Radically Transforming the Nation: Our Politicized Schools - of Education Posted: Feb 20th, 2019 - 7:22 am
If somebody wanted to fundamentally transform a society to its roots, where would he or she start?
The most logical starting point would be education. And if there were one part of the educational system that would produce this transformation most broadly, effectively, and efficiently, it would most likely be at our schools of education that train teachers for the K-12 classroom. That’s where ideas from the rest of academia are inserted into the curriculum for elementary and high school students, and where politically unsophisticated young people are turned into classroom teachers. Control the schools of education, and the education system will eventually be yours to forward your political agenda.
Remarkably, that is just what has happened in this country. Over 100 years ago, when our education schools were just starting up or growing from two-year normal schools to university status, Progressive educators set out to transform the nation into one that was based on social science theories, collectivism, and central planning.
How successful were they? Several years ago, I started an investigation into how politicized education schools have become. Today, the Martin Center is releasing the results of that investigation in a new report, titled “The Politicization of University Schools of Education.”
The report’s main conclusion? That schools of education may very well be radicalized beyond anything imagined by the early Progressives.
The way I came to that conclusion was through two methods. One was an empirical examination of the syllabi of three major education schools, the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. I looked at 290 total syllabi from the three education schools and tabulated the most frequently assigned authors. Rather than basing popularity on the number of times an author’s works were assigned, I used the number of classes in which their works were assigned
(Excerpt)
LINK/URL: Radically Transforming the Nation: Our Politicized Schools
Post A Reply Reply By Email Options
Complete Discussion Below: (  marks the location of current message within thread)
|
