High School Indoctrination

Recently, I reviewed several high school textbooks. Every single text on history, geography, and even biology contained entire chapters devoted to indoctrinating high school students to the dogmas of leftist politics. Every. Single. One.

For example, stuck in the middle of a biology textbook, right between a chapter on the energy transfer of cells - from photosynthesis to cellular respiration - and a chapter on DNA, was a chapter on the "changing earth." Basically, the chapter complained of the myriad ways environmentalists feel that humans are destroying the earth. It covered global climate change (or global warming, the authors couldn't make up their mind which was the current term). It blasted the idea of using fossil fuels. It complained about acid rain (including a lab). It extolled the virtues of renewable sources of energy. It decried the cutting of the rainforest (intimating that all life on earth would die if such cutting continued). It opined about the ozone (yet had to admit that the ozone seemed to be growing back). Above all, it never indicated any hint of an argument contrary to the leftist views it espoused.

All that in one chapter!

Despite what many of you may think, I'm not ignorant of the dangers of pollution, burning fossil fuels, or even cutting down the rain forest. What I do find alarming, however, is that all of these textbooks teach high school students to be ignorant. In none of them did I find a hint of a dissenting voice about what are, essentially, political topics. None of them whispered so much as a contrary idea from the approved dogma of the Most Holy Church of the Sacred Environmentalist, quoting from the Prophet-of-the-Revelation Al Gore himself. Not only were the arguments politically charged, and biased, but they never once allowed the student any choice but to come to the same conclusions as the authors.

Here's just one example from the biology book:

What are the effects of climate change?...

Due to climate change, often called global warming, [the] ice caps are beginning to melt. It’s estimated that the ice caps are melting by 9% a decade. This means that the area around the North Pole, the Arctic, could be ice-free in the summer by the end of the 21st century. Your children could see this happen!

What effects will this melting ice have on Earth?

These "facts" accompanied a photo of a polar bear floating alone on a small iceberg. What's wrong with this argument? Basically, it says something like: "Climate change will melt all of the North Pole's ice. It will kill all the polar bears. All our fresh water will disappear. It will destroy the earth. Why do you think climate change is bad?"

I am going a bit overboard here, but the argument does beg the question - it proposes the conclusion in the argument itself. Not only that, it keeps students from asking real questions by arguing with invalid premises. It disallows dissent because it never teaches students how to think - only what to think. It is indoctrination of the worst kind.

The result of such indoctrination has led to an ignorant society. Time and again we see leftists, environmentalists, feminists, and others of the indoctrinated elite deny any argument against their position for the simple fact that they have never learned any premises which didn't already contain a self-contained conclusion. All of their conclusions are foregone since all of their premises are rigged.

Textbooks at the university level are even worse when "arguing" a point.

We must spread a word of warning to parents and teachers alike. Textbooks which only tell students what to think will one day backfire. Democracy cannot long endure when citizens are willfully kept ignorant of the thinking process. Of course, there are those who would like to see the citizens of the US turn away from democracy to come under the broad wing of the welfare state. There is no better way to kill democracy than by teaching ignorance at all levels of school.