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2008-04-25 Home Front: Culture Wars

Barack Obama complains that hes been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the citys civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nations schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.

A Chicago native son, Ayers first went into combat with his Weatherman comrades during the Days of Rage in 1969, smashing storefront windows along the citys Magnificent Mile and assaulting police officers and city officials. Chicagos mayor at the time was the Democratic boss of bosses, Richard J. Daley. The citys current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the public schools and consulted him on the citys education-reform plans. Obamas supporters can reasonably ask: If Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obamas less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? Its hard to disagree. Chicagos liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayerss case, and Obama cant be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayerss politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate Americas future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K12 teachers need to be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation. Ayerss texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nations ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayerss major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

Posted by Fred 2008-04-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ] Top

#1 The writer concludes, The next time Obamathe candidate who purports to be our next education presidentdiscusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbors vision for turning the nations schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Indeed, its an appropriate question for all the presidential candidates.

Posted by Bobby 2008-04-25 06:32|| 2008-04-25 06:32|| Front Page Top

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