{"id":6598,"date":"2009-11-23T08:10:33","date_gmt":"2009-11-23T13:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6598"},"modified":"2009-11-23T08:38:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T13:38:20","slug":"you-are-guilty-of-thought-crime-go-to-mental-detention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6598","title":{"rendered":"You Are Guilty Of Thought Crime; Go To Mental Detention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Need any more reason to get your kids the hell out of the public school system?<\/p>\n

“America Last” is going to be a matter of academic doctrine – at least, at the U of M.<\/p>\n

Katherine Kersten – the single best columnist working in the Twin\u00a0Cities\u00a0today –\u00a0\u00a0takes it down<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Do you believe in the American dream — the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools — at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.<\/p>\n

In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, in a sense Kersten (and the U of M) are behind the curve; the Education academy has long been a hive of Fabians who see themselves as social artists and the school system as their canvas, on which to create a whole new, “better” America, without all that “America” in it.<\/p>\n

The task group is part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained at the U’s flagship campus. The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.<\/p>\n

The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, education will be even less <\/em>culturally diverse – in the mainline public schools – than it already is.\u00a0 That’ll take some doing.<\/p>\n

The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize — and confess — their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the reeducation camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire, nauseating column.<\/p>\n

Now, on Twitter yesterday the MNPost’s David Brauer noted that Kersten doesn’t link to the report – apparently unaware that we bloggers have been bagging on the Strib for the better part of a decade over exactly the same practice; I suppose it makes sense that David Brauer (to whom I give props for having never adoped even the faintest pretense of detachment from politics in his writing) notices it with Katherine Kersten after years of the Strib treating online columns like print columns.<\/p>\n

Here’s the U of M report in question<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ll tear into it tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday).<\/p>\n

But dont’ wait up for me or anything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Need any more reason to get your kids the hell out of the public school system? “America Last” is going to be a matter of academic doctrine – at least, at the U of M. Katherine Kersten – the single best columnist working in the Twin\u00a0Cities\u00a0today –\u00a0\u00a0takes it down: Do you believe in the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6598"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6601,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions\/6601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}