The Weather Ground-ization of the public schools
Today’s morning must-read is a flashback to Sol Stern’s 2006 report in City Journal on how Bill Ayers’ radical “social justice” curriculum has infiltrated the K-12 public school system: Reason number 99,999,967 to home school.
An excerpt:
The readings that Ayers assigns are as intellectually stimulating and diverse as a political commissar’s indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The reading list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed; two books by Ayers himself; another by bell hooks, a radical black feminist writer and critical race theorist; and a “Freedom School” curriculum. That’s the entire spectrum of debate.
For students who might get bored with the purely pedagogic approach to liberation, Ayers also offers a course on the real thing, called “Social Conflicts of the 1960’s.” For this class Ayers also posts his introduction to the soon-to-be-published collection of Weather Underground agitprop that he edited with Dohrn—called, with no intended parody, Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974. “Once things were connected,” Ayers’s introduction recollects, “we saw a system at work, we were radicalized, we named that system—imperialism—and forged an idea of how to overthrow it. We were influenced by Marx, but we were formed more closely and precisely by Che, Ho, Malcolm X, Amílcar Cabral, Mandela—the Third World revolutionaries—and we called ourselves small ‘c’ communists to indicate our rejection of what had become of Marx in the Soviet Block [sic]. . . . We were anti-authoritarian, anti-orthodoxy, communist street fighters.”
Ayers makes clear that his political views haven’t changed much since those glory days. He cites a letter he recently wrote: “I’ve been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your ‘youthful idealism’ is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don’t grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan’s vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I’m an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out.”
See also Stern’s new blog post in which he points out: “The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.”
Barack Obama was unavailable for comment.
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Hitleryouth.Oh. I thought they used the “small ‘c’”, because they weren’t full grown Communists at that time. Silly me.
Well, they are just “friendly”.
Gawd, I can just see Ayers in front of the class wearing a Che t-shirt, goatee and sandals. This typical run-of-the-mill ‘revolutionary’ readily accepts that Capitalist paycheck from the University of Illinois and resides in a very upscale neighborhood, yet recites the usual bullshit about ’social justice’, whatever the hell that means.
Ayers has the “Peter Pan” Syndrome. He never grew up and took responsibility for his actions.
Even now, his lofty radical ideas give him a sense of entitlement.
All mouth and no revolution. Tsk.
The Obama campaign staff said that Obama and Ayers are still on “friendly terms.”
They just keep crawling out of the woodwork.
It is astounding, and frankly unconscionable, Ayers never went to trial or served time in jail. Is that accurate?????
If it is, Justice in this case was not just blind, she was asleep at the wheel. Of course, it is not a surprise that Ayers went underground and didn’t resurface until 1980. The timing of his resurrection into society just happens to coincide with Jimmy Carter’s term as president. Perhaps Carter’s clear disdain for the United States, as evidenced by such acts as pardoning draft dodgers, encouraged criminals like Ayers to rejoin society as part of the Carter Administration’s new revolution.
That phrase ‘Don’t grow up!’ says it all. Ayers et al are products of of a culture of perennial Peter Pans. I suspect his parents didn’t believe in discipline or consequences and this is what it produced, a narcissistic,selfish child/man who lives in his own little bubble of fantasy, the scary thing is he is in a position to influence other young potential grown-ups, such as Mr. Hope/Change.
He wants a fight. He’ll get one.
At the risk of sounding moronic and maybe I am a bit naive but can someone explain to me how an individual can be “anti-authoritarian” and “communist” at the same time??? If we were a communist country wouldn’t these same idiots be railing against that as oppressive???
So do I, but I have a feeling he will not be happy with the results of the coming revolution. It will be a revolution started by those that love this country and the principles that it was founded on that are bitter and cling to their bibles in one hand and gun in the other that will finally give this liberal communist terrorist traitor the justice he and his allies so richly deserve.
The funny thing is I’m one of the people who actually read Das Kapital and wrote a college thesis on the book. I will say this, as you read the book it’s real easy to get sucked into the hype. In the end, Marx’s theories are eggshell thin and are easily refuted by other economists. In some economics departments Marx isn’t considered economics but a philosophy. I just wonder how many more will die before socialism/communism is thrown into the dustbin of history.
According to Ronald Reagan, “A Communist is someone who reads Karl Marx. An Anti-Communist is someone who understands Karl Marx.”
Obviously, Willy doesn’t understand.
My children will be such freaks in the society the government has created.
Well, isn’t that cute.
Assisting people on the bottom? Is that what he was doing?
I hope that when we have children this will be true in our family as well.
I’m reminded of Tom Lehrer’s classic Folk Song Army.
Poster #1 has it dead on and absolutely proper and correct.
The NEA has dumbed down America by handicapping our children.
Indoctrination is NOT Education!
Obama or Clinton Regimes are not in America’s best interests!
Exactly!
During the Pennsylvania debate last week Gibson, talking about the capital gains tax, pointed out to Obama that history shows when tax rates dropped, revenues from the tax increased; and when the tax rate was increased, the revenues decreased. Accordingly, Gibson asked Obama why he would raise the tax…
Obama’s response:
“Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
So Obama wants to raise taxes not because he thinks it’s good for the economy, but rather because it’s just not fair! Like you said, undrseige247, it’s not economics it’s philosophy.
I must admit, the full article is too long for me to read all the way through here at work, but I skimmed it. I like the end:
That’s better.
Do we need another Joe McCarthy?
I personally don’t see any difference between this and a video I saw of Osama Bin Loghead’s Jihad schools in the middle east. Hate,attack,destroy! Yeah, it’ll all be better when the GROWNUPS are gone……
What he really means is wealth redistribution NOT fairness in the sense that hard work and accomplishment are considered and given their due merit. Let alone fairness in a sense that gives opportunity but not the end result. You’ve got to earn it.
Egalitarianism. Don’t let this happen to you.
Ayers and Dohrn use our tax dollars as their play money. The hacks who run the University of Illinois at Chicago bypassed standard faculty hiring to put both Ayers and Dohrn on the payroll. And the middle class citizens of Chicago who Ayers has contempt for are forced to pay his comfortable salary for teaching about 3 hours a week. I saw him on a video in his classroom. He does not even wear a suit and tie and office shoes to teach his class. There were styrofoam coffee cups all over the classroom. What a waste of money.
It’s too late. The damage is done.
From the C-J.Org article:
These two items are not only accurate as far as most teacher education programs are concerned (I was forcibly exposed to more than a few liberal professors before being granted my BS in ed), but they are chilling in that they point to the concerted effort by academia to inculcate America’s educators into adhering to a systemic method of teaching that amounts to little more than a “programming” of students - a system where diversity of thoughts and opinions do not exist.
In my opinion if Americans do not act to take back their public education system and soon, then it is high time to demand school vouchers and abandon public education altogether!
My point exactly!
Obama said the reason he thinks it’s fair to raise the capital gains tax is because in 2007, 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion. But 50 million middle-class Americans have investments in capital gains and would be effected by a tax increase.
So by Obama’s logic, it’s only fair that 50 million hard-working middle-class Americans get taxed so long as 50 hedge fund managers don’t make so much money.
That’s wealth redistribution plain and simple.
The similarities between the beliefs of Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright are quite startling when you look into it Both believe that America is guilty of wanton imperialism, and have killed thousands of people to further those ends. The only difference between the two is one preaches this from a pulpit and the other in a classroom. Bill Ayers obviously figured out that the bomb throwing wasn’t achieving his goal, but focused instead on the insidious indoctrination he teaches at U of I, it leads me to wonder what it was he saw in Obama, that inspired him to kick start Obama’s political career.
It has been my, albeit, limited experience, that the English Department is where radicals congregate. At the school I am presently at, that is where I met this head on. Our instructor there introduced herself to the students as a self-described atheist, socialist, lesbian.
She would proudly proclaim that her heroes were individuals such as Angela Davis. As a returning student, read that well over 40….I was amazed that this was someone given charge over a class full of young people. While I struggled along with another lady in the class to offer some balance, it became clear, this was a person whom no argument could reach.
Her self-loathing was apparent and through that she internalized the anger, from what God only knows, and then turned those confused ramblings outward. In complete denial that the solutions, to the supposed problems, were anything but those which she espoused.
It has always amazed me, how the simple mind, always turns to destruction instead of construction. Seeing nothing of grace and beauty around them, they always seek to destroy first. I have seen this too often from those who truly lack vision. It is this facet of their internal struggle that is always lurking behind their rhetoric. The self-professed communist, socialist, radical, liberal, cannot imagine compromise. The ideology demands power, and that manifests itself best, apparently in their mind, only when they can wield that power through destruction.
In the case of the disease that has been and is still affecting America, it has entrenched itself in this pedagogy. These self-professed purveyors of radicalism have discovered inside the walls of academia the power they could never possess outside those confines. In the world outside of academia as most of us know, the way to success is through building up ourselves, our family, our community, and our country. And through that we show the world how to do the same.
These self-absorbed imaginers of Marxist Utopia, have for too long been allowed to roam the lecture halls and campuses of our children’s educational impasse. We send kids to these institutions, open and ready to receive the tools with which they will build the future, sadly though they often find themselves at the foot of someone whose idea of the future is that which an Ayers or Dorhn has visualized.
You might think by now that I am ready to throw in the towel. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I submit to you that it is our responsibility to not give up, but rather get up. If you are a retired person, go to your local college and sign up for a class. Then firmly in your seat you can read and learn and be around some wonderful kids and people, and if the opportunity presents itself, you can be the counter-balance to the arguments these professors make. I encourage you to try it. It is easier than you might imagine. And besides hadn’t you rather take that “C” instead of forcing some other kid take it or submit his/her principals to simply survive the grade rage.
Go for it. You might enjoy as there are some wonderful teachers out there, but trust me they are lonely……
Marxism is anathema to Americanism. Marxists hate all that is truly good in America and want to destroy it. Teaching Marxism in schools is like having Dr Kevorkian training phone operators at the suicide hotline.
It’s not the NEA to blame here. It’s the teacher colleges. They fill up with people that couldn’t/wouldn’t get real jobs. They pontificate on how the world should be, like a high school debate class. They exaggerate their own self importance to give meaning to miserable, immature lives.
This is largely true. However, where do you think non-public school teachers come from? Non-public schools can be overtly political (in the best sort of way) but rarely are. Too often, it is the politics of the madrassa and not American Civics that are the alternative to main stream public schools.
Also, don’t forget that public schools are reflective of their communities. What goes on in San Francisco, CA public schools won’t go on in Bitter Church, PA public schools.
If his “imperialist” daddy was rich enough to warrant the above citation, I bet this Stalinist son, Bill Ayers, doesn’t even need a paycheck from the University of Illinois.
Has anyone investigated as to whether “Billy the Bomb Maker” lives as he preaches? Has he denounced the capitalist wealth that daddies, like his, usually bundle into protected trusts in order to avoid excessive taxation by the central state? Or has “Billy the Bomb Maker” acted in typical “Kennedyesque” fashion, and enjoyed the largess of smart financial planning: capital growth and income with the least amount of tax exposure possible?
Or in other words, “some pigs are more equal then others.”
Inquiring minds want to know.
I am a father, a veteran, and an American (not global) patriot. I am very proud of our great heritage rooted in freedom linked to self control and law. I have noticed that folks that are so “anti-American” in their ideology are still living here in America. There are countries that have the same beliefs that these immature idealists have; why don’t they move?? They want the freedom that has been paid for by my ethics, and attempt to force their ethics (failed as they may be) on the rest of us.
Additionally, we do not want to have a president who has ties to any of this ilk.
May God bless America.
I am afraid, very afraid. I lived through the 60’s and 70’s when Americans turned on Americans. I’ve lived the last 40 years married to a man with PTSD. Why should the ones who did their duty pay so dearly while people like William Ayers go SCOTT FREE? Can somebody please tell me that? My fear is that we are once again headed for Americans against Americans trying to find a rational path for our nation.
Man, I wish J. Edgar Hoover, hadn’t gone soft in the sixties, and had pulled a Bonnie & Clyde homecoming on those pukes!!!
Shooter #19
Yes, we do need another Joe McCarthy.
Joe McCarthy correctly identified known communists working for the Soviet Union operating at the top levels of the US government.
We desperately need another Joe McCarthy!!
Zorro #23
What damage?
I have to agree with B Husseins terrorist friend on this one. There is a brewing storm coming, only it won’t be started from the lefty loons.
The rebellion will be by citizens that love and understand what it means to be an American citizen.
I keep saying we need a revolution and i think we can make it work and get the entire country behind us if we say we are doing it for the kids… and this is a good reason to save our kids from ourselves…LOL sarc off/
Public school is so dumbed down and reduced to being babysitters to no learning is available to the kids today.
When this question of Bill Ayers’ connection to Obama came up, I spent much of one evening doing a lot of internet reading, the last hour of which was spent at Bill Ayers’ own blog. Very instructive. I invite you to go there and read for yourselves how — well, actually pathetic he is.
A post on 4-19 is a transcript of a speech given by MLK at Stanford in April 1967. If you read all of it, it’s very easy to see MLK’s turn to Marxism as the answer to white/black race problems in America. He sets out his plan for major redistribution of wealth through a permanent guaranteed income for blacks because of their inability to help themselves. Yes, very interesting.
But as far as Ayers’ writing, scroll down to his 4-6-08 entry entitled “Episodic Notoriety” — it’s an absolute scramble of excuses for why he can’t and/or won’t apologize for his terrorist actions.
And if you don’t want to be forced to bring out the puke bucket, do not advance further into his short fiction entries — “What We Want Now” on 3-16 and “A Viking Wellfleet” also a 3-16 post. But if you can stomach it, you’ll come away absolutely confirmed in the emptiness of his brain and soul.
And then to cap it off — the icing on the cake of this mind-numbing jerk who purports to teach truth — scroll down to the 3-3-08 entry entitled “I’M SORRY!!!! i think….” wherein he pontificates with much noise about truth-telling.
And don’t forget the comments. They’re kinda fun. He has some pretty devoted readers who apparently regularly comment on his every post reminding him that those who know his past and his true current colors are still watching him closely.
Here’s the link:
http://billayers.wordpress.com/
Go and have — well, I can’t wish you an enjoyable read — just go check it out.
Back in the 70’s, Westinghouse has school programs for 7-12th graders, and required reading was “Soul on Ice”. That book makes the diatribes of any rapper today sound tame. I would not be surprised if it is still part of the curriculum.
And both could potentially have the ear of our next president. That’s what’s scary.
Picture Ayers as Secretary of Education and Wright as Secretary of the new Department of Civil Rights.
We need to introduce one of the key pieces of the liberal agenda to education: consumer protection. If it’s good enough for dogfood, it’s good enough for brain food, especially since we pay thousands of tax dollars for the latter.
I forgot to include another interesting tidbit I found in my internet search for “all things Bill Ayers”. It is an enlightening trip down memory lane by Donna Ron who attended University of Michigan in 1965 at the same time as Bill Ayers. In fact, she dated him and confesses: “I thought he was cute” — but then, if you read the whole thing, you find out why she came away from their contact with this thought: “Every time I see Ayers’ name I shudder with fear and rage . . .”
Hmmm. Go. Read.
Donna Ron’s article can be found here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID=9E8CD8A7-E90B-4311-8AA9-AEFD014A14B2
Actually, it was fidel castro who had significant influence on Ayers and Dohrn.
http://paxety.com/2008/04/24/as-usual-its-fidels-fault/
My suggestion is stock up on Rifles and Ammo. That is where all this is headed and may be the only rational solution in the end.
flmom # 26 “…it leads me to wonder what he [Ayers] saw in Obama, that inspired him to kick start Obama’s political career.”
Political gullibility and a susceptibility to flattery, perhaps? I think when he looked at Obama he saw a puppet.
As for Obama’s “purposes of fairness”:
“But, Mommy!” wailed the child, stamping his little foot. “That’s not fair!”
What is the Wood Foundation about?
William Ayres and his pretend revolutionaries have more than the blood of a few Americans on their hands. Creatures like them helped create the political atmosphere to enable Democrats to sell out South Vietnam. A minor effect was the hostile welcome we Vietnam era veterans received when we came home.
Aside from thousands of deaths then, I believe one can trace a loose connection from that time to our war with jihadists. Those traitors deserve our derision and scorn. Mockery is our best weapon against them.
Two things:
1.) Everyone needs to read “Radical Son” by David Horowitz. In fact, THAT book should be required reading in every single English/Philosophy/History/Politics class. He openly and honestly discusses how Communism was embedded in so many places (i.e. the New York City Teacher’s Union was actually, literally a front for the Communist party…I would say it still is…), and how they latched on to other causes to increase their ranks and dilute their true agenda in order to attract more middle of road people (such as the current Ecochondriac/Communist/Socialist ties).
Very, very interesting read.
2.) As someone who wanted to teach and went back to school (University of Oxford - so I did not attend an American university) to get a graduate teaching certificate in Secondary Math - a pretty apolitical subject - I still made the decision to NOT teach in public schools after some serious thought. I refuse to be forced into joining a
teacher’scommunist’s union.I sat through general ed classes as well as my specific, math oriented classes and believe me, they are teaching the teachers how to raise little communists, and on top of that, teaching the math teachers to not teach math - just that “fuzzy math.”
Now I teach adults at a non-profit, where I am totally in control of my own curriculum, and I like to throw in real-life examples when studying percentages, for instance, i.e. look at how much the government takes from your paycheck.
Lastly, when I have children, they will be homeschooled, and luckily, I have a teaching certificate so when Big Brother decides to go the California route and require teaching credentials, everyone can send their kids to me.
how is it wrong to read anti-establishment readings? Isn’t it good to have students understand both sides of issues- or should they just have a myopic view of the world?
When I was working on my recently earned M.Ed. to get my teaching certification, one of the required 12 courses was “Multicultural Education”. One of the websites the prof (who also was involved in some way with the bilingual education teaching program) used in class was put up by some leftist wacko prof at another university promoting “social justice”. “Social justice” sounds good on the surface: who wouldn’t want “justice” in “society”, but it’s really just poorly disguised communism for those who are paying attention. Most all my classmates were older (e.g. - career-changing adults), but I am still troubled with the thought of education students, going into a teaching program straight out of high school, being subjected to this type of subtle brainwashing…
And of course Ayers and Dohrn are members of the elite establishment in Chicago; Daley supports them, and of course the MSM does also. Since Ayers is ‘teaching’ at a state school, guess who is paying for him to spew this garbage?
I was in high school when “billy the bomber” and all the other trust fund babies were running around trying to prove to thugs like the black panthers what swell buds they could be.
I suffered through the fear and destruction in the bay area that they wrought.Ayers and his ilk aren’t heroes…they are scum. And prison would be way too good for them.Perhaps under the new world trade center would be much much better…….
# 49
to tacitly endorse said “anti-establishment readings” that come direct from an admitted, unrepentant terrorist does not show “both sides of an issue” it normalizes the extreme & lawless fringe of one of those sides!
/would you like ksm to publish a curriculum about international relations in the middle east? somehow methinks that might just be a bit “myopic” too!
I know scary what your tax money pays for. Taxation without the proper representation seems there was war started over that,….. hmmm
TO ARMS TO ARMS..
Wouldn’t it be terribly amusing if the pretend revolutionaries got what they “claim” they want?
Instead of dealing with police and other well mannered public servants that have to follow the law even when the protesting scum don’t..what if real American revolutionaries showed up and kicked their useless asses?
Who would the “protesters” call to help them? The cops? Hardly.
And who would they complain to and sue?
And who would listen to them and care?
Hey…..I can dream, right?
#49
What, praytell, are the pro-establishment readings that Ayers is using in his classroom (or other commie/terrorist teachers like him) to balance out the anti-establishment readings in order to give his students a broad view of all sides?
I still can’t even believe that a known terrorist is teaching at a public university. It’s sickening. I can’t wait until the U of C in Berkeley hires Bin Laden to teach International Relations 101…or maybe they would get real “tolerant” and put him in charge of their Feminist Studies classes…
SylviaMarie
Thank you, I think, for that link. It only served to confirm the picture I have of Ayers.
Cowards such as Ayers must always find ways to belittle or humiliate others. This way through the humiliation of others they can continue to wallow in their own cesspool of thought and victimhood.
He is not a man, he did what he did to that young lady because of his lack of manhood. And it is in that lack of manhood that fuels his anger.
I’m certainly not supporting him, but its silly to automatically throw out readings because of their anti-establishment view. For example, you have students read Mein Kampf but also the Diary of Anne Frank.
I agree with your point entirely, but what I was attempting to say was that most private schools, those without a particular political or religious ideology,i.e., madrases, often allow teachers more autonomy to ferret out the agenda-based contents of many text and prescriptive instructional programs; plus, private schools have a more vested interest in meeting community standards and are more open to the input of parents.
I’m requesting a little education with this question, please: Do any readers here believe that the weather-forecasting website creators of weatherunderground.com have some kind of affinity for the Weatherman Underground group? I’ve always been curious about the title of the website, but I never knew of the Weatherman Underground radical group until now.Are the weatherunderground.com folks making some kind of political statement with the title of their website? I’d like to hear your thoughts.