Posted 9:42 AM by Susan Darst Williams

Three-Item Agenda to End-Run Ayers, Ed Schools,
And Others Who Would Radicalize Our Kids

1. Get rid of the U.S. Department of Education before it radicalizes our schools a la William Ayers' philosophies.

2. Get rid of the teaching certificate as a prerequisite to getting a teaching job in a K-12 school, since it is a sort of litmus test for kowtowing to Marxist principles of "bash the past and The Three C's -- Constitution, Capitalism and the Church."

3. Get rid of the education major at the University of Nebraska and other big crank-'em-out teachers' colleges. Instead of indoctrinating future teachers in left-wing philosophies that will end up radicalizing schools to the point where they teach our kids nothing but politics, we can have English majors and math majors and science majors and child psychology majors in classrooms teaching . . . gasp! dare I say it? . . . actual, quality content instead of politicized mush.

Why are these three simple steps so necessary? Because the University of Nebraska College of Education isn't the only teachers' college in the land having an unbelievably stupid, self-defeating romance with the cultural Marxism of William Ayers.

Thanks to Regent Randy Ferlic and other leaders with common sense, Ayers' invitation to speak at the N.U. ed school's big event this weekend was rescinded. But Ayers and others are still protesting that he is an important guru with good ideas for K-12 education.

HAH!

According to reports about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers and President-elect Obama were supposed to employ ($150 million or thereabouts) to help the academic progress of inner-city Chicago kids in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but which improved their academic progress not a whit, here's what the money DID do:

-- Formed "site-based management councils" in inner-city Chicago schools, composed mostly of parents, negating the policy power of an elected school board or the college-trained staff in the central office. Therefore, the rabble got in charge of the decision-making and how the money was spent. Can you spell C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N? It was supposed to transfer power to the parents, which could be a good thing, if the parents deserved that power. But few, if any, of them had any leadership ability, much less knowledge of how to teach kids reading, writing and 'rithmetic. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism.

-- Got rid of most of the Caucasian principals in those troubled schools and replaced them with principals who were by and large African-American. The only reason the white principals were canned is that they were white. That might not be so bad, if only the new principals were better-skilled than the old ones. But they were not. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism.

-- Instead of teaching the teachers the ideas of content-based, politically-neutral education leaders such as E.D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch and others, the only education "thinkers" that the Ayers group permitted to be heeded were "constructivists" who don't believe in teaching kids anything directly, but just allowing them to hang out at school and soak up the knowledge and skills by hook or by crook -- to "construct" their own knowledge bases. Which, of course, doesn't work worth a dang. The ed "thinkers" that Ayers and others promulgate on unsuspecting teachers include Paola Freire, Henry Giroux and Jonathan Kozol, all of whom say that traditional America hates and oppresses people of color, that capitalism and our constitutional republic need to be overthrown, and that little kids in school ought to write nasty letters criticizing state senators and members of Congress telling them what they should do, or else. And THIS is what the teachers are getting trained to believe, instead of the rules of spelling, how to teach rounding, how classic American literature of hundreds of years ago covered the same hot topics as our TV shows today, and THAT kind of stuff. Noooo. All the "old" stuff had to go. In its place: political propaganda. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism!

Here's a pretty good article on this whole "social justice" curriculum, bringing in the element of multiculturalism, which also is part of the Ayers radicalization, and is infecting our schools in a bad way:

www.the-two-malcontents.com/2008/10/23/beyond-%E2%80%98taco-night%E2%80%99-barack-obama-and-the-frightening-future-of-critical-multicultural-education/