Public Schools Indoctrinating Students One Liberal Lesson Plan At A Time

There's an alarming trend in America's public schools, and it involves indoctrinating our children, rather than educating them -- one force-fed, left-wing ideological lesson plan at a time.

In Virginia, Liberty Middle School teacher Michael Denman forced his students to identify weaknesses in each of the Republican presidential contenders. They were then asked to develop a strategy to expose these flaws and research where they'd send their plans to reach President Barack Obama's campaign. Much to the shock and dismay of conservatives, the students weren't asked to vet Obama in like manner.

But should we really be surprised? America's schools are infested with left-wing teachers. The facts are there to prove it.

The largest teachers union, the National Education Association, or NEA, reported teachers donated to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by a margin of 10 to 1. In 2008, a mere 1 percent of political donations went to the Republican Party; 99 percent went to you-know-where.

Turning to the 2012 presidential election, the NEA endorsed Obama on July 4, 2011, long before the Republican field had narrowed. To put this into context, at a time when new candidates were still throwing their hats in the ring, 72 percent of the NEA's representative assembly voted to endorse Obama in what happened to be their earliest endorsement ever.

So, no, we shouldn't be surprised when, in February of 2009, B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey had its students sing, Barack Hussein Obama... we honor you today! and For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say 'hooray!'

Education, at its core, ought to engender questioning and the free flow of thought. Students are supposed to receive a set of premises from which they derive their own conclusions. Instead, we read disturbing story after story where students are given predetermined conclusions and asked to find the premises to support them. In other words: Justify that each of the GOP candidates has a weakness and President Obama should be honored for his great accomplishments.

In his famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote of a society where all books, all alternative opinions, are burned in what many critics have interpreted as an extreme attempt to suppress dissenting thought. Unhappiness, dissatisfaction and destruction ensue.

One of the novel's antagonists, Captain Beatty, who's the head of the book-burning firemen, says this: If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war.

Is this where we're heading?

Many teachers in America's school system are suppressing alternative thought, though in a much more subtle manner. Still, it begs the question: What's the difference between incinerating alternative thought and presenting only one side of the story?

Kayleigh McEnany is a writer and political activist who graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and studied at Oxford University. She is the founder of www.RealReaganConservative.com. She writes every Tuesday for the International Business Times.