To follow up on a blog I wrote a few days ago about the
Right’s antipathy toward education, new examples have come to light that signal
we really are in an all out war over the minds of our children. Not to be
out-cut by fellow wingnut and potential presidential candidate Scott (Crazy
Eyes) Walker, Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has proposed a bill
that will cut higher education in the state by $387 million.
Advanced Placement history courses are being attacked by Tea
Partiers and Christian fundamentalists around the country for being overly
negative and not teaching American Exceptionalism. It’s especially bad in
Oklahoma where Republican Rep. Dan
Fisher has introduced House
Bill 1380 that would give the state sole control of curriculum and assessment.
Dan thinks the current AP history course spends too much time pointing out
what’s bad about America.
People like Dan who
serve in state legislatures and on local school boards across this country want
to replace education with indoctrination, facts with flights of fancy. They
want to dumb down our children to the point where they are unable to think
critically and will live lives of unquestioning loyalty to Jesus and the
Homeland.
How can America be
called exceptional if its population lacks the ability to think and reason? If
the Walkers and the Rauner’s and the morons in Oklahoma are successful, we will
fall further and further behind the rest of the developed countries in education,
and our one-time position as a world technological leader will be only a
distant memory.
Most maddening
about all of this is the hard cold fact that less educated citizens are
attracted to conservative politicians and principals. Republican leaders know
this and, especially at the state level, are doing their damndest to create a
new generation of loyal party members.
