Saturday Forum

VDARE.COM Comment: Cooper Sterling’s Multicultural Educators "Celebrate Diversity" In The Age Of Obama generated several letters from VDARE.COM readers. Some of the comments are posted below.

A Virginia Reader Seeks To Remove Anti-American Books in VA Public Schools; etc.

From: Mark Jaworowski (email him)

For over a year we have been lobbying our local, state and federal officials to take illegal immigration seriously. We have had some success, but as you very well know, illegal immigration is a federal issue and can only be solved with the cooperation of the President and Congress. Since that is not very likely to occur in the next few years, we at Save Stafford (Stafford County, Virginia) should also focus on issues which can be addressed and remedied at the local level.

It came to our attention last year that high schools throughout Virginia and in the Fredericksburg area have been using the vehemently anti-American book, A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn in some of our history classes. If you believe that our high school students should not be subject to Marxist-type, anti-American propaganda in our classrooms, then please allow us to add your name to the already long list of concerned citizens who want to put a stop to this. (Contact me here.)

After all, we can all do our part to Save Stafford by ensuring our students are taught American history from a fair and balanced perspective. I hope we can count on your support.

The author is the Operations Director of Save Stafford, a grassroots initiative to reduce the number of illegal aliens unlawfully living in Stafford County, Virginia. Save Stafford is part of the larger coalition effort Save The Old Dominion.

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A Former UCLA Professor Explains Why Subversive Educators Are Eroding Our Liberties

From: Cornelius J. Troost (email him)

Thanks for the depressing report on NAME (National Association of Multicultural Education). I saw grave danger in the subversive actions of the assorted Sixties radicals and wrote a book called Radical School Reform: Critique and Alternatives, which had a foreword by Sidney Hook.

Little, Brown published it in 1973 with the caveat that I include "alternatives." I told them that a critique of extremist measures required no "alternatives" because sound education was already widespread across America. I compromised for the sake of publication and then discovered that the romantic notions of the radicals had wide support from the MSM and Americans had little interest in the serious deficiencies of the Left.

What you describe so very well is the ongoing onslaught by the new generation of Leftists determined to undermine whatever meritocracy remains.

You are perfectly right about the schools of education in America as soft, Left-oriented factories of propaganda for "social justice." My own school, Indiana University, has a Hispanic dean and the alumni magazine is a showcase for Leftist projects that endanger America's schools. We are in trouble.

My book Apes or Angels was rejected by major publishers outright. It has received great support from famous scientists and some very sharp bloggers. (You can read about it here.) It is a mix of biology and assorted social sciences plus my critical take on the harm done by the Left, much in the same vein as your piece.

Keep up your important work against this ideology that is eroding our liberties and leading us to an American version of the USSR.

The author is a former professor of science education at UCLA and chair of graduate studies at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. For more information about his book Apes or Angels: Darwin, Dover, Human Nature, and Race click here.

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Leftwing Zealots Dominate Education Department

From: (Name Withheld)

I have been telling people for years that the education system in this country was taken over by Leftwing zealots iin the mid-to-late 1970s and that it has progressively strengthened its hold over the children of this country.

Of course, most people looked at me as if I had two heads—how dare I criticize our wonderful education system. YYeah, right!

I graduated from high school in the early 1970s. I saw the huge difference in education that I received compared to what my children were being taught—and even more so now that I have a granddaughter attending government school.. I wasn’t subjected to the political correctness and multicultural hogwash being pounded into our children’s minds.

My father told our vice principal that there was no way he was going to allow his daughters to be forced to attend Black History Week activities. And by God, we didn’t attend them.

Several years ago, I happen to catch a movie on a pay cable station. The movie, I Was A Communist, was based on a true story of an F.B.I. agent, who goes undercover to infiltrate the Communist Party in the 1950s. Only his priest and his immediate supervisor were aware of his undercover work. His teenage son was not and the son was subjected to quite a lot of harassment by other students, since it appeared that his father was a member of the hated (at the time) Communist Party.

Meeting with his son’s teacher one day, the FBI agent learns that his son’s high school teacher is a member of Communist Party. Here was the part that sent the chills up my spine. The agent asks the teacher, "How can you swear allegiance everyday to the United States by reciting the pledge, and hold membership in the Communist Party?" Her response, "Being a teacher puts me right at the center of where young minds are molded (my emphasis)."

I have never forgotten that line from that movie.

The Communists were rejected and hated in the 1950s. But they were smart. They changed tactics. They began their onslaught into every part of society. The upheaval of the 1960s didn’t help things either. Isn’t one of the tenets of Marx to gain control of a political party and another tenet is to gain control of the schools? Can anyone deny that the Democrat Party and even the Republican Party are full of Leftwing, socialist-minded morons?

The Department of Education bureaucrats may not call themselves Communists or Socialists but that’s exactly what they are. Unless more parents wake up and take control of their children back, and stop using the school system as a babysitting service, the next generation of children is doomed to live under one of the most oppressive systems ever devised.

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One Way To Defund The Department Of Education

From: (Name Withheld)

I think the best way to kill the Department of Education would be to demand its funding be divided among the 50 state Departments of Education with a tiny residue of office holders left to administer Pell Grants.

The argument is simplicity itself. Let's bring the money to the states, possibly with strings attached to pass most of it to districts, where it could do the most good.

I know it's sneaky, but any strategy for ending the Dept. of Education is a good strategy. It would be something like Nixon's Housing and Urban Development block grants to cities, it could be raised as an appropriation or lowered as economic times dictated.

An aid in the strategy would be that the selfish local districts and state agencies would not be automatically opposed. The DC-based department would scream bloody murder, but the temptation to states and districts might be overwhelming.

This would require a carefully tailored message—an argument from the Left to achieve an objective on the Right.

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Cooper Sterling Adds: As Prof. Troost points out, radical egalitarians tactically decided years ago to subvert American institutions by working through the trenches as "educators" in our public schools. In order to transform American society, our culture had to be hijacked by the Left (Hollywood, the MSM, publishing, music Industry, Television, etc.) and the "long march" through these institutions (in Gramscian fashion) continues apace in the work of NAME, Teaching for Change, and other organizations deeply entrenched in our schools of education.

The usual euphemisms of "teacher quality" and "improved teacher training" will serve as the justification for increased federal spending in the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus package. Our schools of education will, in part, be major beneficiaries of this new funding, And those with their hands at the helm—mid-level functionaries such as NAME supporters and educators—will be bona fide Marxian ideologues.