Today’s College Virtually Useless?

If you are attending college to get teacher certification, you will probably be required to attend classes on “multicultural education.” This is supposed to bring diversity to the classroom and prepare teachers to teach pupils of various ethnic or national backgrounds.

The textbooks in these courses typically include “Teachers as Cultural Workers” by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who preached that society is divided into oppressors and oppressed. Other required readings teach that Americans are an institutionally racist society and are designed to train teachers to create political radicals to promote “progressive” social change.

The monthly journal Education Reporter published an informative exposé by a teacher who attended a conference on training teachers how to teach students what is called “social justice,” a code word for a specific type of teaching that is contrary to traditional American notions of justice based on individual rights. “Social justice” teaches children that America is an unjust and oppressive society that should be changed.

Social justice materials typically include far-left proposals such as acceptance of homosexuality, alternate lifestyles, radical feminism, abortion, illegal immigration, cultural relativism and the redistribution of wealth.

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More and more universities are telling incoming freshmen to read a book over the summer. One college says the purpose is to promote “a shared intellectual experience” and “campus-wide dialogue”; another college says its summer reading program “is an important first step in building a cohesive, dynamic, educational community.”

However, the National Association of Scholars issued a report called “What Do Colleges Want Students to Read Outside of Class?” that lists the books recommended by 290 colleges. These scholars found that the books are more suited to Oprah’s Book Club than universities, and “rather than asking students to rise to college-level study, they shrink college-level study to the comfort zone of the average student.”