Many people who testified at the Sept 14 meeting of the state Board of Education against using the PragerU Cash Course as a Learn Everywhere option argued that it would provide a camel’s nose under the tent to conservative ideas that will indoctrinate students.
There are so many problems with this point of view.
First, many families in New Hampshire have conservative values. So why keep these ideas out of public schools? The opponents, mostly teachers and former teachers, are afraid that students might be exposed to ideas that don’t agree with their views. But they think it’s okay to have their politically “progressive” views in the classroom.
Second, they don’t realize that they themselves are indoctrinated to believe in public schools. Yes, “believe.” Make no mistake — they treat public schools as a religion. In this particular case, they didn’t evaluate the merits of the PragerU course; they decided from the start that the conservative head of the organization would only be interested in indoctrinating students to his “evil” way of thinking.
If they would instead put their energy into evaluating what’s being taught in the public schools and the associated dismal performance of students, something might actually improve. Instead, they’re willing to accept a terribly low level of achievement in public schools. All while holding private schools, school choice programs, and anything outside of public schools to a standard much higher than anything public schools could dream of reaching.
By the time they’re in high school, students should be capable of reading different points of view and deciding whether they make sense on their own merits. That’s called critical thinking.
The cure for indoctrination is literacy. If students can actually read and judge an idea on its own merits, then we don’t have to worry about exposing students to ideas we don’t agree with.
If you’ve ever wondered why schools aren’t able to teach kids to read, maybe it’s intentional. Maybe the people running the schools don’t want students to learn to read because that would undermine their longer-term goal of indoctrination.
