Imagine, for example, a forty-year-old teacher in California who received his/her training two decades earlier at California State University Dominguez Hills school of education, which is in the Los Angeles area. “Peruse the course catalog of any major education school, or read the Twitter feeds of the professors,” observes Forster, and you will “find yourself swimming in an ocean of hard-left ideology: ‘critical theory’ that says there is no truth, only power ‘intersectionality’ that says you’re not allowed to be right about anything unless you’re right (that is, left) about everything cheerleading for every fashionable left-leaning cause.”įorster notes, “The central concept in the ideology that rules education schools, with an iron fist, is that real pedagogy means the liberation of the oppressed.”įorster emphasizes that in the prevailing worldview at education schools, “Liberation means left-wingery because left-wingery means liberation.”įorster’s observations mirror my own research, co-authored with Gwynne Spann, on California schools of education. Greg Forster, Friedman Fellow at the school-choice organization EdChoice and a top education researcher, last year wrote that university education schools indoctrinate future teachers in left-wing ideology. It is important to understand the influence of schools of education, which train prospective teachers, on the political and ideological leanings of teachers.ĭr. While there are slightly more Republicans among math and science teachers, among high school teachers overall, there are 87 Democrats for every 13 Republicans. While it unsurprising that among actors and actresses there are 90 Democrats for every 10 Republicans, many would be amazed to discover that teachers are actually as liberal or even more so than those in acting.Īmong English teachers, there are 97 Democrats for every three Republicans, with the proportion being even more one-sided among health teachers, with 99 Democrats for every one Republican. The Washington Post reported on research, conducted by Verdant Labs using political-contribution data, on the Democrat-Republican divide based on job type. Tom Rademacher, a Minnesota teacher of the year who writes for the Education Post, says that teachers “are mostly liberals,” and the evidence backs him up. Many Americans are now asking: “Why are teachers so liberal?” He also warned that with donation reform in the US had come the development of political action committees, or Pacs, which have become more important than parties themselves in funding campaigns.The wave of teacher strikes across the country, with their focus on killing education reforms such as charter schools, have focused attention on the ideology of teachers. Yabsley argued it was too small an amount to influence any politicians, but Loosley was concerned it would give rise to the US phenomenon of bundlers – political operatives who rounded up smaller donors in the name of a particular interest group.
They also disagreed on the need for $200 donations to be reported publicly.
“Democracy doesn’t run on thin air and candidates are faced with temptation at all times,” he said. While Yabsley is in favour of scrapping public funding altogether, Loosley said he would prefer to take the private money out of politics and keep public funding. While the two men do not agree on the detail of the solution, Loosley said he fully supported a debate on reform and “a retrieval of trust” in the parliamentary system.
Yabsley was joined by another politician with personal expertise in political fundraising, the former NSW state secretary of the Labor party and former senator Stephen Loosley.
0 kommentar(er)
