Well, as a Liberal... who used to be a Conservative... I'm of two minds on this issue of Liberal Indocrtrination in schools.

The remaining Conservative part of my brain... (the Lizard Part, probably)... says that the children of Conservatives and Fundamentalist Christians should be allowed to opt-out of the Liberal education establishment entirely.

The tiny Conservative part of my brain says that that Conservatives should simply home-school their children, or send them to schools run by Billy-Bob the-former-insurance-salesman now turned born-again-"science"-teacher.

This would allow the Conservative children to learn about how Jesus preached to the dinosaurs, and about how things like evolution, biology, astronomy are all simply forms of witchcraft...heretical notions practiced by Atheists, deviants, and other forms of non-Christians.

My Conservative lizard-brain says that after 12 years of "education" which skipped any and all forms of critical thinking, and which simply indoctrinated them to accept the pronouncements of the Bible and their local preacher in all things... these Conservative and Fundie kids would be perfectly trained to be a subservient slave race of non-thinking drones, fit only for digging ditches, serving hamburgers, or as cannon-fodder for whichever wars would benefit thier masters.

Unfortunately, the Liberal side of my brain, and my sense of compasion, and my sense of fair play.... says that it would be wrong to raise a generation of barely-educated, non-critical-thinking, slave-like subordinant drones/serfs.

The Liberal side of my brain says that a well-educated person should be exposed to all ideas, and even more importantly... a well-educated person should specifically be exposed to FALSE ideas so that they can understand and analyze WHY they are false.

As an example, one of the most memorable classes I had was... amazingly enough... a general-education Astronomy class.

The entire first third of the semester was on the Celestial Spheres, and how each planet in the solar system, along with the sun and the stars and the moon, were all held in place on invisible spheres formed of ether, which governed the rotation of each of the celestial bodies around the Earth.

Retrograde motion was easily explained by some of the celestial spheres rotating in the opposite direction periodically, and some celestial spheres slowing down periodically. There were even pictures of a physical model of the Celestial Spheres, showing how all of the planets, and the moon, and the sun, each rotating around the Earth.

The Celestial Spheres theory was a beautifull thing. It was elegant, it used all of the available data available at the time, it was an internally consistent, testable, falsifiable, scientific explanation for how the universe works.

Oh... and it was completely, dead-ass wrong. There are no celestial spheres formed of ether, and the sun does not rotate around the Earth.

Exposing students to a few such things, and then explaining (a) WHY they are incorrect, and (b) mentioning that many people were tortured to *death* by the religious authorities in the middle ages for daring to say that the Celestial Spheres theory was incorrect, will definately give students a more critical eye when shown theories that are pushed by religious authorities as "the ONE truth", when in fact they're as deeply dead-ass wrong as the Celestial Spheres view of cosmology.

As for showing a Michael Moore film in an English class... well, either the film's premise is correct, or the film"s premise is incorrect. Either way, the film would be an excellent starting point for discussions about propaganda, media manipulation, and rhetoric... all of which would fall under the general heading of English/language skills.

Unless, of course, one didn't want educated, thinking students.... but simply wanted subservient drones who do what they're told without every asking "why?"... then in that case showing a controversial film by a non-establishment figure would be considered horribly counter-productive to the production of drones.

StormnMormon said:

Everyone here out of college or high school can joke about liberal teachers because they don't have to face them. However the term is mislabeled, because i'm against any teacher who punishes students for their poltical views, and believe me I had teachers like that. I've had teachers who when I wrote papers disagreeing with their opinions, i'd get marked down and get comments like "You don't seem to grasp the concept..." and other vague thing like "I don't think you read the text well enough." Unfortuanetly there are some teachers who hold student's grades hostage, which is a shame when they're supposed to be teaching you.

My final example is my term paper in history my senior year was "A history of terrorisim" starting with the jewish zealots who knifed romans.....I got a c...and this was a paper, and a powerpoint presentation. A kid literally copied huge chunks of "Loose change" and got an A.

I believe that you're looking at high school and college education the wrong way.

When I was younger, and very Conservative, I had this odd notion that high school and university classes were some sort of an oportunity to show what a precious little snowflake I was.

The teachers, at the time, seemed awfully "liberal" to my young self, and they seemed oh-so "politically correct" to my eyes, and I felt frustration at getting lower grades (on what I felt were brilliant papers), than the folks who simply turned in parroted crap lifted straight out of the text book.

I'm older now, and have become very Liberal over time, and it's amazing what a little real-world life-experience will do for one's outlook.

I'm also back in university, while I also work full-time... and with the benefit of age and experience, the political views of my instructors don't mean a damn thing to me.

I'm not in school now to show what a precious little snowflake I am, or to expound upon my economic or political views in class papers. I'm there to learn.

I'm there to pick the intellectual pockets of everyone within reach, and run off with my winnings... and what they might think of my beliefs, doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Heck... I doubt that they even know what my beliefs are.

Which is fine...I'm not paying tuition so that I can teach THEM. They'd have to pay ME for that.

I'm after knowledge. Information. Facts.

A wise man can learn from anyone... even a fool. Even the stupidest, last-in-their-class, politically-blinkered instructor has *something* to teach you.

Even if all you might learn from them is the ability to mirror and mimic their narrow views for the purposes of recieving an "A" on your papers.... well, that's knowledge of a sort, and it's also knowledge that you aparently lack ;)

Of course... this lesson is a very Liberal lesson, when combined with the lesson that flows from it:

Lesson: Folks who are capable of wielding arbitrary authority, or folks who occupy positions of power or influence, are just as capable of being narrow-minded, non-thinking fools, as anyone picked randomly off the street.

If you ever truly took that lesson to heart, in all of its implications and ramifications, then you will have learned a very valuable lesson. An extremely Liberal lesson, to be sure.