At U, future teachers may be reeducated
They must denounce exclusionary biases and embrace the vision. (Or else.)
Sometimes the Chief has heard seni-laughing references from Minnesota friends about the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.
If this is any indication, maybe the laughter should be gone, leaving nothing but the “People’s Republic”…for real.
Do you believe in the American dream — the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools — at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.
This is because of a series of “reforms” in the teacher education program being drafted and proposed for the U of M that forces compliance with a set of attitudes and procedures that are nearly exact reproductions of procedures implemented in ChiCom Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s disastrous “Cultural Revolution”.
In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace — and be prepared to teach our state’s kids — the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic….
The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.
The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize — and confess — their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the reeducation camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi.
Wait, it gets worse:
The task group recommends, for example, that prospective teachers be required to prepare an “autoethnography” report. They must describe their own prejudices and stereotypes, question their “cultural” motives for wishing to become teachers, and take a “cultural intelligence” assessment designed to ferret out their latent racism, classism and other “isms.” They “earn points” for “demonstrating the ability to be self-critical.”…
The goal of these exercises, in the task group’s words, is to ensure that “future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”
Good grief, Charlie Brown!…and worse yet:
What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment? The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must “develop clear steps and procedures for working with non-performing students, including a remediation plan.”
This is what Mao referred to as “re-education”, and he built special “camps” to insure proper implementation of this program.
And what if students’ ideological purity is tainted once they begin to do practice teaching in the public schools? The task group frames the danger this way: “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors are themselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes in order to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class, culture, and gender?”
Its answer? “Requir[e] training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps a training session disguised as a thank you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?”
When teacher training requires a “disguise,” you know something sinister is going on.
Hard to imagine Minnesota is only 20 miles away from the Chief’s outpost. And they can’t figure out why more people are interested in home-schooling.
DISCLOSURE: The Chief is a semi-retired teacher with over a quarte-century of teaching H.S. sciences, as well as social studies, including U.S. history.