"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Beware of Youth Entrepreneurs (YE) Right Wing Indoctrination System

If the Education Writers Association ever gives an award for REAL education reporting, this piece at Huffington Post by Christie Wilkie and Joy Resmovits has to be the winner!

Wilkie and Resmovits do a terrific job exposing the Bircher-inspired and Koch funded Youth Entrepreneurs (YE) indoctrination system that is worming its way into public school curriculum around the country.  This is a must read and a must share.  Here is a clip:
YE's course materials reflect some of the initial thinking by the Koch associates charged with designing the course. In late 2009, the Koch group made a list of "common economic fallacies" that they believed should be repudiated. These included:
  • Corporatism v. Free-market Capitalism
  • Deregulation is what caused recession in 80s, Economic problems of today
  • Rich get richer at the expense of the poor
  • FDR/New Deal brought us out of the depression
  • Government wealth transfer programs help the poor
  • Private industry incapable of doing functions that public sector has always done
  • Unions protect the employees
  • People with the same job title should be paid the same amount ...
  • Minimum wage, "living wage," laws are good for people/society
  • Capitalist societies provide an environment for greed and materialism to flourish
  • Socialist countries do just fine, people have great lives there (using this as proof that socialism works)
They aimed to "inoculate" students against liberal ideas by assigning them to read passages from socialist and Marxist writers, whom they called "bad guys." These readings would then be compared to works by the "good guys" -- free-market economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

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