Education: the Next Frontier for Conservatives

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal. 12/4/20

            Conservatives have cracked the media, but haven’t touched education. America’s political left still dominates almost every major institution in the nation including the judiciary, entertainment (especially comedy), the arts, fiction literature, professional sports, and most thoroughly, the university.

            How sports? By the fact that so many team owners who, instead of reminding their athletes who is the boss, have cowardly acceded to their social/political protests such as refusing to honor the American flag. Talk about the animals running the farm, professional athletes appear to have their owners eating out of their hands. In the not too distant past, one value of sports was that they took our minds off our cares and differences, but no more. Sports have been politicized and it’s a shame.

            As for the media, it wasn’t cable television or even talk radio that got the first conservative foot in the door. In the late 1950s Texas oilman H.L Hunt funded the excellent radio program called “Life Line.” The program was totally conservative, monologue commentary. It warned the nation of the spread of communism and rightly so. At the time, the Soviet Union had enveloped Eastern Europe and swallowed the eastern half of Germany.  Soviet Russia was also planting missiles in Cuba only 90 miles from America’s shore. Thus anti-communism was the main tenet of the conservative gospel.

            It came to pass that the Federal Communications Commission used its Fairness Doctrine to quiet conservative voices. The FCC compelled political commentators to give equal air time to opposing points of view. In 1987 the FCC terminated the Fairness Doctrine whereupon Rush Limbaugh in 1988 became the radio voice of conservative Americans. Mr. Limbaugh’s success is well known.

            Less well known is the success of Newsmax and One America News, two cable networks that are clearly trumpeting the conservative perspective and are growing rapidly. The conservative New York Post has also increased its presence and influence in recent years. Suffice it to say that liberal voices like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post no longer rule the roost. They are being challenged.

            Not so the American university. Its grip is sure. Its fads go unchallenged. Its undergirding ideology is always the craze of the moment: diversity, tolerance (as the university defines it, of course), transgender “studies,” feminist “studies,” race, “rights,” sexuality (sexuality “transformed,” that is), social justice, and economic transformation (weasel words for socialism). Somewhere underneath all such indoctrination, we suppose, lie math, science, history, and language.

            What is it about the field of education, particularly higher ed, that draws people from the political left? It could be that liberals love labs and incubators, for labs and incubators are what classrooms are. In a classroom (lab) students can test their knowledge and intellectual strength and discover their deepest interests if not a line of work. In a classroom (incubator) students can receive help for their intellectual development. Academic labs and incubators are the left’s chief tools.

            But classrooms are also transmission stations. Conservatives argue that schools and universities should transmit the knowledge and values that produce good, productive citizens. Liberal educators typically push the notion of students becoming “agents of change” or challengers of the status quo.

            Says the conservative, “Give my kid the facts; teach him to read, write, think, and analyze, but don’t go indoctrinating him. And no putting down his country as you are in the habit of doing.”

            In other words liberals want our children so they can set their paths straight. Conservatives are not so willing to turn their children over to the village. According to political scientist Jon Shields only 10% of university professors identify as conservatives. California State University illustrates Shields’ research. It currently requires a course in social justice as do many other public and private universities.

            Public schools are not untouched by progressive dogma, as their lingo indicates. Consider the following inane principles: “the teacher should be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage;”  “the best teaching is facilitating, not direct instruction”; and “facts are not as important as thinking skills” (as though facts are not essential for logical thinking).

            A Biden administration does not bode well for solid, subject matter-centered schooling. Get ready for regs from the federal Department of Education that require schools to emphasize racism, gay rights, and social justice in order to receive federal funds.

            Conservatives are no longer content being strangers in a strange land. Having taken on the media and given the fact that a down ballot blue wave didn’t happen on November 3rd, they will resist the next four years of progressivism with their frontier spirit and love of individual liberty all in tow. Their children and grandchildren are at stake   

 

Roger Hines

12/2/20