Conservatives have made bold strikes in politicizing the classroom in the service of their agenda

[Better Believe It]

The Right's 'Big Lie' Strategy: When Losing, Simply Rewrite History
Contemporary conservatives aim to disseminate an alternate version of reality through the media echo chamber and the schools.
By Chauncey DeVega
May 13, 2011

1. David Horowitz, failed academic and incendiary polemicist, and his group, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center), have been policing college classrooms for years. They have compiled a McCarthy-like enemies list of professors who are "dangerous Leftists" that "poison" and "pollute" the minds of young people by criticizing the pet policy positions of conservatives. Offenders who earn the ire of Horowitz and his organization are routinely harassed. Some have even been drummed out of their positions as college professors for being too liberal and "Leftist" for Horowitz's taste.

2. The Koch brothers, the astroturf puppet masters of the New Right, have been funding academic programs and research centers that parrot the extreme gospel of trickle-down economics, anti-statism, and other policy positions that are favorable to the most extreme elements of the conservative agenda. Subverting the rules of academic freedom, the Koch brothers have also donated monies with the condition that faculty members support their policy positions.

3. Christian Nationalist pseudo-historians such as David Barton offer an uncritical view of American exceptionalism and the Constitution where the United States is portrayed as a theocracy beholden to Judeo-Christian beliefs. They have become darlings of the New Right and the Tea Party. A historian without credentials, he has become a mascot for popular conservatives and praised by Newt Gingrich as a preeminent scholar in his field. Barton has risen to fame on the backs of Glenn Beck and Fox News, who together pander his "righteous" and "correct" versions of American history to their audiences. As part of a cottage industry that features such factually challenged writers as Jonah Goldberg, their jackbooted and incorrect versions of history (synthesized by ideological pedants and hobbyists) have become the intellectual cornerstones of contemporary conservative thought.

4. The Arizona Ethnic Studies ban, along with the efforts to rewrite Texas school books to reflect a conservative view of U.S. history, are entry points for (re)educating children in a mold that fits the Right's social and political agenda. In the age of Obama these state-level moves are designed to quite literally whitewash American history and to remove the successes of liberals and progressives from the classroom. In total, these assaults on education are efforts to propagandize the country's youngest and most impressionable citizens by elevating conservative mythology to the level of historical certainty.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150937/the_right%27s_%27big_lie%27_strategy%3A_when_losing%2C_simply_rewrite_history/?page=entire

[lame54]

1. it's the only you can get them into a classroom...

too bad they still don't learn anything while they are there