They’re on to us. A conservative organization called Turning Point USA is distributing a pamphlet titled 10 Ways College Professors Indoctrinate America’s Youth and How to Prevent It
(that’s a link to Jezebel’s deconstruction: if you want to read it in its full unedited glory, here’s a PDF). I learned many surprising things.
The # 1 goal of a leftist professor is to change the way their students view the world. Progressive professors want to make you question your beliefs and then hope that you will abandon them altogether. They want to make you think like they do. They want to brainwash you.
The first sentence is correct. Why are you at a university if not to learn whole new ways of thinking? I’m a little surprised at the implication that there are “rightist” professors who are just there to affirm that everything the student already knows is right.
The rest just slides off into nonsense. Come to college for four years, and you will come out a different person, or you’re doing it wrong. That’s not brainwashing, it’s called education.
I don’t think the author has ever actually attended university, because their portrayal doesn’t reflect what we actually do.
Similar to the way the army breaks down their trainees before building them back up, your leftist professor will try to make you doubt everything you’ve ever believed, only to teach you a new way to see the world.
Yeah, right: college students are up at dawn for an hour of rigorous calisthenics, just like the army. I’ve had students tell me they won’t sign up for classes before 11am because it wrecks their sleeping schedule. I might have a student under my iron-fisted control for maybe 3 hours a week, during class — they’re off partying or reading the Bible or studying, whatever they want, the rest of the time.
Your professor will attack your upbringing. He will insinuate that your parents are not educated enough to know what they are talking about or that they are not modern enough to understand the complex issues of today’s times. This is false, and is the first step to undermining your belief system. The lens in which you view the world is not unenlightened or outdated. It is, however, a barrier to what your progressive professor wants to teach you next.
Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever attacked a student’s parents before. I have talked to them about their upbringing — I have lots of farm kids in my classes, and it turns out that’s really helpful for understanding genetics, for instance. This sounds more like a Christian cultist approach, demanding that the new member repudiate their past life and break off all contact with family. It’s not what we Liberal College Professors do. If anything, we tend to encourage students to embrace their upbringing, and use what they’re learning to understand.
The same may be said about your religion. Here are just a few examples: “It is outdated, it is anti-intellectual, it isn’t based on fact, it’s an old book, it’s a fairytale.” If your professor can make you question the God of the universe, he can certainly make you question everything else.
Oh, yes, I say that all the time…but not in class. I teach biology — the Bible is so irrelevant to learning about the electron transport chain or signal transduction that it doesn’t come up even as a bad source. I also don’t bother to explain to them that Goodnight, Moon is not a genome structure text.
I guess I’m not doing my job as a Liberal College Professor, because you can take all of my classes and not get shamed even once for going to church on Sundays. Remember, I get them for 3 hours a week, and everything outside of the classroom is completely out of my control.
Your upbringing plays a large role in the way you view the world. And chances are, at some fundamental level, you believe things similar to your parents, mentors, church, etc. That is okay, and is in fact, a good thing!
Of course, your college experience is meant to be a time for learning, growth, and maturing. Challenging your beliefs is a good way to strengthen them. However, you should know, there are ways to refute the left’s attacks on your values and upbringing. This book is here to help.
Interesting. So their target audience is people who have never experienced university life, and it’s going to tell them all these lies about how it works…so either it’s going to scare potential students away from an education, or there are going to be a bunch of first-year students wandering about, shocked that we don’t seem to be doing anything like the pamphlet promised.
Just as I say about creationists, if you lie about what your opponents say, don’t be shocked when people learn that you lie and that your claims about everything are untrustworthy. I don’t have to work very hard to undermine confidence in this nonsense, when all I have to do is reward students for their work in biology, rather than giving automatic Fs for going to church, and I’ve accomplished Satan’s goal of destroying people’s faith in their elders.
I won’t even get into the rest of the pamphlet, but here’s the summary: government is bad, capitalism is good, social justice is undesirable (there’s even a great big “Dear Muslima” in there!), recognizing white privilege is racism, there is no “war on women” (it’s a scam to trick women into voting for leftists), environmentalism is a scheme to demonize capitalism, and somehow this is all about gender neutral restrooms.
I don’t think the authors have noticed who is doing the indoctrinating yet.
Thank the lord for unbiased educational institutions ike BJU and Liberty.
To get that piece of paper that satisfies credentialist employers. University is just supposed to be jarb training and pay-to-win level-ups in the game of life, donchakno?
“Goodnight, Moon is not a genome structure text”
It’s not!!?????!?!?
Damn!!
Questioning beliefs? That might just be the most awful thing you could do! Or actually, perhaps not? Wait. No. Wait. It’s to late. I think they got to me! They got to me, too! Run!
Do Lady Professors do all those awful things, too?
That’s the funny thing about how people often use terms like brainwashing and indoctrination: It’s brainwashing and indoctrination when you are teaching things you don’t like.
(Though, to be more charitable: One could legitimately say that it is brainwashing or indoctrination to teach things that are false. The issue is when you incorrectly believe true things to be false, and false things to be true, and use that as the framework for assessing someone else’s education)
Also on clear display is the right-wing aversion to doubt and questioning previous beliefs and assumptions. They talk about it like it is the most horrible thing in the world. They portray critical thinking and challenging your own preconceptions as something traumatic, a loss of identity, a complete shattering of your personality or your mind.
I love the certainty with which they declare that some hypothetical audience member’s parents are not wrong, and their worldview is definitely not unenlightened and outdated. No reason to change, no reason to doubt, no reason to to fucking learn . This goes beyond opposing college education because it is Too Librul: This is essentially saying that college education is pointless.
“Challenging your belief is a good way to strengthen them”. Again, critical thinking and education is only good if it never causes you to change. If it causes you to change the way you see things, it is bad. That is the right-wing view of education for you.
#5 chigau
When they’re not otherwise busy crying, being in love, pregnant or distractingly sexy, sure.
I had a classmate in grad school, who was a fundamentalist Xtian of some stripe, and who was proud that his education had done nothing but reaffirm everything he believed. So nice going, professoriate. You missed one.
Unless, of course, your parents, mentors, etc., were/are tofu-swilling left-wing commie heathens. Right? RIght?
This “logic” is exactly why assumptions need to be questioned.
The “logic”:
God is so big, and great undeniable!
Professors can make you disbelieve in something as big, and great and undeniable as God!
Therefore, professors can make you disbelieve in anything!
The problem: God is deniable and isn’t big and great if He doesn’t exist.
Professors can make you disbelieve in ghosts!
Can make you doubt Thor!
Can make you question Athena!
Can make you deny Isis!
Therefore, professors can make you question anything.
LOL.
These guys are amateurs, soft on knowledge, education, and thinking skills. All of which are enemies of mindless religion.
Many or most fundies actively discourage people from going to colleges and universities. Rick Satanorum calls them satanic (He also has three degrees from good public universities including a law degree).
Their bible colleges carefully teach nothing but indoctrination and act as a dating service so your kids don’t marry a Catholic or Lutheran.
And it shows. Fundies score low in IQ, education, and socioeconomic status compared to the general population.
As opposed to the writer of this pamphlet, who forbids that you question the God of the universe but is trying to make you question everything else you’re about to experience at college. Yeah, nothing says ‘rational objective stance’ like starting out with sacred dogma.
OP:
I agree! totes.
This little “pamphlet” was circulated at a “homeschool convention” to encourage (and reinforce) keeping ones kids out of those eebil schools.
So of course they will left unsaid all the self contradictions in their propaganda screed.
as in: teachers are trying to get their students to ask questions. Kids asking questions of their parents might get the parents answering with things things that the child will ask, “how does that fir with this other thing I learned in school?”. So rather than admit they were wrong, they can just say “the teacher taught them that the parents were wrong”. *mic drop*. (or so the screed tries to provide the excuse thereof). Never realizing that getting your students to ask questions is the exact opposite of indoctrination.
This screed of “how to avoid indoctrination” is essentially “how to do indoctrination”.
anteprepro @9
As a frequent visitor to the Great Scalzi website, I can definitly say that Athena (Scalzi) exists.
Of if only things were that easy.
@AndrewD
And ISIS, as irony would have it.
Heh. I may have chosen bad examples :P
That last paragraph, where PZ goes into “the rest of it” (anyone else having trouble highlighting the text?)… how is any of that relevant to how professors are brainwashing teh yoof?
I got totally oppressed in astronomy class just for pointing out the Earth is obviously flat.
And the bilology teachers refuse to accept that insects have four legs, even though it is clearly stated in The Book!
I once had a creationist friend who came out of her biology degree accepting the science of evolution. If that’s not indoctrination, what else is it? Education? Bah!
Sure, that’s what you say now but you’ve already been through “The System” and have been compromised by the leftist professors to believe that. Its a vast underground conspiracy that has been operating now for decades, each generation of professors indoctrinating their students as they were indoctrinated. Only those
who’ve taken the red pillwith a true relationship with jebus are capable of removing the blinders, seeing down how deep the rabbit hole this goes.The truth is out there, people. You need only open your eyes to see it. While you still can.
Stay thirsty, my friends.
I’ve asked wingnuts who proclaim academe a leftist bastion this question probably 300 times and never gotten an answer at all–
Does it strike you as weird that I trust the intelligence and judgment of your children more than you do? I don’t believe for an instant that I could undo 18-25 years of what they’ve learned from you even if I wanted to, but you believe I could do it in one semester!
I’m amused at how generic it is. Any random nonsense ideology could accuse a proper education of trying to “make you doubt everything you’ve ever believed”. Like if you were raised to think that 1 + 1 = spaghetti, and that this belief is of the highest importance in every area of life.
Seth wrote:
oh, you are so humble…they respect your skillz; you are being respected as an expert at the washing of brains, at cleaning out the truth the parents nurtured (parents don’t teach, only nurture), to replace it all your eebil falsehoods presented as more true than Truth. See? Kids know the truth, gawd built them with the truth built-in and all the puffesaurrs want to wash that out and replace it with all the stuff they think is better than what the Lord designed in there.
*cough* *clears throat* *ahem*
/strawmanning
Thinking about things in terms of “left wing” and “right wing” shows how heavily indoctrinated the writer is. Perhaps they are under the illusion that only “the left” indoctrinates its followers?
The strongest arguments are those that withstand questions, and get stronger with each one. The weakest arguments will collapse when they are challenged, sometimes on the first question.
Unfortunately, religious “thinking” says the strongest arguments are those with the physical force and violence needed to prevent questions. The weakest arguments are those that haven’t brainwashed people sufficiently (i.e. people start listening to the opposing point of view).
The small town where I went to college had a sign painted on the water tank overlooking the main road which read:
The philosophy professor who supervised my major often deplored this statement in class saying education, particularly at the college level, should be full of dangerous ideas, not “safe.” Even though he was an ordained minister, he challenged our thinking and our assumptions, including god and all that. And then there was little Dr. Pettigrew, 70 years old in 1966 teaching Hamlet from yellowed 4×5 note cards, tipping back in his cane-backed chair, peering over his frameless granny glasses, and in his squeaky old-man voice challenging our assumptions about why America was in Vietnam. I was lucky they and a few others were there.
Do you think they know they are lying and fear-mongering?
I can’t tell anymore.
Speaking of brainwashing though
http://turningpointusa.net/aboutus/
Bolding is mine.
Do you get a sense of the hypocrisy?
@ 27
well thanks for venturing over there I have learned that those places are not good for me the sticky crap and the hucksterism tend to ruin my day,
as to brainwashing I have a very simple come back to that. I needed and still need it to help me get rid of a lot of accumulated misinformation and ignorant crap that I have been exposed to. I need brainwashing because my brain is dirty!
uncle frogy
Brian Pansky writeL
“Like if you were raised to think that 1 + 1 = spaghetti, and that this belief is of the highest importance in every area of life.”
Wait, you mean it isn’t? FSM forfend!
If you believe:
-black people should be slaves
-that LGBT people are disgusting subhuman creatures undeserving of rights
-that instilling obedience in your children via regular beatings
-that wives ought to be subservient to their husbands
-that women are little more than brood mares whose job it is to give birth every 9 months
-prayer is more effective in curing sick children rather than consulting a medical professional
then no, believing in things similar to your parents, mentors, or church is not a good thing.
I’m gonna do a dubious favor for everyone, and give a summary of the pamphlet for everyone to stare at, giggle, and then have their brains bubble and their eyes bleed.
Indoctrination Prevention
Deconstruction of your upbringing
Already fully quoted in the OP.
American Exceptionalism
-America is the freest nation in history!
-Filthy libruls will say it has blood on its hand and it isn’t better than other countries!
-America has success and opportunity!
-AMERICA FUCK YEAH
-Slavery was in a different time, everyone was doing it, we’ve made up for it and healed the wounds!
-America is the most compassionate and giving nation on Earth, made the greatest technological advances, have the greatest government mankind has ever seen, and is a beacon of freedom and opportunity!
-Has the most industrious, hardworking and compassionate people on Earth!
-AMERICA FUCK YEAH
-Don’t be ashamed of America!
Glorification of Government
-Not the same as glorifying America! Cuz reasons
-Professors will say government is there to help! But Ronald Reagan once said that the most horrifying phrase is “I’m here from the government and I’m here to help”! He would know!
-Government is corrupt, inefficient, corrupt, wasteful, corrupt, and a poopyhead!
-BIG GUBMINT SUX
-Business is better! Proof: Postal service loses money while Fedex and UPS do well! Take that, libruls!
-New Deal is no big deal!
-Picture of Ronny Reagan, hallowed be his visage.
Capitalism
-Professors redefine and destroy capitalism to destroy the idea of America!
-Bank bailouts and cronyism isn’t True Capitalism!!
-There are no back room deals in True Capitalism!!!!
-Cronyism is gubmint’s fault!!!!!!!!
-Professors will religiously talk about rare occurrences like the BP oil spill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Free market capitalism doesn’t hurt poor people, it is the only way that has improved life of poor people!!!!!! Look, life expectancies have gone up!!!! Praise be capitalism!!!!!!
Greed vs. Success
-Libruls want to make you feel selfish for enjoying the benefits of capitalism!
– A rising tide raises all ships!!!
-Successful people are unequal to people who have failed, so libruls want equal results, and not just equal opportunities!!!
-People succeed, people fail, and the people who succeed will make life better for those who failed through private charity through the kindness of their hearts!!!
-Your professor thinks fairness is more important than quality of life!!
-Your professor wants government to intervene whenever there would be outcomes that are not equal!!
-Redistribution of wealth!!!!
-They will call you greedy!!! But small conservative towns give more to the Salvation Army!!!!!!
-Private charities can only exist without government regulation!! (I don’t know either)
“Tolerance”
-Tolerance is NOT acceptance.
-Tolerance IS NOT acceptance.
-You will be called intolerant for Just Disagreeing!!!!
-He is intolerant of your intolerance!!!!
-They censored that guy from Duck Dynasty for Just Disagreeing about the gays!!!!!
-Critical thinking tells us that discussion with multiple points of view is superior academically to just teaching one single viewpoint! TEACH THE CONTROVERSY
-“Real value in education is derived through disagreement, not compliance”. Please do not try to reconcile this with the arguments regarding upbringing being sacrosanct!!!!
-Unironically quoting Ricky Gervais for the flawless victory.
Social Justice
-It’s about equal results!
-It’s anti-capitalism and anti-American!
-It’s emotional blackmail!
-Discrimination is just recognizing a difference and can be a good thing!
-They call themselves social justice warriors!!!
-They blow issues out of proportion!!
– [Insert Dear Muslima here]
– They attacked a man relentlessly for his shirt!!!! And they ignored the robot!!
– Don’t combat REAL social issues and just want to redistribute wealth, the Commies!!
White Privilege
-It’s a buzz word!
-Skin color band-aids is basically the same as every example your professor will come up with!
– It means that your accomplishments are just due to race and not due to effort!
– It’s racist!!!!!!
– 38% of the homeless population is white. This somehow proves my point about white privilege not existing.
– Black President, racism over.
– Hard work! It’s all hard work, all the way down!!!!
War on Women
– They say it exists to get women to vote librul!!
-It’s anti capitalism, because capitalism is True Equality!
– The American dream helps women be successful, not liberal policies!
– 4 of the 5 female governors are Republican! Take that!
– The wage gap is due to choices!
– Men prefer math and science!
– Women take women’s studies and anthropology so deserve less money!!
– Fuck you, soft and social science!
– Women make the choice to take time off to raise a family!
– Therefore, no discrimination is involved here!
Sustainability
– The left’s attempt to hijack environmentalism! (They literally said this)
– A leftist religion dedicated to spending money without regard for benefit!
– Green-washing! (Blamed on the left for some reason).
– Meant tear down successful capitalistic nations!
– Global warming and cooling over last 2000 years!!!
– Fossil fuels have bettered the environment!
– Homes on stilts and insulation, ergo who gives a fuck about climate change, praise be to Capitalism!!!!
– Alternative energy is economically destructive!
– Demonizes wealth creation and sweet, sweet oil!!!!!
– Al Gore uses airplanes!!!
– Quotes Thomas Friedman dismissing the green revolution because nobody had the sacrifice anything (right after complaining about the economic sacrifice involved in alternative energy investments….)
– Carbon tax lets the rich get away with pollution and the left hate the rich so this is cronyism!!!! (I seriously don’t get the logic involved here)
– It’s all about money and control and changing Western culture!!!!
I just don’t even with half of this shit. It’s like if Fox News was transcribed by a drunk college blogger.
robro #25
College should be a safe place to explore “dangerous” ideas. Unlike guns, ideas really don’t kill people, and nobody should fear retaliation for what they choose to think about.
I also think children should always be kept safe–occasionally even from ideas, if they’re not cognitively prepared for them. College students are young adults, so this does not apply in their case.
anteprepro
Actually, brainwashing really does mean something, although universities don’t do it. It’s pretty much limited to military organizations and cults. The basic process is to completely cut someone off from their existing support structures (family, friends, etc.), then control every aspect of their lives, when and how much they eat, drink, sleep, wash, or excrete, while subjecting them to constant abuse, leavened with praise when they do something the way you want instead of they way they would have done it before. After enough of this, something akin to Stockholm syndrome sets in, and they start to identify with your group. (for the most part; complete mental breakdown, PTSD, and/or suicide are also fairly strong possibilities).
It’s always amazing how little faith the faithful have. Right now, I’m still my children’s moral compass. As time passes, they will more and more go out into the world. They will find different ideas. They will have different ideas than I have. But I’m pretty confident that they will not turn into homophobic racists and reject the deep humanism of my teaching.
Yet those who believe they have the divine truth think that a semester in college can shake that divine truth?
Professor Myers, will any of this be on the exam?
And teaching of the right-wing political and religious beliefs the kids had before they went to college wasn’t “indoctrination?”
Back in my misspent youth where I was an uptight teenage Republican Catholic who should have been trying to score pot and get laid rather than reading National Review, listening to Limbaugh, and trying to be the child my parents would love, I believed all this bullshit. I was convinced that when I got to college that I was going to be “persecuted” because of my conservative beliefs (which were all obviously 100% correct because AMERICA) by Marxist college professors. their Hippie-wannabe TAs, and hordes of brainwashed student “PC thought police.” Why did I believe this? Because that’s what I heard on right-wing squawk-radio, in the conservative rags I read, and from my bigoted, paranoid parents.
(BTW…Hi Mom and Dad! Thanks for helping screw up my life with your superstitious lies and overprotective fuckwittery . Fuck you and may you both die slowly in agony!”)
And you know something, they were right. Oh no, I wasn’t flunked for being a reactionary asshole but they did teach me things that ran counter to the crap I was brought up with. It didn’t affect me right away, although I left college an atheist. After that, I spent the next decade a… ick… libertarian flitting from crap job to crap job until I realized that the capitalist system is a hollow lie that only the sociopathic can truly benefit from.
So when these clowns claim that college professors are trying to “indoctrinate” good, clean, white, Christian, heterosexual AMERICANS with their godless, Marxist, multiculturalist, feminist, materialist propaganda, all I can say is “GOOD!” We fucking need it.
paulbc @ 32
Of course, but the irony was that the safety many folks in the school and in the area were concerned with was safety from those dangerous ideas, not physical safety which wasn’t particularly an issue in the 60s.
I know you’ve been done a lot of harm, Akira, and I’m sorry for that – but at least you’ve been capable of learning better and growing (not that this makes the harm done hurt any the less, unfortunately, or not much less).
“Of course, but the irony was that the safety many folks in the school and in the area were concerned with was safety from those dangerous ideas”
I see. Maybe I do need a better understanding of historical context, because I read it as two disconnected things associated with Jefferson City. It has a college, and it (the city) would be a safe place for your child if you choose to live there. As I said, college students are young adults, not children, so calling a college a safe place for your child sounds odd to me. I guess an adult could be called “my child” by their parent but it’s not the first association that comes to mind. (Likewise, the Phil Ochs song http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/im-gonna-say-it-now.html songs naive and dated to me today, but people really may have had a different idea about college students at the time.)
I wonder if anybody at TPUSA has ever attended an economics course; they will likely have some of the most conservative professors you can find on campus, even at ostensibly “liberal” public universities financed in party by the government they proclaim to hate so much.
And, as others have already mentioned, this is before you even add in the slew of private, authoritarian (if the students are already adhering to a strict classroom dress code, the indoctrination has already started) socially conservative institutions–Bob Jones, Liberty, Regent, Brigham Young, just to name a few–that Americans have done so much to maintain over the years.
Two things come to mind: a comment here long ago by Brownian involving an idea he had for the “University of What You Already Believe,” and that bit in the Bible, Luke 14:26, where Jesus says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Not to mention all that “reason is the enemy” shit, and the thought that being taught that it’s a virtue to believe things for which there is, and can be no, external validation. And off the top of my head, I’m thinking that anyone who can’t be bothered to read their own holy book probably isn’t big on that reading thing and maybe wouldn’t do terribly well at college anyway.
But maybe the professors around the country can look forward to a new batch of kids all armed and ready with their memorized “refutations” of science, like when Jack Chick was in his prime.
anteprepro @31:
I have no idea why, but this one stuck out to me more than all the other points for its sheer whatthefuckittery.
BTW, do you need some brain bleach now, or just a nice strong alcoholic beverage (or 3)?
projection is a powerful driver of wingnut paranoia — they live in perpetual fear of their own tactics being used against them
and for the god-botherers that’s always been the problem — NEEDZ MOAR GODZ (AND I MEAN MY GODZ NOT THERE GODZ)
lying for jebus in the defense of my omnipotent invisible overlord is no vice
richardelguru@5:
Don’t you just hate it when thoughtless people like PZ, who just happen to be faster readers, drop such a great big spoiler??!!?
…Well, I’ve got to get back to my studies of QCD in The Color Kittens.
♬ You can’t have one
Without
The Ooooother! ♫
Am I the only one that noticed that the “OBAMA=COMMUNISM=COOL” teacher is the teacher from Beavis and Butthead? I’m not claiming to have always had good taste in animation.
@20 (Seth Kahn), a young woman I worked with way back when I was 16 said it very well:
If your entire philosophy of life can be changed just by somebody talking to you for 10 minutes, then it wasn’t really your philosophy of life to begin with.
Exactly.
Yup. Same ol’ conservative meme…”Exposing my kids to your ideas is indoctrination” but “Forcing my beliefs on your kids is not indoctrination”. We hear this over and over.
I was thinking about this saying a couple of days ago and it suddenly dawned on me* that this is true, but on a real ocean all the the ships are at the same level to start with and end up at the same level, Not really the analogy the trickle down / supply side fantasists have in mind when they spout this cliche, but a good analogy for an extremely egalitarian society instead. Are they aware of why seal level is used as a reference for elevation?