yet), but unless the ideology behind it is addressed, it will grow. Thanks for the comment!
As you point out this is a terrible blow to America. In fact, it is a combo, and ends with the knockout punch you haven't yet treated. The attack on truth (considering facts relative to the beliefs of the observer) renders students, even STEM students only required to take humanities courses for degree completion, either unable, or less able, to consider objective reality.
It is objective reality that matters, and the penetration of STEM departments with diversity quotas is infiltrating science with the enemies thereof, saboteurs destroying the engineering and technical programs they suffuse with their ideology.
While I am aware of the cliche of the liberal humanities professor, I was startled to read that History, particularly, was 3300 times more liberal than conservative.
Given the facts of history, this seems alarmingly skewed. Indeed, it seems unlikely that given events like the Holodomor, perhaps the most deadly holocaust ever conducted, which was undertaken by the Bolsheviks, poster children for leftist ideology, that such a weighting simply reflects the lessons of history.
At first blush, I had to question the statistic itself, since that imbalance is impossible to achieve naturally, but when you pointed out that the more elite the institution, the higher the skew towards liberalism, it all made sense.
This imbalance is being created deliberately, by deep state actors, intent on increasing the power of the bureaucracies the deep state depends on for their power. The more elite the institution, the more integrated it is with the deep state (one only needs to follow the money to find the deep state).
I find that beyond cynical, but, as bad as it is, it's about to get much, much worse.
Pokemon Go captured 75 million users, and it's been out less than two months. Augmented Reality has hit the big time, and I just dare you to have a look at how VR and AR have the ability to completely immerse people in the program.
Numerous studies show that the brain is only able to interpret the information from all it's senses as real events. People may be conscious of the fact that it is a game, but the subconscious is not, and better VR blurs the line further. It is very easy to believe. That's the point.
Coupled with the fluidity of truth already part and parcel of the worldview of the SJT community, the propaganda potential of VR is unlimited. People are going to be raised in worlds that don't exist from their earliest youth, and the deep state is going to use them in this one to destroy liberty.
VR is the knockout punch the deep state is intending to wind up this combo on us with, and it is hard to see a flaw in their plan.
Thanks for making these connections apparent to me. I really needed to know this.
It is worth pointing out the statistics are for registered Democrats and Republican, those registered as something else or not registered at all aren't factored in, nevertheless, the bias is alarming. I too am of the opinion that nefarious actors are behind much of this, but without names and documentation, it pretty much has to be left vague - which I don't like that much but that's what it is.
At least in STEM programs the projects have to meet certain logical criteria, otherwise many of them just won't function no matter how much people wish to believe it should. The risk for STEM, I believe, is in what objectives will be pursued that is in accordance with the ideology. The whole VR issue shows the potential danger of that, the picture of Zuck the Cuck walking past all VR rigged zombies was chilling for its implications. It is as good as being announced it will be used as a control mechanism.
Thanks for another great comment!
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