A comprehensive report just released this month paints a disturbing picture of politicization at America’s universities.
The College Fix reports that leftist professors at post-secondary institutions have used traditional courses in civics to promote their political tastes and openly attempt to radicalize students to create a pool of activists to further their political views.
“Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics” argues that “instead of teaching college students the foundations of law, liberty, and self-government, colleges teach students how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations.”
But the scholars who wrote the report could not reach a conclusion on how best to fix the problem.
Civics – which used to mean politically-neutral instruction in how the political system works and how citizens can participate in it – is increasingly taught as how citizens can change the political system to make it more left-leaning, according to the report by the National Association of Scholars, a conservative academic think-tank.
The report studies curricula at four leading universities to reach their conclusion that civics classes have essentially been transformed into lessons in political activism and “community engagement.” The ultimate goal of these courses is to “fundamentally transform” America by instructing students that their country is inherently flawed and needing radical change.
There are some suggestions in the report for addressing tendentious professors who bring their politics into the classroom. The authors argue for a coordinated civics program that would encompass both high school and college; a prerequisite course in traditional American civics; and that classroom instruction be focused on a politically-neutral civics dissertation.
Most controversially, the report also recommends the termination of state and federal funding for university level courses in civic engagement.
But the report’s authors think desperate measures are required.
Co-author David Randall told The College Fix: “I was most startled that a number of these service learning professors cited Maoist China as one of their models for instruction.” He says at Pomona College a service learning course was directly responsible for an anti-Trump rally.
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