“I fear going to college because I don’t want to be indoctrinated”

By Dr. Harold Pease

I was not surprised last spring to hear a mother share with me her son’s fear that he did not wish to attended college because he did not wish to be politically indoctrinated. As the years go by I hear this more frequently. Two months ago, while purchasing an automobile, I had an all-to-frequent experience when the dealer asked my profession. I told him that I was a college political science professor. His look was, “Oh! Your one of those.” So, the assumption is that professors, especially those in political science, are socialists or worse.

Those who know me as a syndicated columnist or in my lectures realize that I seldom use the words liberal or conservative. I want my students to think for themselves and labels largely end that process, so, I won’t use labels here either. The principle is the same for either ideology or political party. No one should be afraid to go to college because either ideology has effectively placed the other on the endangered species list. College is supposed to be a big tent housing all types of thinking so that the student can gravitate to that which he thinks best. The liberal or conservative paradigm suggests that there is only one or the other. Why can’t you be a part of both, or a third, as for example a constitutionalists as am I?

Of course most colleges insist that they adhere to the idea of intellectual diversity, but the literature suggest otherwise, that too many colleges and universities, are vastly weighted in favor of one ideology and professors to one political party. This is not hidden. Virtually every political science textbook acknowledges that the vast majority of political science professors are of one political party and ideology.

There exists a consensus of what a good education consists. Students are immersed in race consciousness, feminism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, collectivism, political activism, class warfare, acceptance of sexual deviations as normal, and minimization of the importance of Christianity. The end product, the student, must come to accept the above script. It is also in virtually all textbooks. It’s not that any of these notions are bad in and of themselves but in the nearly universal absence of the opposing view that is most troubling the critics and they do not want the indoctrination. All this reminds me of a 1960’s tune. “Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky… And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses, all go to the university… And they all look just the same.”

It’s not fear of political science classes alone in most colleges and universities. Students can escape this indoctrination across the hall in a history or sociology class. Not so! Such bias permeates most academic areas. An English professor from a large Midwestern university, who did not wish to be identified because of possible retribution, spoke of English classes giving less emphasis on grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure and more on the political correctness. “Everything from Theater to Philosophy to History to English has, in effect, become sociology,” he wrote. “Teaching subject matter has become less important than teaching a very political perspective.” In the end, “They get taught the same thing over and over: a radical critique of the entire American social structure, an indictment of capitalism, anti-Christian propaganda, and collectivism over individuality.”

An extreme example of this was Professor Deandre Poole of Florida Atlantic University who, in his Intercultural Communications class instructed students to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, place it on the floor, than stomp on it. Imagine his having done this to Mohammed. Another is the French Language and Culture class at Penn State University that required students to view the Michael Moore film, Sicko which focused on the inadequacies of the U.S. healthcare system and promoted Obamacare. In a French language class!?!

Of course, additional classes reinforce the “good education” and the result is that if students have not learned to think for themselves, or have some opposing information from home or church to think with, they graduate and carry the message (indoctrination) into every segment of society as gospel. New teachers from kindergarten to the universities will pipe the same, or similar, message.

Age and experience may alter the indoctrination but the twig is already bent in a prescribed direction and the student, like the twig, will give first consideration to returning to the indoctrination when confronted with anything in opposition. Colleges have so much power over “right” thinking.

The indoctrination begins, critics say, with “incoming freshmen in nearly 100 colleges with orientation where students begin by learning about the evils of ‘white privilege’ in a program called the ‘tunnel of oppression’ and sit through lectures informing them that they are part of a ‘rape culture’.” University of Delaware forced incoming freshmen to participate in a “treatment” program a part of which informed them that the word racism applies only to “all white people.” It also “blamed whites for having created the term racism” in the first place “to deny responsibility for systemic racism.” At Hamilton College in New York, fall 2010, male students were required “to attend a ‘She Fears You’ presentation to make them aware of the ‘rape culture’ of which they were allegedly a part and of the need to change their ‘rape supportive’ beliefs and attitudes” (New American, Aug. 5, 2013, pp. 23-27).

No wonder the young man did not wish to be subjected to what he saw as indoctrination. Because he knows that there exist other views there is hope for him, more especially if he selects professors who attempt to give alternative views of which there are still many, he will be fine. This is especially true at the community college level. It is the students who have no idea that there exists alternative views that are most endangered.