[nostromo]

There's a lot of good content in this article focused on the media. The media is highly visible and well-documented, so it makes sense.

I'd like to see more content about indoctrination and propaganda happening in US education. This to me is much more insidious as it takes an impressionable populace (kids and young adults) and provides an authority figure (teachers and professors) that are largely hidden from public view and gives them a lot of room to provide whatever narrative they like about politics, history, or just about any subject.

The impact of shouting matches happening on cable news and Twitter seem like a rounding error compared to the decades-long indoctrination that happens during one's education.

[lupire]

Do private schools not have propaganda?

Student have over a dozen teachers over the course of education. If they "provide whatever narrative they like " it seems students would get a diverse range of perspectives. Not to mention all the perspectives they get from other authorities like their churches, clubs, family members, and... every adult they encounter, and every book too.

[akiselev]

Most private schools - in the US at least - are religious, so I'd argue they're peddling propaganda as a matter of course (though not all such schools require students to participate in the propagandization).

[benjohnson]

Yes. Private school do have 'propaganda' - but that's perfectly ok if it aligns with the parent's wishes. As the parents, we have the right to chose how our children are raised.

[Broken_Hippo]

I don't know. Sure, you are raising your kids, but they are going to be adults, some with kids, some without - and that is going to require some information.

I think it is a grave injustice to children to, for example, not introduce them to a variety of religions so that they can better understand folks they might run into. Same for not having comprehensive sex education: It matters little to me that a parent thinks some sex - or birth control - is a sin: The child still needs to learn about it so that they can make good decisions even if it goes against the parents' beliefs. Some parents want girls to just learn to cook and clean, and demand an emphasis on such classes.

And so on.

I'm not convinced it is entirely your right to do as you please with your children: To me, it is only OK so long it is healthy for the child and doesn't infringe on their rights... which they should have, and the US refuses to give.

[stronglikedan]

They do, but the parents have more of a say, since they're paying for it. And, since they can afford it, they have a choice of schools should their complaints fall on deaf ears.

[cbsmith]

Right, so effectively you are getting more propaganda from one point of view. At least when there is conflicting propaganda, there's some hope.

[pc86]

I don't think the goal with public education should be allowing wildly conflicting propaganda.

[cbsmith]

I wasn't saying it was.

[boomboomsubban]

Most private schools are still required to follow a state mandated curriculum in many areas, and are still hiring from the same pool of indoctrinated teachers. You could make a propaganda light private school, but that would need to be your explicit goal.

Sure, children will encounter a diverse range of ideas. Schooling dominates in time spent with, and it is the one most likely to reward or punish a child for regurgitating an ideology.

[colordrops]

The private schools in Los Angeles definitely push political agendas.

[nescioquid]

Susan Jacoby[1] made the case that the lack of a federal/national education system (the constitution makes it a state responsibility) historically results from Americans' fears of indoctrination by such an education system -- specifically that their children would not be properly indoctrinated into their religion, or worse, be indoctrinated into someone else's religion.

[1] Age of American Unreason

[HWR_14]

That's strange. There's no federal system because of 9th amendment issues. And there was no federal right in the original constitution because universal education is a fairly new concept.

[NortySpock]

So, the American Civil Religion?

Dangerous History Podcast with Prof CJ https://profcj.org/ep124/

"Ever get the sense that the government and politics in the United States is kinda cult-y? If so, CJ thinks your spidey sense is justifiably tingling, and what you’re picking up on is the phenomenon known as the civil religion.

Join CJ as he discusses:

The concept of civil religion

The origins of the American civil religion, and a brief word on the scholarship on the concept

Some of the overtly religious elements that can be found in American government and politics, including: dogmas, rituals, sacred texts, holy places, sermons, sacrifices, sacred days, spells/mantras/incantations/prayers, music, sacred histories/narratives, temples, symbols/totems, priests, and saints

The ways in which people of different cultural and ideological predilections can — just like with conventional religion — interpret the civil religion in order to make it fit their preferences

How voting fits into this civil religion, and why CJ thinks a reasonable person should reject the civil religion — whether they are theists or not

[refurb]

I think that Prof just described every human civilization that ever existed?

[francisofascii]

What some educational systems are missing is a class on how to identify propaganda, just like this blog post. Sometimes this is covered in a logic course that covers logical reasoning, logical fallacies, etc. How these techniques are used in advertising, news stories, etc.

[jhabdas]

Philosophy and sociology should be moved earlier in the curriculum. I gained much from studying Descartes and Bertrand Russell, and learning propositional logic. The school system did not teach me those things until after I graduated high school. Had those teachings come earlier I may not have been as susceptible to propaganda at such a young age as I was.

[josefresco]

> The media is highly visible and well-documented

Sort of. Social media feeds and ads are ephemeral and customized to the specific user. This makes transparency hard, unless the network provides access.

[flippinburgers]

Critical Race Theory as I have read about it being applied in schools teaches youth that they are inherently racist (note this is only taught to the white children) and that the minorities get to share their anecdotal, lived experience while the white students stand by and are not permitted to say anything.

I find the entire formula to be a groundwork for severe social damage. It certainly does not build bridges. Nor does it pave the way towards compassion and understanding.

[dragonwriter]

> Critical Race Theory as I have read about it being applied in schools

Critical Race Theory isn’t applied in K-12 schools (at least not as a thing that is taught, it can certainly inform education policy and approaches to policymaking), nor has anyone proposed teaching it there, and anything you’ve read about it being taught there is a complete and utter fabrication for propaganda purposes.

> teaches youth that they are inherently racist (note this is only taught to the white children)

CRT doesn't include the idea that people are inherently racist, and is, indeed, an outgrowth of critical legal studies and shares CLS’s focus on institutional rather than personal forces. People being racist is largely outside the focus of CRT, which is centrally about how social institutions can be racist, often independently or even contrary to the values of the people currently comprising the institutions.

The anti-anti-racists have been claiming people advocating against racism are teaching white children that they are inherently racist long before they attributed that to CRT. CRT has just been adopted as the new buzzword to which anti-anti-racists apply their standard arguments, just as “cancel culture” recently became the label to which all the arguments that the Right had been tieing to “political correctness” since the 1980s became attached.

[cbsmith]

Yeah, that's not what Critical Race Theory is or how it could be applied to schools.

The irony of you bringing this up in the context of propaganda is amusing.

There's a good short interview NPR did today with Gloria Ladson-Billings, who has been working on applying critical race theory for education policy for over a couple of decades: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/22/1009182206/academic-who-broug...

Be careful out there. There's a lot of propaganda out there.

[esyir]

Having seen the media about crt, as well as the way it's applied and the attitudes of its adherents, its pretty close to the truth.

And its hard to argue with the result. Whatever is going on, that particular strain of "crt" is virulently spreading.

[cbsmith]

"The media about crt"

s/media/propaganda/

Keep in mind you're being fed a narrative. CRT has been around for decades, and isn't something you can apply in a grade school curriculum (as Gloria Ladson-Billings said, it isn't something you teach in undergrad at college... it's a subject for post graduate study/research). There's a reason you're hearing about this now.

[esyir]

You attacked probably the weakest part of that entire statement.

Your claim that it's a subject for post graduate study/research might have been true at one point, but many of it's principles have been leaking into multiple levels of society, and in my opinion, to the detriment of society.

Firstly, the focus on storytelling over data that is a hallmark of CRT. This has clearly metastasized. Note the prevalence of personal narratives, and the use of personal narrative to explicitly supplant other sources of truth that's common in today's conveyances.

Then look at intersectionality. The US is literally fractured along identity lines, with people literally pulling that separation and interaction of the various subidentitites to war with one another. Look at the slow march towards "male gays are oppressors" that you see on LBGT communities AND the mainstream media [1].

How punctuality and other such professional merits are now just white people's oppression [2] and that any acceptance of such is considered internalized racism?

Reparations and separation (CHAZ, general talk) anyone? Also common themes in academic CRT.

It's pretty clear to me, building from the principles of CRT, and the common themes in their papers have punctured that academic bubble into the mainstream. We're hearing about it now because of this. I certainly don't like it.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/white-gay-privilege-ex...

[2] https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_bias_of_professionalism_...

[cbsmith]

> You attacked probably the weakest part of that entire statement.

I wasn't intending to attack.

> Your claim that it's a subject for post graduate study/research might have been true at one point, but many of it's principles have been leaking into multiple levels of society, and in my opinion, to the detriment of society.

It's not my claim, and the "principles" you're talking about aren't CRT principles.

> Firstly, the focus on storytelling over data that is a hallmark of CRT. This has clearly metastasized. Note the prevalence of personal narratives, and the use of personal narrative to explicitly supplant other sources of truth that's common in today's conveyances.

The idea of a narrative being an important aspect of history education goes back... essentially forever. It doesn't trace back to CRT. It's a core principle of CRT because it predates it... and of course there's the whole thing about certain stories being excluded from our narratives.

> How punctuality and other such professional merits are now just white people's oppression [2] and that any acceptance of such is considered internalized racism?

The narrative on punctuality that is currently making the rounds is deliberately misframing the context. There's a reality (that has been studied) about how racism colours the application and enforcement things like punctuality. It's not that punctuality is intrinsically a tool for oppression, but rather how systemic racism plays out through things as trivial as punctuality.

There may indeed be a lot of the thinking here that has percolated out "into the mainstream". That's kind of the point of these things. You would expect that most ideas would get around throughout society. But no one worries about String Theory being taught in grade school, and the idea of actively trying to ensure it doesn't somehow slip in to the curriculum in grade school is laughable. If you can get students to the mental headspace where you can even begin to examine CRT, you're doing an amazing job as an educator, and I kind of don't care what you proceed to expose them to at that point.

Do you remember all the concern about CRT in 2018? All the brawls at boards of education? The 1100 times that it was mentioned on FOX News in just the first half of that year? Yeah, me neither. Yet somehow, I'm supposed to believe a narrative that there's been some massive nationwide covert shift in school boards, school administrations, and teachers that was executed without any turn over, public policy, etc.? I'm sorry. It's a lot easier to believe that the narrative about CRT is propaganda that plays a role in a larger, otherwise unrelated, political landscape.

> I certainly don't like it.

...and that's the crux of it. We're used to the propaganda we've been fed, and the idea of it changing in anyway is just really upsetting.

[ttt0]

I get the overall idea of what CRT is and it's basically in the same vein as for example The Culture of Critique. Some of it might be fair points, to some of it I have strong objections, but the bottom line is that children are not mentally and emotionally mature enough to deal with subjects like that. Hell, the same thing can be even said about a lot, if not most, of adults. It's almost impossible to have any reasonable debate around what these actually say, without throwing around words like racist, anti-white, anti-semite, etc. I'm opposed to censoring anything, but just in principle, neither of them should be taught to children, it's a terrible idea. Period.

The NPR interview doesn't really say anything interesting or new to me. All of it applies to The Culture of Critique too. Putting whether these theories are actually true aside for a moment, my point is that if you are opposed to teaching children something like CofC then you should be opposed to CRT as well.

To illustrate my point better, let's take the CNN article on what CRT is: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/01/us/critical-race-theory-e...

Here is how CRT is defined, which isn't exactly the most charitable definition of CRT I've ever read, and it frankly sounds completely terrible, but just to demonstrate a point:

> Critical race theorists believe that racism is an everyday experience for most people of color, and that a large part of society has no interest in doing away with it because it benefits White elites.

Now let's change some races around:

> Critical race theorists believe that racism is an everyday experience for most White people, and that a large part of society has no interest in doing away with it because it benefits Jewish elites.

And this is roughly the conclusion CofC reaches too. So honest question, assuming you can come up with something to substantiate this claim (to keep the discussion simple), would you also be fine with this? Just in principle.

[cbsmith]

> but the bottom line is that children are not mentally and emotionally mature enough to deal with subjects like that

Which is why you can't possibly introduce it in to grade school curriculum. The very idea is laughable.

[cbsmith]

...and to your question, I think you're missing the point of CRT. The point is to look at the systemic effects that may otherwise go unobserved because they aren't experienced by the majority. Swapping it around so that it is the experience of the majority takes it out of that context and makes it pretty much a joke.

[ttt0]

It happens to focus on groups that are currently minorities, but it's not so much about the demographic makeup, but about power. And majority does not equate to power. That's just false, and it'd contradict Marxism, or even something like the colonization of Africa, among other historical events. I don't know the history of Africa in depth, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that the European colonizers at the time didn't have to reach the majority of the population to take over the power there. What I'm essentially asking is whether you'd be fine with putting the blame (again, just in principle, so we don't have to debate the validity of such theories) on the Jewish elites for the way things are and the Jewish people for upholding such system, because it doesn't impact them negatively, because they believe it benefits them, because they fear the backlash, and so on and so forth.

But I guess your other comment already answers that, so if you're opposed to practices like the one below, then we're in agreement:

> A public school system in New York has introduced a new curriculum to teach that 'all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism', and show kindergarten classes videos of black children shot and killed by police, instructing them about the dangers of police brutality.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/buffalo-schools-claim-all-...

Appeal to authority just in case, it was fact-checked by Newsweek and ruled as true: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-buffalo-schools-teac...

[cbsmith]

> And majority does not equate to power.

Fair.

[clipradiowallet]

CRT is a new [political] spin on an old evolved trait in all human beings(and in some non-human life forms). That trait is "pack mentality"; the idea that a single organism has a higher survival rate when in a pack. Example: lone wolf VS pack wolf - the lone wolf has a higher mortality rate. Expulsion of a pack wolf from the pack invariably leads to a shorter lifespan for the expelled wolf. This works in humans also... eg, a tribe of humans can hunt larger mammals, which results in more food security for the tribe. A single human cannot do this, and has no safety net when they are physically unable to hunt/gather.

Whether CRT is right/wrong is another issue altogether...but it's just another lens on a very old behavior trait of species that have survived over long periods of time.

[kevando]

100% i think it was peter thiel who i heard say something to the effect of “if 90% of the most recent supreme court justices went to hardvard/yale, you have to ask yourself what are they teaching there?”

and on the other side, i witnessed what the chicago public school system says to the kids (remote learning) and holy shit. it was like something from 1984. gotta start preparing us to not own anything and like it some time…..

[bosswipe]

The bigger concern is that professional educators are being overruled by politicians about what is in the curriculum. Such as the recent wave of anti-Critical Race Theories laws being handed down because of a panic created by right-wing media.

[akomtu]

Educators, i.e. teachers, are being coerced into imposing CRT onto students by school boards and since teachers have little leverage, they have to comply. The CRT's tenets are identical to those in Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. Just read the wiki pages about the two regimes and see the striking similarities. I think the reason CRT has started getting so much flak is that it's reached the phase when it needs to impose its key technique known as "self criticism" (in USSR) and "struggle sessions" (in China). Americans have noticed that something is off and got agitated.

[temp8964]

No. The panic is not created by the media. I don't want my kids to be taught how White people are racists, or "people of color" are oppressed. Even I am not a White.

[humaniania]

Yes, it is.

"As Media Matters has previously noted, Fox News’ current obsession with “critical race theory” has been a year in making. What once was a slow trickle of monthly mentions has developed into a full blown assault. Since February, month over month mentions of the theory have more than doubled on Fox News as the network has begun to spin an illusion of what it is and where it’s being taught (in reality, critical race theory is not generally taught in K-12). Coverage of the theory sharply increased in March, with 107 mentions on the network according to data from Kinetiq media monitoring service. The following month, network figures and guests mentioned it 226 times, and by May, the number had increased to 537 mentions. Not even halfway through June, there’s already been 408 mentions on the network.

Just last week, Fox mentioned “critical race theory” a record 244 times -- an increase from the previous record high of 170 mentions the week before."

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-has-mentioned-crit...

[temp8964]

Your logic is very very strange. Because Fox mentioned it, it must be created by Fox?

[tolbish]

Fox is known for the "People are saying" propaganda that makes something seem like it's everywhere to build consensus.

[temp8964]

But it's truly "everywhere". There are too many photos of those crazy presentations come out almost every week. Maybe you think it's not widely spread. But those crazy nuts are being adopted by many places. Parents are rightfully concerned.

[pacerwpg]

Where did you hear that kids are being taught those things?

[temp8964]

This kind of training on teachers is everywhere. Which is also wrong. Shall I wait on it? Or are you saying it is ok for those things to be taught in teacher training, but only wrong when it is taught to kids?

[pacerwpg]

I'm saying that children aren't being taught the things you say they're being taught.

[MarkLowenstein]

You casting doubt on the poster's assertions makes me incredibly angry. You clearly don't know anything about what's going on in public schools yet you pretend to be wiser than the poster about it.

I have a kid in a public high school. He has shared pictures, video, links, and schedules. Also I have visited local high schools and seen the messaging being delivered on the walls. These schools have one mission right now, above anything else: crank out social-justice warriors; get some reliable street troops on the ground for leftist causes.

Do NOT dare to tell me it is not like I describe.

1. Special presentations carved out from academic class time every day for black history month, with presentations about white privilege and other fodder to cultivate racial grievance.

2. A week devoted to BLM during that month, with similar time carved out each day from many classes for a presentation that included justifications for hate against white people and exhortations about how you should become an "Ally". Including a black poet that read that she was justified in calling white people "the devil" and lumped all white people who didn't jump to BLM action into the category of aggressors that deserve the violence of BLM protests.

3. "Open" class discussions after such presentations where everyone is called on to share their thoughts, but of course only certain thoughts are permissible and discipline is doled out to those who disagree.

4. A school-wide presentation by the "equity association" that re-enacted all the horrible things white people do to black people, such as saying they like fried chicken and watermelon, to demonstrate just how bad white people are all the time.

5. Gay pride month where they devoted more class time to special presentations and discussions, like Bill Nye saying that in addition to that little "sex" thing, there's also all these other more important dimensions like "gender" that need to be dwelled on.

6. Time off granted if you join a walk-out for preferred causes like global warming activism.

7. Posters around school lauding the actions of "world-changing" demonstrators. All leftist demonstrators of course.

8. Lots and lots of "No human is illegal" signs all over.

9. In my kid's school, at least one classroom decorated from top to bottom with Black Panther publicity and aggressive black-defiance messages.

10. In my spouse's teacher training, 100% of the time has been spent on "anti-bias" and "equity" training. Where no problem existed in the least.

11. School district hiring 6-figure "diversity consultants" by the dozen, all of whom will do nothing except arrange presentations such as I cited above. And then they claim to need a new tax levy to hire enough teachers or pay them decently.

So whatever you've seen in terms of CRT quizzes and stereotype pyramids, what you don't understand is that it's way worse than that. It's not just obnoxiously flooding kids with racial stereotypes. It's not just that that is a topic that is 100% unrelated to education. It's that they are cultivating racial grievance. And they are pitting student against student to get it done as completely as possible.

I'm a mild-mannered guy. And I've never been so pissed off in my life.

[temp8964]

Where did I say they're being taught?

[jollybean]

I actually do share the concern that fairly far-right wing people are politicizing education.

But - CRT in it's applied form ultimately turns into 'propaganda' and there should be some legislative parameters around it.

The basic CRT premise of 'Minorities who live in Majority Culture are suppressed in systematic ways, and that we should be more sensitive to that and it's historical impact' ... is definitely fair.

So there's a legit grounding in aspects of CRT.

If that were it, then then this would be a good thing.

But the rhetorical application of CRT gets pretty vicious, pretty quickly, and it turns to the language of 'race war' almost instantly.

In particular, using terminology such as 'White Supremacy' which is normally associated with 'Men in White Pointy Hats' as purposefully toxic language, the tactic of castigating anyone who doesn't support their cause as 'upholding White Supremacy' and therefore racism etc. are common.

Controversial foundational elements such as rejecting liberal and enlightenment values (literally objective truth) in favour of one's own 'realized or expressed truth' in addition to issues such as rejecting the foundation of the written word etc..

There's been a few debates here on HN, but there is documentation from school boards on 'how the teaching of Math upholds White Supremacy' because it ostensibly implies 'linear thinking', 'predicate knowledge' and other artifacts of supposed 'White Supremacy'. The response to this particularly bad form of CRT on HN usually comes in the form of discounting classical teaching pedagogy as being possibly too 'stifled' - but that has absolutely nothing to do with race and there is no evidence whatsoever to back it up. In reality - certain groups (Hispanics, Blacks) do poorly, and other groups - including minorities/people of colour (Whites, Asians) do just fine under the same pedagogy and what's more likely is that kids who show up for class, who have good parents, who want to learn etc. (i.e. the obvious things) do just fine. CRT 'in practice' in this situation is unsubstantiated, anti-scientific, anti-progressive ideological rubbish in making excuses for kids who don't do well in math. It's 'good intentions run ideologically wild'.

Last week a New Jersey school board opted to remove the names of all holidays from their calendar and replace them with just 'Holiday'. This one is actually a pretty good example of the intersection of CRT and the effete values of school administrators: July 4, Easter, Memorial Day are just 'too controversial' for our kids to be exposed to, therefore, we'll just mark them as 'Holiday'.

That to me represents a kind of ideological 'crossing of the line': if our educators are interested in making sure kids hear about slavery and segregation, that seems reasonable. Important, actually. But erasing civic holidays because of concerns of CRT is I think 'radical', and there are people in every school board in America who would like to follow suit and CRT gives them basically the impetus to 'Be on the right side of history' (in their view) despite the 'Ugly, angry, overtly traditional parents' (again view of the teachers).

There's a little bit of a postmodern aspect to CRT - it's a 'turning inside out' kind of ideology, allowing adherents to basically refute anything and everything part of he 'conventional narrative' and replace it with ... well whatever they want. This is what makes it scary.

CRT has some valid intellectual underpinnings, but it ends up being like ugly Red Hat Trumpism for the Left. I actually support some aspects of it but I have no trust in the education system to use it responsibly.

Unfortunately, I think the 'sides' are talking past each other I don't see any consensus developing just yet.

[temp8964]

I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think CRT has anything value intellectually. Reasonable thinking on race issues is very difficult, I don't think CRT positively contribute to any of that. CRT is in itself radical, if you remove radical thoughts from CRT, then it is no longer CRT.

[esyir]

>It's 'good intentions run ideologically wild'.

I would characterize it differently. The core issue with CRT is that it's an attempt to frame everything in an oppressor-oppressed framework. Perhaps it might have more nuanced takes, but whenever I see it, whether in the wild, the media, or (thankfully rarely) in person, it takes that oppresor-oppressed binary and explains any negative impact on such.

As you've mentioned, Asians do well, as do Indians. Both cultures value education highly, resulting in a heavy, often overwhelming approach to their children (Neither is a monolithic bloc, but the trends are pretty well characterized here). It does happen that the environment they're in is amenable to this, with academic achievements conferring access to a bevy of advantages. CRT could argue this that the academic focus is in a domain selected to disadvantage (insert selected group).

However, even if an academic focus is actually objectively (or in it's weaker form, generally) advantageous to the individual or society, CRT would continue to see it as an issue, as long as it disadvantages said group.

Of course, then the question is what cultural end metric you consider "good", but that's a whole different ball game.

[colordrops]

The worst kind of propaganda is that which makes certain topics taboo, regardless of merit. For instance, if your idea that propaganda is pushed in schools gains traction among the populace, the idea would then be associated with the "other side", either liberals or conservatives in our case, and would then mark you as being on the wrong team. Its a pernicious form of propaganda that has escalated with the last presidential election.

EDIT: curious about the opinions of anyone who down voted this.

[wolverine876]

> indoctrination and propaganda happening in US education

What evidence do you have that it is happening and on what scale?

My teachers, all that I recall, never presented any opinion or perspective as truth. It was always about thinking critically for ourselves. If, for example, they presented a well-established view on the sinking of the Maine, it was as material for our analysis and evaluation.

[seertaak]

There are slides circulating on Twitter, apparently snapped during presentations given to educators in the context of diversity training, exhorting viewers to understand, say, punctuality as a manifestation of white supremacy.

Set aside for a moment the very fair questions one can ask about the trustworthiness of these images. Ignore for now whether this was shown to 5 or 5000 eductors, etc.

Let's just assume such instructions were in fact given to educators on some non-negligible scale.

Would that be evidence enough for you?

[wolverine876]

> Let's just assume such instructions were in fact given to educators on some non-negligible scale.

IMHO, and pertinent to the OP: That is out of textbook of how mis- and disinformation impacts human thinking: Observe something emotionally provocative and follow the urge to dive in, regardless of the reality: 'What if it's true???" I've trained myself not to do it.

I'm always interested in valuable, credible information. (And to be clear, it's not your job to educate me - that's my job - but it is your job to backup what you say.)

> slides circulating on Twitter

Is there any place where amount of propaganda is greater, in the history of the world, than on social media such as Twitter? It must be orders of magnitude beyond anything ever. Serious question: Why are you reading it? It's like digging through a garbage dump for coins.

[nescioquid]

You seem to deny there is any propaganda or indoctrination happening in U.S. education.

A commenter asked what it would take to change your mind, and offers a hypothetical scenario as a test (which may have some basis in reality, but excludes that from consideration), and you refused to consider it.

Do you think there is any sort of evidence, if demonstrated adequately, that would change your mind? What sort of evidence would be sufficient?

[CRConrad]

> You seem to deny there is any propaganda or indoctrination happening in U.S. education.

Heck no, everybody knows American schools have been indoctrinating kids into robber-baron capitalism, "Manifest Destiny" imperialism, trickle-down economics, Christianity and other stupid shit like that for ages.

Wait, what -- that wasn't the propaganda or indoctrination you meant?

[wolverine876]

I'm not defending myself against baseless allegations, if that's what you are seeking.

They made a claim, not me. Let's see some evidence or it's just, effectively, propaganda. Anybody can say anything without evidence.

[nescioquid]

You challenged the notion of "indoctrination and propaganda happening in US education" (from the parent comment). You simply made a counter-claim to the parent commenter, to the effect that you know none of your teachers ever presented opinion as truth.

Another commenter asks you whether, hypothetically, a certain kind of training were given to teachers would change your opinion.

Who is making a claim here?

[esyir]

Man, if you're trying to defend teachers, you're doing a sufficiently terrible job that I'd almost think you were deliberately strawmanning.

You've effectively responded to a hypothetical "if teachers were converted to propaganda machines, would that be propaganda" with evasion that makes you sound like you have something to hide.

[akomtu]

That's a real thing, though. In fact, some legislatures are so concerned that they've started passing laws prohibiting propaganda. Example is the recent HB3979 bill:

https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/id/2339637

[dragonwriter]

> In fact, some legislatures are so concerned that they've started passing laws prohibiting propaganda. Example is the recent HB3979 bill

But that law:

(1) Nowhere prohibits propaganda, by name or in effect,

(2) mandates teaching propaganda, and specifically teaching various propaganda documents, opinion/analysis works, and campaign presentations (the Federalist Papers, Democracy in America, the first Lincoln-Douglas debate) ahistorically as “founding documents of the United States” rather than as propaganda, controversial opinion, etc.

It does explicitly prohibit policies mandating teaching current events, though. But not propaganda.

[jollybean]

So I would disagree with both of those points.

For part 2) it says they 'must teach those foundational concepts and supporting documents' (i.e. Constitution) but it doesn't say how. I'm not sure if that counts as 'must teach propaganda'.

For part 1) The Boards are prohibited from requiring teachers to teach current events via an ideological nature, but it does not prohibit teachers from teaching anything - rather they must teach the subject from a variety of viewpoints without taking sides.

"(2) teachers who choose to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs shall, to the best of their ability, strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective;"

And prohibiting things like giving credit for activist projects etc.. If parents want to get their kids involved in activism, that's perfectly fine but I don't think that's the school's job.

Honestly, I don't like that we feel such a document needs to exist, but I think it's pretty fair, neutral and civic.

As a parent, I would be happy if this were already the 'policy' at my school board.

[wolverine876]

> some legislatures are so concerned that they've started passing laws prohibiting propaganda. Example is the recent HB3979 bill:

> https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/id/2339637

If you are aware of that bill, you know that it's potentially a product of the conservative reactionary movement, which demonizes anything liberal and attacks with everything they've got.

That doesn't mean propaganda doesn't exist in education, but isn't it a bit disingenuous to present the bill only as a product of 'concern' and omit political movement with which it's widely associated? Isn't that disninformation?

I'm asking a genuine question, given the context.

[akomtu]

The bill's language is very simple and reasonable, e.g. "members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex." I don't really see where this bill attempts to demonize anything.

[wolverine876]

It's telling, perhaps, that the parent comment doesn't address the question, misrepresents what I wrote, and continues to misrepresent the bill.

[akomtu]

Is there a particular statement in the bill you deem wrong?

[_ivvf]

The evidence that radicals have already successfully overtaken Western universities is overwhelming, and the evidence that these radicals are in the process of taking over secondary education is also readily available for anyone who is interested.

If you are actually looking for some eyewitness accounts, Jordan Peterson has many podcasts where he interviews specific people that have experienced the ideological takeover themselves, including:

* Yeonmi Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yqa-SdJtT4

* Dr. Rima Azar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIw8mH7ZpFY

* Bret Weinstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O_gW4VWZ5c

He has also interviewed one person who lost his job fighting the takeover in high school:

* Paul Rossi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysQBegyQP8A

He's also interviewed a self-identified liberal and former employee of New York Times that witnessed the takeover at the Times. Starting at minute 8 the conversation diverges into talking about her experience at University.

* Bari Weiss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFTA9MJZ4KY&t=12s

Bari Weiss says it herself in this podcast, loosely quoted since I don't remember it exactly: If you as a liberal can't see the danger in what is happening, then you have your blinders on.

I would say the same holds true of people who can't see the takeover in education, which is already mostly complete.

Edit: I found the Bari Weiss quote at 43:06: "I have to be honest. At this point, if one can't see the way that this language has been hijacked and used as a kind of trojan horse strategy to smuggle in a hardened, zero-sum identity politics view of the world, to smuggle in a view of the world in which we have collective guilt or collective innocence literally based on the circumstances of our birth, that smuggle in a deeply anti-capitalist position, to smuggle in essentially a leftist illiberalism, then, I'm sorry. You have blinders on! The evidence is so overwhelming at this point.... I think it's because admitting that's true, is extremely psychologically scary, and socially scary, if you are a liberal."

[wolverine876]

There's no evidence in the parent, just the opinions of a few political actors.

> radicals have already successfully overtaken Western universities

Ironically, this uses techniques from the OP. It's an emotional appeal - calling people radicals, catastrophizing, etc. - but there's no evidence and really no information. Hyperbole eliminates information; it's like screaming 'we're all going to die!'.

[blindmute]

If eyewitness accounts are not evidence, what would pass as evidence to you? Anyone with children in public school has seen this. Do you really need a peer reviewed study on every piece of information to form a worldview?

[wolverine876]

> If eyewitness accounts are not evidence

What a few people in the whole country say is necessarily credible and is evidence of a widespread trend? Wow. Do you know what you can find people saying, especially on the Internet?

It's surprising that people, especially on HN where evidence is commonplace, and especially in a discussion on propaganda, are so triggered by that. Note that almost nobody in this thread is discussing the facts of the original claim, they all are trying to change the subject to me.

> Anyone with children in public school has seen this.

What I read is, 'I'm so sure that I haven't even looked for or at evidence.' It's not a good sign.

Fact and reason are the difference between burning witches at the stake on one hand, and justice, fairness, truth, law, and science on the other.

[blindmute]

> What I read is, 'I'm so sure that I haven't even looked for or at evidence.' It's not a good sign.

What you should read is that there is so much obvious evidence, easily available, that asking for more of it can only be interpreted as bad faith. I am certain that there is no evidence that fits your standard, because short of "Study: Schools taken over by radicals" you would not accept it. A scientific study like this would never be funded, even if this were a question for science (it isn't), for many reasons.

A google search of the relevant terms would turn up dozens of egregious instances. Have you looked?

[ttctciyf]

Jordan Peterson is the worst kind of bloviating bullshitter pushing divisive bad faith talking points designed to muddy and degrade debate, in my ever so humble opinion.

[sreque]

I don't agree with everything Jordan says. In fact, as a religious person, I find his attempts to redefine religion as a form of atheism with psychology-based respect for religious instinct to be offensive. But, I don't believe a single thing you just said. I believe Jordan has and continues to do more good than I ever will in 100 of my own lifetimes, despite his flaws.