Teaching Minnesota Kids to Hate America

It would be easy enough to believe that a lot of Minnesotans hate America. After all, a majority of them voted for Al Franken.

However, Big Government has a report on the plans to institutionalize the hatred of America by teaching it as part of the school curriculum:

We couldn’t even begin to make something like this up.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, College of Education officials recently established the “Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group.” It’s charged with helping to devise a new system for training prospective K-12 teachers, because current teachers lack “cultural competence,” a factor officials believe contributes to the poor performance of minority students.

The task force has issued its final report, which the group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education brought to light, and officials from the College of Education are expected to review its recommendations in January.

What’s the task force’s main recommendation? That new teachers be immersed in a liberal political agenda that’s highly critical of American social norms, particularly the notion that all people can positively influence their own destiny through hard work and determination.

The task force “recommended that aspiring teachers must repudiate the notion of the ‘American Dream’ and instead “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,” according to writer Katherine Kersten of the Star Tribune.

“The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the ‘overarching framework’ for all teaching courses at the university,” Kersten wrote. “It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching, based on their willingness to fall into intellectual lockstep.”

The task force recommends that prospective teachers begin by confessing their own bigotry. They would have to prepare a report “describing their own prejudices and stereotypes, questioning 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,’” according to the newspaper.

More than anything, “future teachers must. . . recognize and denounce the fundamental injustices at the heart of American society,” the article said.

What about those prospective teachers who refuse to fall into “intellectual lockstep?” After all, there’s bound to be a stubborn conservative or two who think America’s a pretty decent place to live, work and raise a family.

For them, the university “must develop clear steps and procedures. . . including a remediation plan,” the report said.

We wonder if the university’s “remediation” program will prescribe years of hard labor, so the unenlightened will have plenty of time to ponder their foolishness.

If I might make a suggestion to Minnesota parents, why don't you request that the schools use this new history text from former Education Secretary William Bennett instead:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt today announced an exclusive agreement with former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett to distribute America: The Last Best Hope, a three volume series and interactive website on United States history that will be available January 1, 2010 for grades 8-12.

“As students of this generation seek out unique methods of learning, this program meets them where they already are – in cyberspace.”
“Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is excited to partner with Secretary Bennett, and benefit from his unique experiences with education, by distributing this groundbreaking new series,” said Bethlam Forsa, Executive Vice President of Content Development & Publishing Operations, K-12 Publishers at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “As students of this generation seek out unique methods of learning, this program meets them where they already are – in cyberspace.”

America: The Last Best Hope is told by eminent author and educator William J. Bennett, and curricular applications were developed by noted, award winning educators and American history experts. The books are available in e-reader versions as well as standard texts. In addition, Team HOPE (“History Opens Eyes”) has developed innovative and revolutionary online companion materials for students and teachers, called The Roadmap, to change the way American history is learned and taught.

Secretary Bennett stated: “History is our nation’s school children’s worst subject. And yet, the history of America is the greatest story of the modern era. It should not be boring, it should not be dumbed-down, and it should not be politicized. It is the story of a great experiment—what Abraham Lincoln called a ‘proposition.’ It is the story of many noble efforts to live up to that proposition, sometimes failing, more often, succeeding. This great adventure is told the best way I know how, chronologically, excitingly, honestly. ‘Once Upon A Time’ can still be an invitation to our youth and there is no greater ‘Once Upon A Time’ than ours. It is the dream of a lifetime for me to have a textbook in our nation’s schools explaining all of this—and with a most exciting curriculum to accompany it. And to do so with the leader in excellence in education publishing, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is a special privilege.”