Education or indoctrination?

Is academia advancing learning or socialism?

Many studies have emerged that find that an overwhelming majority of university faculty members are Democrats and a meaningful percentage identify themselves as Marxists. In many universities, there is not a single conservative on the faculty.

The same is true of school teachers, where left wing ideology desribes the political bias of most teachers. It should come as no surprise that American schools are teaching our children “critical race theory” and “intersectionality” and indoctrinating our kids to believe that society is composed of oppressors (conservatives or white men) and the oppressed (everyone else) and that America is a racist country. Terms like “white privilege” and “white supremacy” abound.

America has seen the rapid growth of activist organizations that identify themselves or their leaders as communists. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was founded by (among others) Patrisse Cullors, an avowed communist, and Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist who served a lengthy prison term until pardoned by Bill Clinton. The communist roots of BLM manifest themselves in the incessant rhetoric claiming oppression of blacks and promoting violent protests, arson and looting as “acceptable” behaviour in support of the BLM cause. Antifa is similarly using its “anti-fascist” rhetoric as an excuse to promote Marxist values. The message is clear - only an authoritarian socialist government can lift the weight of oppression of black people by upending the free market system and putting an end to capitalism.

Climate activists are following the same script. The pretense that CO2 causes global warming is demonstrably nonsense but it has captured the minds of millions of Americans who see it as the rallying cry for a movement to upend capitalism. A prominent Canadian climate scientist who now teaches in Texas makes no bones about what she sees as an urgent need to act.

The bulwarks of a successful democracy are education, free speech and free markets, with a social safety network of publicly funded health care, schools, infrastructure, pensions, welfare and a progressive income tax system. Underlying them all is a population of citizens sufficiently well-educated to understand the difference between autocracy and democracy, the importance of free markets to economic well-being and the principle of all citizens being equal under the law. In most democracies, including Canada, these are articulated in a Constitution and protected by a Charter of Rights and Human Rights Code. The study of history and mathematics in our school system empowers students to understand the dangers inherent in compromising these principles and gives them the tools to comprehend scientific research based on statistical analysis.

It is history and mathematics that are under attack today. History is being rewritten to promote critical race theory and the ideology grounded in the claim that society comprises solely those who are oppressed and their oppressors. That was and is the fundamental underpinning of Marxism. Mathematics, perhaps the purest of the sciences, is under attack as “racist” and an element of a toolkit to perpetuate “white supremacy”. I was under the impression that China and India both have excellent mathematics programs in their universities and would be surprised to find those mathematics courses were part of a program to perpetuate “white supremacy”. Studies have shown that Chinese students outperform their North American counterparts in mathematics. Should we conclude that “white supremacy” is infecting Chinese culture?

Some left wing ideology is not only silly but also borders on the absurd. World rankings of the top university mathematics programs include Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore and I am confident that neither the Chinese communist regime nor the leadership of Singapore is “white supremacist” in its ideology.

Canada needs to protect its education system from becoming a center for left wing indoctrination, not by limiting the ideology of those who choose academic careers who are entitled to their beliefs, but by disclosing the political affiliations of school and university faculties and having regular reviews of curricula to ensure a fair balance between liberal and conservative values is included. We need to take care who we elect to our school boards and pay attention to what our children are being taught. The best result will be obtained when “diversity” means diversity of views and experiences and has little to do with race, religion or sexual orientation.