The UAH Education Department hosted the Huntsville Education Summit entitled “BridginGaps and Opening Doors” yesterday.  Other than the intentional, edgy, silly spelling of “bridging gaps” (see how the “G” bridges the gap!), what really sets me off is that the keynote speaker is a Marxist.

Yes, I know that I make up words and intentionally misspell words at times, but then, I’m not an “educator”… 

As for Dr. Ron Glass (who is not the fabulous actor) being a Marxist, look at who he proudly refers to as his “mentors”:  ”two of the premier educators for justice and democracy the world has ever known, Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. I hope my own work keeps alive their spirit, their ideas, and their commitment to making this a better world for everyone.” 

Freire wrote “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and inspired The Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy:

The Freire Project is dedicated to building an international critical community which works to promote social justice in a variety of cultural contexts. We are committed to conducting and sharing critical research in social, political, and educational locations.

The project promotes research in Critical Pedagogy, and brings together local and international educators. We are committed to continuing the global development of Critical Pedagogy and to highlighting its relevance with marginalized and indigenous peoples…

Critical Pedagogy is a domain of education and research that studies the social, cultural, political, economic, and cognitive dynamics of teaching and learning. Critical Pedagogy emphasizes the impact of power relationships in the educational process.

Of interest to me was the listing of Antonio Gramsci as one of the “Important Figures” in the critical pedagogy movement.  If you’ve ever wondered how we got here (failing schools), thank Gramsci:

In his theory of hegemony Gramsci argued that in modern industrial societies, it was also necessary to control culture. Culture is controlled not by way of coercive force but through the winning of consent…

This elevation of the importance of culture, Gramsci argued, also increased the need for intellectuals in modern societies. Organic intellectuals, Gramsci wrote, are individuals who resist hegemony and help bring their fellow citizens a sense of historical consciousness of themselves and the society. These organic intellectuals were to be distinguished from traditional intellectuals, Gramsci concluded, whose charge is to maintain existing power relations, to create and deliver sanitized information that supports the existing hegemonic order. One can quickly discern how important Gramsci’s work is for the evolution of critical theory and especially for critical pedagogy.

You see, traditional methods of teaching were tools to oppress “individuals whose economic interests were not served by free market policies”.

Myles Horton founded the Highlander School (and that’s enough said about his Marxism).

Read about some of Glass’ published works while you’re checking him out and you’ll see that it’s not just his “mentors” that reveal his ideology.

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Crystal Bonvillian of  The Huntsville Times wrote “Need for partnership with community a hot topic at education summit”:

Since the early 1980s, school reform has been more about social mobility and social efficiency, Glass said, adding that educators need to be able to focus more on setting strong standards of learning and less on testing their students…

“It’s easy to look at the students in front of us and test them,” Glass said. “But maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.”

The right place to look, he indicated, is into the community. If educators look into their community and help to solve the needs of it and individual families, then student achievement will rise.

Glass said educators need to align their innovations with the needs of the family and the community, mobilizing all possible resources to do so. That includes social, cultural and health resources.

“Is our children learning?”

You already know the answer to that question.  The more time “educators” spend on “social mobility” and “social efficiency”, the less time they’re teaching math and science.  Do the Chinese who own your mortgage care about “marginalized” peoples?

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I cannot adequately express my disappointment at UAH for expecting anything good to come from people who think like that.  However, I remind myself that it -is- the Education Department…  Let’s remind them of the true history of Marxism – tens of millions of people dead and hundreds of millions of people enslaved and impoverished.

To the local educational community – this is not the way to gain my trust (or my tax dollars)…

Who Wrote This (reminiscent of the dormant ‘Daily Dixie’):

When the aim of education is the absorption of facts, learning becomes exclusively and exhaustively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive for learning. The measure of success is always a competitive one—it is about comparing results and sorting people into winners and losers. People are turned against one another, and every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead of others is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural, is severely restricted or banned.

Unlike Dan, I’ll go ahead and give you the answer: “respected” “mainstream” “distinguished professor” “school reform activist” William Ayers (also known as Marxist terrorist William Ayers, who is “friendly” with Barack Obama). Note that all those glowing descriptions of Ayers are from Obama’s ‘Fact Check’.

Who knew that learning “facts” is “selfish” and that “winners and losers” are unnatural?  I’ll go ahead and answer that too, Antonio Gramsci.  Gramsci is credited with the idea of “cultural hegemony“, which addressed the failure of socialism to ignite communist revolutions in capitalist states:

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a “war of position” and a “war of manoeuvre”. The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of manoeuvre, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

Understanding Gramsci helps explain the mess that is public education, the leftism extant in many institutions, and the bias of the media.

To bring this home, consider this from a “News” article in the UAH Exponent:

…you could always try red: the Socialist Party of America has also announced their nominees. Far from hazy images of Cuba or the former Soviet Union (both of which were communist, not socialist), the party’s Statement of Principles asserts that “The Socialist Party strives to establish a radical democracy that places people’s lives under their own control—a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society … where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled public agencies…

It’s obvious to most people that facts weren’t important to that reporter…  It’s interesting to me that communism has such a bad reputation among today’s socialists that they feel compelled to rebrand their beliefs.  Anybody here think that communism isn’t a form of socialism? Anybody here think that people like Gramsci and Ayers have impacted US education?