"Media literacy" programs in schools promote "regime-compliant" sources of information
"Clockwork Orange on steroids"
I’ve been fortunate to have known some great teachers. One of the best teachers I ever had was a professor of astronomy from Yugoslavia.
Professor Nikolic was physicist of great talent and had escaped his socialist home to get his PhD from Columbia in physics in the 50s. He was loud, academically demanding, and pretty uncompromising on all manner of things. His tests were tough, but I enjoyed his lectures.
In between teaching us about binary stars, the foundations of the Theory of Relativity, and how planets were born, he waxed politics, a lot. And there was a lot of time for him to do this because each class, it being a summer session, was three hours long. We’d talk comets and then he’d do a half hour on the news.
Nikolic was a vehement anti-communist, and as I remember he fought the Nazis. He loved guns, and said so all the time. He would laugh about his “petite bourgeoisie tendencies” and would talk about the necessity of property rights. I don’t think he’d have called himself a libertarian, but looking back he probably could have been called one.
He had a particular distaste for American public schools, which he felt were not rigorous enough and focused too much on creating “good citizens”.
He said that school was for learning not indoctrinating. I wonder what he’d think about things today.
When I was a kid there was enough propaganda. The D.A.R.E. stuff was everywhere, and there were plenty of other things. But it was before what was known then as “political correctness” had infected schools.
Now it seems that indoctrination is of more import than academics in many schools. There is one world view that is acceptable, and that worldview is usually defined by people who have “teach peace” bumper stickers on their cars. It is all pervasive. For those of you without kids in school, take our word on this.
One particularly nasty little area of official indoctrination comes from “media literacy” efforts pushed in many public schools.
It comes down to this - CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times - good. Anyone or anything that challenges the officially sanctioned narrative - bad.
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