Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Indoctrination at Racine Unified

In a response to the Fred Dooley (realdebatewisconsin.blogspot.com) led flap over the Obama section of a Racine Unified textbook, curriculum director Jeff Weiss said "There is no unit on indoctrination."

Perhaps that is because an indoctrination unit would be redundant. Take the text book in question. It is a literature textbook chosen because of its emphasis on diversity in the reading selections, according to Weiss. "We want to find materials that reflect our student body, which is a diverse and multicultural student body." The book contains excerpts from American Indians, Japanese, Hispanics etc...

And this is not indoctrination? Why not read the best, age appropriate written material regardless of the skin color or ethnicity of the writer? Should Unified be promoting a multiculturalist agenda without any apparent consideration of the harm that might do to children and society?

Make no mistake about it folks. Unified is teaching leftist ideas in the schools. They could choose textbooks that disregard the color of the writer. They could remain neutral on the merits of multiculturalism.

But no, they have detirmined that the curriculum should be infused with notions of multiculturalism and diversity, thereby rejecting individualism and American exceptionalism.

And they claim not to be indoctrinating our students.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't know who whines the most, you or my 2 yr old daughter.

For someone who opposes diversity and multiculturalism, you sure do embrace those philosophies when it comes to making a fast buck at your shop.

You say, multiculturalism maybe harmful to children and society, how so?

I would venture to say, multiculturalism has been extremely healthy for you and your bank account, would i be mistaken?

Anonymous said...

SPLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAASH!!!

Nemo said...

Anon 7:24, I can't speak to any economic benefits that multiculturalism may have provided for Dennis, but I can teach you how multiculturalism maybe harmful to children and society.

Sarah Said, 17, and her sister Amina, 18, were killed on New Year's Day last year. Almost a year after the two teenage girls were found dead — allegedly executed by their father — in the back seat of a taxicab in Texas, the FBI is saying for the first time that the case may have been an "honor killing."

It would seem that some cultures can be harmful to children.

Anonymous said...

Multiculturalism and diversity are two exceptional American attributes.

Nemo said...

Rugged individualism, a can do spirit, and liberty are exceptional American attributes. Multiculturalism and diversity are just artifacts of the aforementioned.

Anonymous said...

"making a fast buck at your shop"
"you and your bank account"

Bitter jealously is not a good trait

Anonymous said...

Selectively denying American history and culture is not a good trait either.

Denis Navratil said...

anon, I have been gone for a few days so I have not been able to respond earlier.

The study of other cultures is important and the value of diversity, properly understood, is evident.

However, in practice multiculturalism all too often means the uncritical acceptance of all aspects of other cultures coupled with a thorough and unbalanced study of this country's real and imagined failings. Diversity, in practice, means elevating the importance of certain minorities irrespective of merit. The multiculturalism that I criticize can be harmful if students absorb the basic message that there are no external threats to our country (all cultures except ours are equally good) and mistakenly believe that the internal threats can only come from the right.

Anonymous said...

your definition of multiculturalism in practice is highly skewed to your republican platform and not based on fact.

Diversity is beneficial to all, as the principle lowers prices, increases productivity, attracts the most talented personnel, increases competition among many other benefits.

Denis Navratil said...

Anon, if diversity attracts the most talented personnel, as you claim, then diversity would be causing homogeniety, which makes no sense. Really now, diversity should attract the talented and the untalented, should it not?

Diversity should be seen as neither good or bad, or perhaps sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example, a good basketball team would want some measure of diversity. They would want great shooters, great ballhandlers, tall players, shorter quicker players etc... but they would not want blind paraplegics despite the wealth of diversity that they would bring to the team.

Getting back to the original RUSD example, I think they are peddling the wrong kind of diversity when they choose writers based on skin color or ethnicity. They should choose writers based on diverse writing styles, subject matter etc... but skin color ought to be seen as irrelevant.

Anonymous said...

Where most people have a brain, anonymous 7:52 has a Whack-A-Mole game.