Editor:
In the 1950s the Communist Party identified its 45-goal plan to take over America. Three stand out clearly today:
15) Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Their 17th goal is both very public and painfully private, with the American family in the bulls-eye. For clear thinkers today it can be shocking to see how far American education has fallen under goal 17. Teacher unions were the prime vehicles they used. Marxist ideology has been penetrating many of our nation’s public schools for decades and has captured many teacher training colleges.
During COVID lockdowns, parents of students in some districts across the nation have become more directly aware of what their children have been indoctrinated into. In the “COVID Zoom era,” many parents have been activated against the ideology they saw at work in the class lessons of teachers with extreme views; some have moved their children to charter school, private school or home school options.
Parents today must actively monitor their children’s education. If they go to public school, and the classes teach essential skills and knowledge mastery, then actively support school administrators and teachers who conduct intellectually honest courses and classrooms and do not endorse those who turn classrooms into centers of social activism.
America’s founders were very well-educated, read widely, learned from history and built-in what they learned into America’s constitutional framework. Understanding these lessons is vital to a civics education.
Then, students must learn how the American system actually functions. What are the powers and limits of each branch of government? How does the America system distribute sovereignty?
Many of today’s “Action Civics” classroom approaches live in an inverted pseudo-reality. It reverses this and takes young, uninformed minds, preys on their idealism, portrays Americans as oppressors through and through, and makes students into foot soldiers for leftist causes. Results? Students are left ignorant of their country, and taught to despise what makes it unique.
Peter Ready
Albany