The Corruption of Academia, Continued -- Indoctrination in Schools of Education

I'm a bit late coming to this one. Frederick M. Hess has a terrific piece in the Sunday WaPo on the politicization of curricula at schools of education.

He writes:

Stirred by professional opinion and accreditation pressures, teachers colleges have begun to regulate the dispositions and beliefs of those who would teach in our nation's classrooms.

For example:

At the University of Alabama, the College of Education explains that it is "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism." To promote its agenda, part of the program's self-proclaimed mission is to train teachers to "develop anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist . . . alliances."

Noting that adherence to a specific set of beliefs is in no way related to teaching effectiveness and that a diversity of beliefs is highly appropriate in dealing with diverse student populations, Hess concludes that

Ultimately, screening on "dispositions" serves primarily to cloak academia's biases in the garb of professional necessity.

Read the whole thing here.

For those of us who have spent much of their lives in academic environments, this comes as no shock, but the public as a whole is starting to wake up to what goes on in those sheltered environments.

Stanley Kurtz over at NRO's Corner writes:

This story is very important, because if you can control the ideology of the schools that certify teachers, you control the education of America's children. But I think the story is far more important even than that. The Ed School scandal makes the political bias of America's colleges and universities obvious and open. It puts a public face on what goes on more covertly in much of the academy.

I wonder how those who still deny that political bias and indoctrination pervades the academy will explain this. Given the fact that schools of education are deputized by state licensing systems, it looks as though state legislatures may need to get involved here.

Read it here.

State legislatures are indeed getting involved in more and more aspects of academia, and it is for many a welcome intrusion. For those who lament outside interference, Kurtz has a pithy answer:

No doubt that will raise howls about the "injection of politics into academia." Yeah, right. Look what's going on there now. Amazing how the folks who've brazenly politicized our entire system of education are wont to scream "no politics" when someone tries to stop them.

Once again the left's "long march through the institutions" has resulted, more than anything else, in compromising the integrity of those institutions.