Not your father’s Civics classes
Paul Mirengoff discusses a national drive currently underway to institute standards for a civics curriculum. Sounds good, right? After all, civics is a subject that’s been highly neglected and is extremely important.
Most of you probably can see the catch, though – which is that education departments have been so taken over by leftist thought that this is a recipe for further disaster and for removing the last vestiges of local control over education in more conservative communities and forcing a leftist standard on them.
Bill Ayers certainly had a brilliant idea when he saw that the activism of the 60s and 70s by violent revolutionaries wasn’t going to win over the American people, and that education was where to put the left’s energy for the next half-century. That effort (and others – the left is tenacious, organized, and thorough) has borne a bounty of fruit.
One of the ways the left functions is to redefine terms and sell them to a public that isn’t up to speed. It’s a form of bait and switch for the unaware, and for the increasing numbers of approving awares it’s a promise. The terms “justice,” “equality,” “equity,” “racism,” “anti-racism,” and a host of others do not mean what they used to mean, but the left uses them to give the initial appearance of something traditional and attractive. Then the changes come, many of them quite unexpected.
The same with “civics.” Mirengoff cites this piece by Stanley Kurtz:
The critical point is that final responsibility for setting the new history and civics curriculum will lie with state school boards and their attendant bureaucracy. These boards, and even more so the bureaucratic curriculum specialists upon whom they rely, are far more left-leaning than the legislators — or citizens — of their states…
The civics now recognized and promoted by America’s dominant, left-leaning education establishment is radically different from what conservatives or traditionalists think of when they hear the word civics. Not one in ten conservatives has even heard of “action civics” or “project-based civics,” but this is what professional educators now mean by civics.
Essentially, “action civics” trains students to protest on behalf of leftist political causes…
So-called action civics is more like anti-civics. It pressures ill-prepared students to take up leftist causes, when educators dealing with policy controversies ought to be teaching students how to assess the strengths and weaknesses of conflicting viewpoints instead. Leftist action civics is already widespread in blue states, and activists hope to force it onto deep-dyed red-state school districts via statewide civics mandates.
Even without this bill, the Biden administration will probably do its best to push this by executive action if possible.
The best defense is to try to take charge of the state school boards. I don’t mean to imply this is easy, but it seems to me that it is key. Of course, another thing that might happen is that people will vote with their feet and take their children out of the public school system, but realistically speaking I don’t think most people will be able to do that.
A National Drive.
Common Core was originally proposed to do something like that and got hijacked.
At first an attempt by some well-meaning educators to standardize education levels across a country that had a fluid student population.
Then, as you point out, an opportunity for the left to set indoctrination as education.
A mother and her high-school son (Gabrielle and William Clark) have filed a fascinating lawsuit in Las Vegas against a publicly-funded charter school for teaching not civics, but BLM/CRT/1619 propaganda, which indoctrinates the students with Marxist and pseudo-Marxist nonsense about race instead of teaching anything remotely resembling good citizenship. What makes this case especially interesting is that the mother is black, but the son’s appearance favors his deceased father, who was white. Without question, the judgement in this suit will be of the greatest importance imaginable.
It takes continuous surveillance and complaining. The left is full of people in jobs they feel are not worthy of their august presence but give them plenty of time to push political positions. Librarians, high school teachers, and petit bureaucrats are the prime posts.
Over 40 years ago I got an NROTC scholarship and my tony Chicago suburb high school did not choose to have it presented at an awards day assembly. I couldn’t care less but my Mother sure did. The Navy usually sent a recruiting officer to these types of affairs. My Mom raised holy hell so the School Principal had to arrange a special presentation in his office the next week. He caught hell from the school board etc. When my daughters was in high school 30 years later at least this was not the case. Both service and merchant marine academy scholarship winners were included.
Fait Accompli because no one cared enough to stop it when it was smaller…
Now, I dont really want to hear their complaints as they wake up…
I took a lot of grief being aware early and caring…
Now i care little and do not feel like sacrificing more as I had already lost a lot
sometimes you wake up and say, i am old, its my turn before i go…
They will get what they deserve and I will try to avoid what is left…
Artfldgr:
What do you mean “no one cared enough to stop it when it was smaller”?
I lived for quite a while in a community that “cared enough to stop it” and was actually quite successful for decades. I don’t know what’s going on there now, but I doubt that community was unique in “caring enough to stop it.”
The problem, as you well know, is that the right was not organized to stop it everywhere, and was somewhat late in the game. The takeover by the left of education started a very long time ago, although it picked up an enormous amount of steam after the 60s. Most people were unaware until it reached a sort of critical mass. But plenty of people became quite aware in the 90s (that’s when I recall becoming aware), and that’s when the efforts I’m talking about in my community occurred.
Neo,
This leftward march will either burn itself out, Or claim enough victims that it collapses. But having dealt with seemingly normal people who espouse these beliefs. They are wholly impenetrable. Just today I passes along a quote that espoused frugality as a way to increase financial stability. Simple enough. I was attacked because the advice came from someone who was “wealthy”. No value was given to actual merit of the statement. It was to be dismissed out of hand.
Its frightening how far this mentality has spread in the last decade. To boot the person was a successful architect and I am considerably less wealthy than he is. But we seemed to have come to an age where the only value a statement has is who uttered it. What was said has become irrelevant
What was disconcerting is that the American Legislative Exchange Council – which is supposed to be on our side – has been promoting this.
Mythx. I know. When I think of making an observation about one fact or another, I usually don’t because the response will be so non-responsive.
Richard Aubrey,
I tend to agree with you. But I passed the information along in an honest attempt to help people who may not think in those terms financially.
On a lot of things I simply let it pass. But I think denying all logic to appease the vision of the self anointed only furthers the problem
But my discussions with many people lead me to believe that there can be no good ending to this. They have replaced the basis of western thought with that of tribalism and science with a form of shaminism. Then stand upon the figurative and literal corpses of their ideology. And accuse everyone else of putting them there. Its not even that we no longer share common values. We no longer share any line of thinking. And as the left further contorts words and their meanings. The chasm grows ever wider.
Their zealotry will force us all to either bend a knee or take their feet from them. The low hanging fruit of a middle ground has rotted away.
This leftward march will either burn itself out, Or claim enough victims that it collapses.
Mythx: I’ve been betting on the former, but the croupier keeps raking up my chips. I don’t want to be around for the latter.
However, history is not a straight line. Who foresaw the Christians pulling the rug out from under the Roman Empire? Or, for the worse, the Nazis turning one of the most civilized countries in Europe into a genocidal death machine?
“The best defense is to try to take charge of the state school boards.”
I disagree. The best defense is to go Gault. Don’t participate. If you have children homeschool them. If you are retired volunteer to teach at a Homeschool co-op. Do not give them your children. Help others who may lack the means to teach. My wife an I paid high property taxes to live in good school districts so our kids would be relatively safe while paying a relative fortune to send them to private , religious schools. Our current net worth is 1/2 – 2/3 what it would have been if we had not done this, but we do not have a single regret.
Mythx,
The pandemic has seemed to accelerate the wealthy classes need to lecture the lower classes while insisting they (the wealthy class) are victims. I have literally lost my job due to the pandemic, yet some very well to do friends and acquaintances who have been safe in their jobs sort-of working on zoom calls in the comfort of their homes lecture me about the importance of continuing lockdowns.
Slightly tangential, but this exposure of Alec Baldwin’s wife’s grift and his and her response is related. It is literal cultural appropriation of the worst kind by two, very wealthy individuals; yet I’m sure they’ll both be on twitter next week insisting their fans boycott some white guy’s Mexican restaurant because he has no right to serve Latin cuisine.
Dishing the dirt on “Hilaria” Baldwin:
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2020/12/28/alec-baldwins-wife-hilaria-keeps-digging-after-getting-royally-busted-for-allegedly-how-you-say-in-english-lying-about-spanish-heritage-videos/
Oh Rufus …
If a man can identify as a woman or a woman identify as a man
and be accepted it’s a simple jump for “Hilaria” Baldwin can identify as whatever Spanish and be accepted! Next she will say she’s Cleopatra incarnated. She does kinda have the look. This is the mind of the far left.
How dare anyone question!
Huxley,
I agree with you. But sadly I am preparing for the latter.
History is replete with odd changes in course. I have always felt that the left’s insistence that they will be on the right side of history. Says less about the value of their position. And more about who will have the power to write the books.
As for the Nazi’s. We can see the proximate cause of their rise to power. Was driven primarily rampant inflation and economic ruin. And yet we seem to be marching down a horrible path that will lead to similar circumstances. Most people do not want this. I think the left is counting on it.
Rampant money printing, impossibly low interest rates and regular semi annual trillion dollar orgies of spending. Will lead to a hard hard downturn. I think its already too far gone to make any correction. As even incrementally fixing one of them only makes the other factors even worse.
Rufus T. Firefly
I am sorry to hear about your job loss. I know many people who have ended up in similar circumstances.
I work in a call center. While I cannot work from home. I work with the public on the phone. And I absolutely am against this fascistic need for continued lock downs. Its ruinous both financially and spiritually to all those involved. But as there are zero actual benchmarks that cant be moved. I see this lasting indefinitely. Until they are forced to by a court, or the public. They will not back down on this issue.
As for the Baldwin Saga. There are not rules, until there is a rule. Then those who grovel at the lefts altar can violate the non-rule rules. Its made up as they go along. Thousands of little Caligula’s with blue check marks. Happily lording their madness over the rest of us.
That’s what family dinner is for. “The teacher said WHAT?”
My granddaughters pretend great boredom with the inevitable question whenever we meet; “What are you doing in social studies?”
I try.
Or Stalin not knowing what actually was going on …. and on … and on. Or the “reforms” carried out by Mao or Pol Pot (sarc). Nothing to see, it’s the curse of whiteness and Eurocentric hegemony. Oh to be a leftist and to be on the right side of history; that arc thingy. But we know all about the Nazis and what to watch for, right?
Rufus T. Firefly:
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
Mythx:
It would have been interesting to have asked him if he only takes advice on how to live from those who are poverty-stricken.
Neo,
It was a long conversation. Its main basis is seems to be that a rich person’s opinion held zero value as he did not understand poverty.
Eventually the conversation got around to mentioning his wonderful garden. He is by trade an architect.
My question was should I ever take advice on gardening from him? Or does his opinion only have value if based in brick, mortar, and stone?
He seems to always place inordinate value on who is offering the advice, policy, or idea. And is able to completely dismiss the merits of any argument based solely on who is making it. Which seems to be a hallmark of the Trump era. As long as you are the wrong person. Any position take must be reflexively dismissed and afforded no further discussion.
From the outside he seems completely normal. Pleasant and jovial to be around. mild mannered and seemingly cares about others. While to our circle of friends I could be charitably be described as irascible and bombastic. But when challenged in any way . He delves straight into hard core identity politics and socialism. Poverty to him cannot be solved as it is inherently an oppressive system as long as capitalism exists. While I point out its a set of circumstances that can be changed by modifying behavior
To quote him. When describing a quote on the value of frugality. His exact description was “prosperity gospel capitalism”
As for the Nazi’s. We can see the proximate cause of their rise to power. Was driven primarily rampant inflation and economic ruin.
The inflation in 1922-23 one one episode in the loss of legitimacy of the German establishment, but the German body politic still had enough stress-tolerance to avoid turning the keys over to nutty revanchists. It was the economic implosion of 1928-32 which gave the Nazis a large electoral base (and augmented the Communist Party’s vote as well). Deflation was a feature of the latter period, a fall in prices to the tune of 25% coincident with a fall in real per capita product of about 17%. Germany would have benefited from a devaluation of the mark and some moderate inflation, something the Bruening ministry declined to do in accordance with prevailing schools of thought.
He seems to always place inordinate value on who is offering the advice, policy, or idea. And is able to completely dismiss the merits of any argument based solely on who is making it.
I think that fallacy has an ancient proper name attached to it.
One source of the cancer is the teachers’ colleges, who consume all too much of the aspirant teacher’s time, skimp on instruction in useful skills, and hire people like Barbara Regenspan and Robin d’Angelo to traffick in political propaganda (“social justice education”). A serious reform at the state level would start with mass closure of teachers’ colleges. A second reform would be to fire every single line professional in the state education department without serious training in psychometrics, statistics, or quantitative methods in the service of policy evaluation. A third would be to remove any requirement in the state education law which would compel the hiring of people with MEd degrees and the like to work as teachers, principals, or superintendents. Ideally, superintendents would be general administrators not enmeshed at all in the guild ideology of the education ‘profession’. Hire some elderly business executive who wants to close out his work life with public sector work.
Art+Deco
“I think that fallacy has an ancient proper name attached to it.”
I do believe your correct. But I cannot think of it at this time
As for the Nazi’s of course there were many many causes. But desperate economic straits with such a direct cause to other countries. Made the Nazi’s job much easier. Truly desperate people will do nearly anything to make the pain go away.
I think we have a much better understanding of economics of industrial societies than we did in the 20’s and 30’s. Or we should. Targeted devaluation has its merits when called for.
But on a scale we have never seen. We have decided that the Keynesian theories that debt load does not really matter is accurate. Is not founded in rationality as much as it is now the path of least resistance. And a method to buy votes and stave the wolves from the door. That our market position in setting interest rates and expectation that we will continue as the benchmark currency. Are allowing to pull off this Houdini act.
Mythx; Art Deco:
A form of ad hominem argument, but also perhaps specifically Argumentum ad lazarum?:
I wonder if he likes how the USSR and/or Venezuela have solved the problem of poverty.
Neo,
Thank you!
Mythx,
Re: your friend. Remember how they used to tell us that the Civil War pit ‘brother against brother’? I had a hard time wrapping my head around that.
Well, here we are.
Some of my most beloved friends and family are on the other side. If push comes to shove I’ll have to stand for freedom.
I cannot do otherwise. God help me.
At the Kurtz NRO article cited above, one of the commenters points out that another controlling force for wokeness is(are) the accreditation agency(ies). If your high school is “reformed” to provide decent civics instruction but it cannot get “proper” accreditation because of those “wrong ideas”, the students graduating therefrom may not gain entrance into the better colleges. The march through the institutions included those institutions “valuing” other institutions.
Standard and Poors, et al. still face the discipline of profit and loss within the marketplace should they fail to provide reasonable valuations. But today a distorted and indoctrinated mind has little in the way of alternative social forces to realign it to face and accept reality.
Molly+Brown
Sometimes that came as disagreement between brothers.
But in some larger families i have read there was some cold calculation involved. Sometimes as spies. Other times believing having members on each side would ensure some survive.
I tend to believe that most of the GOP in Washington fall into the spy categories
R2L:
The “better” colleges? There are many small, private colleges all around us of which few have heard. Some are trying to keep up with the “latest” educational fads exhibited by those “better” colleges, which often requires hiring additional lecturers and administrative staff — but their enrollments have been declining nonetheless. Meanwhile, more and more parents of college-bound children are dismayed at what passes for education in the bigger name state and private colleges. It would seem that the small colleges could restore a rigorous curriculum of essential core subjects, cutting faculty and administrative staff, in order to attract students who want to learn instead of being indoctrinated, and perhaps those small colleges could save themselves, and provide the sort of leaders that could be available to guide the nation after the collapse that is coming.
Let’s lighten the mood a bit – although I agree that the best thing to do with the education system right now is shut it down.
https://notthebee.com/article/watch-this-91-year-old-substitute-teacher-put-her-students-to-shame-with-her-dance-moves
On the other hand, maybe it’s too late to burn down everything.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-words-matter-task-force-at-the-university-of-michigan-is-busy-expunging-deeply-offensive-language-like-brown-bag-picnic-and-long-time-no-see
As regards college, or that level of education, the “college experience” if living away from home is a peculiar version of maturation.
You go from home, possibly having included a part-time job out in the adult world, to…a dorm full of strangers. The academic structure is unfamiliar and, at least at first, produces anxiety.
Your parents and your neighbors aren’t watching, for whatever that’s worth.
When I was in college, the dorm provided twenty meals a week. When my kids were at the same place, the meal card (picture debit card) provided fifteen meals. What you did for the rest allowed for lots of choices, such as desk top refrigerators in the dorms–which had been rewired to cover for ‘puters and other stuff. Or piles of Li’l Debbies attracting ants, which annoy your room mates.
Different kinds of pressures and freedoms.
Millions of Americans have gone through this and not only the more fortunate, since the GI Bill. Whether it was fun or stressful in real time, it’s usually considered positive in results.
Getting a substantial number of folks to forego this for their kids is going to be difficult. And as long as the kids are, in effect, locked away in circumstances controlled by the institution and the informal left–purveyors of micro aggression accusations and so forth–nothing changes.
So Hillsdale multiplies by the score, or the kids….stay home and go to community college? Most conventional universities REQUIRE on-campus living for at least one year, if not two unless the actual residence was within a certain distance What the point is, now that we’re paranoid, besides controlling the kids are minimizing the influence of normal life, doesn’t occur to me
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves … We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
– Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel Prize Winning Chemist
From 1983 I believe
You would think that if he is fixated on authorities, he would give the advice of the “rich” ( as he assumes the ultimate advisor to be) greater, not less weight when the matter concerns acheiving financial stability and progress.
I don’t suppose he would think much of the notion of ignorimg his recommendations on sound comstruction, because he is already a successful architect and has not made a career of producing disastrous designs and failures.
He does not seem to know what a prosperity gospel is; since the advice to engage in self-discipline and take actions in order to accumulate working capital and freedom from debt, is just the opposite of “word of faith” programs of uttering magical professions of faith, and then waiting for the wealth to start rolling in.
I was talking to an old associate who still smokes: A pack a day. You figure the dollar cost out. What does that bill for the middling cable package you cannot even watch 90% of because it is so shitty, cost a month?
Those so destitute they are on the street will not be helped by such advice. But for those at the official poverty line, another two or three thousand a year in saving could make a real impact.
Others?
Many years ago in high school I worked as a clerk in a supermarket. Starting off as a “box boy” or “bagger”, one of the first things I noticed ( in the very mixed income location I started off in) was the wildly varying purchase choices people of visibly differing income levels made.
In general, below a certain level, the poorer the customer, the worse the choices.
I recall one case that still tugs at me a bit. A short, heavy-set, diffident, middle aged woman with stringy greying black hair used to come in. As I can still see her now, she is wearing a lumpy dark colored cloth car coat [ like a minor character out of a 1940’s film noir movie] and is accompamied by two boys. The older and larger was as obviously intellectually impaired as she was. The younger boy looked perfectly normal and alert … so much so that he was, – so I thought at the time – in a kind of torment; loyally and helpfully accompanying the other two, while acutely, perhaps agonizingly aware of how they presented to others.
Almost everything this poor woman bought was junk food. I do not know how they managed to live on such a diet of cookies and chips, and soda and some canned goods.
There was nothing we could do to intervene. Even at 16, I thought there was nothing at all funny about it.
I do not know how many of the poor are to be pitied; but I learned that there are some.
To quote him. When describing a quote on the value of frugality. His exact description was “prosperity gospel capitalism”
You mean he equates frugality with the life and works of Tammy Faye Bakker? It’s a pity no one whose good opinion your acquaintance wants ever looks him in the face and tells him he’s full of sh!t.
neo,
Correct, not technically mutually exclusive, but I genuinely believe the only solution is to go Galt. Collapse their system before they can finish their destruction of ours. Also, in many school districts it’s not prudent to send your kids to the public schools due to their curricula. And, as you pointed out last week with your post on the Dalton(sp?) school, many private schools are as bad, or worse.
If one’s school district is teaching ideological claptrap leave. If 20% or more of the students leave a school district in one year it will have devestating effects on the district. We have to collapse this by ceasing to participate in our own demise.
I know I sound like a broken record; but it’s civil disobedience 101. If your local coffee shop funds BLM don’t buy coffee from them. If your community cable provider only provides options including networks that are spreading lies; cancel and go a la carte. These are simple things, yet millions who claim to care deeply about saving the country don’t even take these steps.
Stop giving them the money to fund their revolution. Why is this not obvious to every one?
If one is giving this system one’s very own children it’s hard to believe one cares at all.
“In general, below a certain level, the poorer the customer, the worse the choices.” – DNW
Many years ago, one of our local church leaders explained to me why Jesus said, “The poor ye have always with you.”
(The Savior caught some flak for that from his own disciples, and still does.)
As you do, I now know this by experience from working with them for many years.
Much as we might feel sorry for them and try to help them, some people — for whatever reasons — cannot be persuaded to make good choices.
AesopFan,
“The poor ye have always with you.”
I don’t pretend to know the mind of God, but I have heard the phrase you used as evidence that even Jesus thought some people are, how did Hillary so sagely put it? “Irreedemmably deplorable?” That theory is inconsistent with His other teachings.
An explanation I have heard, which seems more accurate to me; Jesus was imparting that his capture and death were near. Regarding your statement about “flak” you are obviously aware that Gospel scene is part of a series of events that convinces Judas to betray Him. This explanation seems more obvious to me. Not that Jesus was using the circumstances for an impromptu economics lesson.
Isn’t “poisoning the well” a more precise label for the fallacy discussed above? It’s kind of a subcategory of ad hominem. At any rate it’s standard procedure now: your argument is wrong because you are a member of such-and-such a group. There’s also the converse: my argument is right because I am a member of….
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
A couple I know has major financial disagreements. He wants to economize and save, she doesn’t. He asked her to read a book on investing. She read one chapter and I gather it must have contained some Dave Ramsey type exhortation, because she said it was “poor-shaming” and refused to read further.
Nose vs. face.
A couple I know has major financial disagreements. He wants to economize and save, she doesn’t. He asked her to read a book on investing.
I’m wagering that a deficit of knowledge about investing is not the source of her problem. Cue Mel Udall.
Of course not. Just illustrates the syndrome.
“Bulverism”
To some extent, the enumeration, and generation, of informal fallacies has become a kind of cottage industry. One takes the genus of “informal fallacies”, picks the species, either fallacy of relevance or fallacy of ambiguity, and then begins applying subspecies names to every shade or twist produced by the rhetorical inventiveness of man.
To try and iterate every informal fallacy capable of receiving a precisely distinguishing name is like trying to state precisely how many Eastern Black Oak/Northern Red Oak hybrids are possible. To some extent it is a kind of vanity project, or at best, hobby: as the broader and more traditional sub-classifications will generally do.
Among informal fallacies, one I find more interesting than most is the fallacy of composition (and division); as it is among the more commonly seen engaged in by progressives and has fewer provisos – unlike say, an “appeal to authority” wherein appealing a question to an acknowledged expert in his own field, as opposed to a celebrity or an expert in an irrelevant field, does have qualified value.