“Teaching as a Subversive Activity”: The Theory of

“Teaching as a Subversive Activity”: The Theory of Political Indoctrination


Because this was a presentation aimed at education insiders only, the lecturer, retired professor H. Douglas Brown from S.F. State, seemed perfectly willing to let the cat out of the bag about political indoctrination on college campuses. Fortunately, I had my trusty camera with me, so I was able not only to snap a few pictures but also record several key portions of his speech, which I found so eye-opening that I felt the general public deserved to hear it as well.

The timing couldn’t have been better: A devastating new report issued by the National Association of Scholars had just been issued a few days beforehand, which documented with exquisite and irrefutable detail the extreme liberal bias at the University of California. However, the main problem with the NAS report (which you can download in full here if you’re interested) is that it’s too overwhelming and too technical to deliver the kind of emotional impact needed to sway public opinion. To drive home the point in a more personal way, the NAS report needed an introductory companion anecdote of a professor frankly confessing the rationale behind what is essentially the “theory of indoctrination.” As if on cue, Professor Brown stepped into that role, unwitting though he may have been.

[clip]

The title of Brown’s lecture is taken from an influential and groundbreaking book published in 1969. Written by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, the manifesto Teaching as a Subversive Activity did not actually advocate political indoctrination in the classroom, but rather it was one of the first books to completely deconstruct the concept of education itself, and the “subversion” it advocated was much deeper and more structural: Get rid of tests, the notions of “the right answer” and “the wrong answer,” the memorization of facts, the ascendency of teachers, and so forth; instead, make education an ungraded process of learning how to think and how to criticize, respecting the opinions and ideas of the students themselves. Of course, this being 1969, it was presumed that the establishment status quo with its facts and rules was rigid and conservative, while the students were radical and transgressive, so all one had to do to foment a revolution was simply to put the kids in charge of their own education, and they’ll naturally overthrow society without even being specifically instructed to do so. (If you’re curious, the entire text of Teaching as a Subversive Activity is now available for free online as a PDF document.)

In the decades since, many of the recommendations in Teaching as a Subversive Activity and similar books were in fact implemented to various degrees, but things didn’t quite work out as the authors envisioned. Without some structure, students often flounder aimlessly. Furthermore, the “authority figures” controlling academia are no longer uptight conservatives, but are instead now liberals, progressives and radicals themselves, so when students are encouraged to ignore those in charge, then they may very well ignore the progressive messages as well.

Professor Brown’s talk focuses specifically on this problem: His basic thesis is that it is no longer sufficient to simply tell students to think for themselves, because then we lose the ability to influence them, and there’s no guarantee that the students will then develop progressive worldviews. The “Revisited” part of the lecture’s title means that these days, we must be more blunt and to the point: Since the good guys are now in charge, let’s just dispense with all the experimentation and instead directly indoctrinate the students in leftist thought and ideals.

and the other shoe drops .........

I’m not presenting this lecture in and of itself as a significant political watershed, nor as a shocking behind-the-scenes glimpse at academic bias. Rather, it’s just another random day at a random university; stuff like this goes on all the time. And it’s this normalcy of radicalism that makes it so alarming; people in the academic hothouse chat about the most disturbing ideas as if they were discussing the weather. The banality of subversion, as it were.

Clip 4: “Just a Complete Wacko”

H. Douglas Brown: The third question: “Does our zeal for realizing our own vision of a better world stand in the way of truly equal, balanced treatment of all issues?” So in this part I want to talk a little bit about Christianity or religion in general. I had a very devout Christian ALI teacher a few years back who came to me and said that, “I’m teaching English because I really want the whole world to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.” OK [laughs], I took a deep breath, and sat back in my chair and, y’know, made a few comments about how I appreciated anybody with zeal, but that first of all this is a state institution, and that we’re not a Christian institution, and that part of our whole ethos in the United States of America has to do with freedom of religion or — if you wish — freedom from religion, depending on what your perspective is — and that a motive like that could remain in the back of her mind, I thought, but that we weren’t going to ask her to get up and start reading John 3:16. [This is an] English class. That this was beyond the mandate and beyond the scope of what the American Language Institute was doing. Well. Was that the right thing to do? Was she just a complete wacko in saying that she wanted everybody to convert to Jesus Christ, or what? I still think y’know, I think I said the right thing. She left ALI fairly quickly [audience laughter] because she realized that we were not an institution where she could teach Jesus as The Way. And she did say Jesus was The Way, and I said that, well, y’know, “That’s, I’m sorry, but we can’t do that.” And I think she went to another place.

So that’s just one example of, y’know this balanced treatment, and how far does your zeal for a particular issue go? I mean, let’s — we can name any issue — how far does it go?

Here’s another kind of ridiculous little example, but: from an ESL textbook this dialogue came: “Why do you smoke? Because I like it. You shouldn’t smoke. Well, it makes me less nervous. But it’s not good for your health. I don’t care. Well, you will die young.” That was actually in a textbook. Well, you know, that’s sending a message. That’s not exactly balanced treatment of tobacco use. And I’m afraid I would have a hard time giving balanced treatment on an issue like that. I would tend to kind of go along with this dialogue and say, you know, “Stop smoking.” But what is our mandate? What is our moral imperative as teachers and what can we do subversively and yet maybe not so subversively that could get to be fairly overt?
…
Well, I think that’s the realistic thing when we become agents for change and when we become teachers with some sense of our moral imperative.

So one of my favorite books that came out by a former ALI student, had a chapter in it on homosexuals in— I think they were just in just Any City, USA, and it was about “Daddy’s Roommate.” And do you teach this, and how do you teach it? And what do you do when students rise up in holy wrath and say, “Well, you know that’s” — whatever they’re going to say — “It’s a sin, it’s bad, or whatever, to be a homosexual?” How do you treat that? What do you do as a language teacher?

We had a unit at ALI about, it was a videotape, about My Two Mommies, a wonderful, wonderful, very sweet videotape, and kids of gay parents were being interviewed. Beautiful, beautiful tape. But some students didn’t like this, right? I mean, you can imagine. They thought, “What are you trying to teach me?” Well, we’re trying to teach English, but we’re trying to get you to think a little bit. Maybe some of them didn’t like that, and we got some controversy over that.

We had an article about burning down an abortion clinic that we also used at ALI once. Equally controversial.

This clip is truly mind-boggling. Brown first cites the example of a Christian teacher who of course is completely forbidden from discussing her crazy values with the students, something Brown recounts with pride — and then moments later he turns right around and discusses how “wonderful” and “beautiful” and thus reasonable and praiseworthy is his curriculum about homosexuality and abortion clinics and so forth. He’s not even trying to be unbiased here; he’s just presuming that his worldview is correct and superior, and the Christian’s worldview is “wacko,” and thus it is right and proper to banish her and instead promote his agenda.

(An explanatory note that applies to this clip and many of the other clips as well: Professor Brown’s specialty was teaching English as a second language to adult students, so many of the scenarios he presented involved introducing progressive American liberalism to foreign students who sometimes had brought with them conservative or old-fashioned values from their native cultures, and who were therefore affronted by his politicized language lessons. As a result, the “indoctrination” scenarios he described are somewhat different from standard public school scenarios in which teachers can manipulate the comparatively unformed psyches of young American children.)

What did we learn from all this? Well, aside from the obvious — that the educational establishment not only indoctrinates students, but also openly discusses the best way to do it — I learned of the various code words they use to mask their discussions. Here’s a handy list: Remember these phrases, and keep an ear out for them when dealing with teachers or educators.

Code Phrases Alluding to Indoctrination

If you hear or read academics using any of these tell-tale terms, they are actually discussing how to indoctrinate students:

• Critical pedagogy
• Agent for change
• Moral imperative
• “Critical” anything
• Subversive
• Mandate

[twinoaks207 (Premo)]

You know, if you REALLY want to get an eye-opener about public education, start doing some research into the Gates Foundation and especially the Broad Foundation and see just how far their tentacles wind into education on a local and national level. It'll both piss you off and scare the bejeebers out of you.

Gates Foundation : Rich Liberals giving money to abort black babies in Africa

[b23hqb]

Well, this is all old information, but information that never gets old. It is what it is - liberals forcing indoctrination education at the youngest levels. Indoctrination of what they perceive to be the truth, any other viewpoint be damned, condemned, ridiculed, ostracized, etc.

And with the overall press running interference for them........imagine that.

Wake up, Amerika!

[twinoaks207 (Premo)]

So, imagine this...

You want to control the country.

How do you get elected?

You need the votes of the cities (largest population bases, capable of skewing electoral college votes).

How do you get the cities?

You need to do something that will appeal to the masses of those cities, mainly the lower income levels as there are more of them (more votes).

What do you do?

You give money to the schools. Always a popular philanthropic endeavor. You can almost claim sainthood for this as it is "for the children". As long as you use the mantra, "for the children", you can basically do what you want.

How does that help?

Ahhh...that's the beauty of it. The school district officials are so pathetically grateful, they will alter programming to meet the conditions of your "grant", all under the guise of it being "for the children". Want your own people in there to run things? Set up a "free" training program and then place your people around the country, focusing on the major metropolitan areas where you see the greatest population groups. Keep feeding money to your people so they can keep showing that they are successful in getting in more "donations" so they keep their jobs. This allows them to be popular and change the programming to meet your needs. No one will question them because they are so "successful". Dumb down the programs and eliminate those that teach the children to "think" on their own because that's the last thing that you want. You want all of these children to grow up thinking that you are great.

How does that help me control the country?

Simple, you now have a huge voting block that thinks the way that your people have taught them to think. Find a dupe that will let you lead them around and then pass the word that the dupe is the next thing to God.


It's actually diabolically clever when you think about it. Unfortunately, we are all so used to looking at the tree in front of us, that very few of us step back to look at the forest, or the sky, or even the road ahead.

[Lurk]

Originally Posted by twinoaks207

So, imagine this...

You want to control the country.

How do you get elected?

You need the votes of the cities (largest population bases, capable of skewing electoral college votes).

How do you get the cities?

You need to do something that will appeal to the masses of those cities, mainly the lower income levels as there are more of them (more votes).

What do you do?

You give money to the schools. Always a popular philanthropic endeavor. You can almost claim sainthood for this as it is "for the children". As long as you use the mantra, "for the children", you can basically do what you want.

How does that help?

Ahhh...that's the beauty of it. The school district officials are so pathetically grateful, they will alter programming to meet the conditions of your "grant", all under the guise of it being "for the children". Want your own people in there to run things? Set up a "free" training program and then place your people around the country, focusing on the major metropolitan areas where you see the greatest population groups. Keep feeding money to your people so they can keep showing that they are successful in getting in more "donations" so they keep their jobs. This allows them to be popular and change the programming to meet your needs. No one will question them because they are so "successful". Dumb down the programs and eliminate those that teach the children to "think" on their own because that's the last thing that you want. You want all of these children to grow up thinking that you are great.

How does that help me control the country?

Simple, you now have a huge voting block that thinks the way that your people have taught them to think. Find a dupe that will let you lead them around and then pass the word that the dupe is the next thing to God.


It's actually diabolically clever when you think about it. Unfortunately, we are all so used to looking at the tree in front of us, that very few of us step back to look at the forest, or the sky, or even the road ahead.

Or you could be a well-spoken black who had his career greased by slimy Democrat millionaire$ who can invent a history and education without even having to show up on campus.

[twinoaks207 (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Lurk

Or you could be a well-spoken black who had his career greased by slimy Democrat millionaire$ who can invent a history and education without even having to show up on campus.

You will recall that I did mention the dupe, right?

[Lurk]

Originally Posted by twinoaks207

You will recall that I did mention the dupe, right?

While I agree with your characterization of THE WON as a dupe, I believe my scenario involved creation of a dupe as opposed to your scenario of finding a dupe.