Many universities try to indoctrinate students, but the all-time champion in this category is surely the University of Delaware. With no guile at all the university has laid out a brutally specific program for "treatment" of incorrect attitudes of the 7,000 students in its residence halls. The program is close enough to North Korean brainwashing that students and professors have been making "made in North Korea" jokes about the plan. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has called for
FIRE reports that the university's views "are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to 'sustainability' door decorations." Residents are pressured to promise at least a 20 percent reduction in their ecological footprint and to promise to work for a "oppressed" group. Students are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings and one-on-one sessions where RAs ask personal questions such as "When did you discover your sexual identity?". Students are pressured or required to accept an array of the university's approved views. In one training session, students had to announce their opinions on gay marriage. Those who did not approve of gay marriage were isolated and heavily pressured to change their opinion.
The indoctrination program pushes students to accept the university's ideas on politics, race, sex, sociology, moral philosophy and environmentalism. The training is run by Kathleen Kerr, director of residential life, who reportedly considers it a "cutting-edge" program that can be exported to other universities around the country. Residential assistants usually provide services to residents and have light duties, such as settling squabbles among students. Kerr and her program are more ambitious. She has been quoted as saying that the job of RAs is to educate the whole human being with a "curricular approach to residential education." In this curricular approach, students are required to report their thoughts and opinions. One professor says: "You have to confess what you believe to the RA." The RAs write reports to their superiors on student progress in cooperating with the "treatment."
The basic question about the program is how did they think they could ever get away with this? Most campus indoctrination is more subtle, with some wiggle room for fudging and deniability. This program implies a frightening level of righteousness and lack of awareness. But the RAs have begun to back away a step or two. After telling the students the program is mandatory, the RAs sent an email saying the sessions are actually voluntary.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:21 am
[...] On the other hand, closer to home, will the indoctrination of students in certain US colleges continue unopposed? John Leo’s column on the University of Delaware is here. Having teachers impose politics in class is nothing new. Some of this is done to show their own point of view to students, but others do it as a way to make students think and learn to explain why they believe x or y. [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 2:07 pm
That the University of Delaware would institute this Maoist program in such a blatantly open fashion shows how extremely confident these Marxists have become. It also shows that they feel that mainstream America is ready to accept brain washing and thought control.
I was forced to sign the NCATE “Professional Disposition” social justice loyalty oath when I recently attended education grad school at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia. I tried to protest this but the administration did not care. At least I shook the place up by introducing other opinions into all of my classes. The other students really thought I was from another planet. It truly is a leftist mono-culture.
They could not get rid of me because I had a 4.0. So what do they do? First, I was accused of bias when I wrote a first-class Unit Plan on the Cold War. (It is really a book that I would like to publish.) Whatever you do, don’t ever write the truth about either President Carter or President Reagan. Instead, write a hagiography about the former and give no credit for ending the Cold War to the latter.
Second, you get black-balled from getting a job in the Fairfax County Public School system. You see, the same Professor that accused me of bias also happens to be one of the head Social Studies coordinators for Fairfax County. This allows her to scrutinize many potential incoming social studies teachers going to grad school there. A cozy relationship indeed.
Lobotomize the whole diseased lot of them before they infect the rest of the populace!
October 31st, 2007 at 4:06 pm
[...] *** Bryan Preston ipresses the university. John Leo writes: “The basic question about the program is how did they think they could ever get away with this? Most campus indoctrination is more subtle, with some wiggle room for fudging and deniability. This program implies a frightening level of righteousness and lack of awareness. But the RAs have begun to back away a step or two. After telling the students the program is mandatory, the RAs sent an email saying the sessions are actually voluntary.” Posted in: Education Send to a Friend Printer Friendly comments (0) trackbacks (0) [...]
July 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
It is nothing but the the moral and legal issues posed by campus thought-control programs in general as they might think. But as fas ar i am concerned academic freedom is an important aspect specially in the grad universities. Always these kind of sessions should be voluntary…
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CHRIS
Addiction Recovery Delaware