There's No Indoctrination Here

The right side of the blogosphere is all abuzz about this video.


Duane at AAB also points us to this.

A few days after President Obama’s speech, one of the members of Smart Girl Politics contacted me and was upset about something that had transpired in her daughter’s school. Her daughter, a senior in high school, had come home upset because, although the speech was not shown in her school, her anatomy teacher had made the class watch the President’s health care speech. After the video was shown, the students were given a short quiz about the speech. The questions asked gave the assumption that the answers provided in the President’s speech were fact and not opinion. The students were given no opportunity to discuss opposing views or have a debate on the topic. In fact, when one student stated that the President had lied, the student was told that kind of talk was unnecessary. Students in the class with opposing views were forced to remain silent or whisper amongst themselves.

I remember a couple weeks ago when many conservatives were skeptical (and more) about the President's speech to schoolchildren. Democrats condemned them for overreacting and, when the text of the speech was released, they had a point. It was very innocuous - at least the final version. (Personally, I was ambivalent about it. I don't have a child in public school and I neither advised others for or against letting their children listen.)

The video and the report above are exactly the types of things that the skeptics were concerned about. Parents do not send their children to school to have politics forced upon them. These children are young, impressionable and easily influenced by authority figures such as teachers, especially with parents not present.

It is appropriate for schools to discuss current events and issues but teachers must be careful not to cross the line into advocacy. The unions that represent teachers have become largely political organizations. They venture into advocacy that extends far beyond issues related to education. Combine this fact with the evidence presented above and elsewhere and I don't believe that our public schools can be trusted to objectively present political controversies in the classroom.