Political Bias in the American School System
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Well actually the problems you display are quite contradictory to your message. Most other countries we consider part of the western world have government paid education, and this is something the conservatives oppose in the belief that a business thrives on competition, and therefore a private school will go out of their way to provide top class students than a government funded school would. USA is very financially conservative, even those you call ''liberal'' are very conservative compared to the politicians leading elsewhere.. again in what we call the western world. Therefore most of your schools are private organizations. What does a private organization need? Funding! And which people with money can benefit from investing in schools? Perhaps those who have an ulterior motive to have their affect on what is being taught? When you look at private schools you see for example christian schools and catholic schools, and other kinds of schools like these. These schools actually benefit from branding themselves as christian or catholic, because some parents specifically seek these schools out for their children. However I doubt a democratic or a republican school would receive much popularity... but does that still mean that parties don't fund schools? If you look at the government funded schools in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, etc. you see that they take measures to be neutral in conflicted topics such as party-politics and religion. So maybe for the next election go join the Bernie Sanders rally :) Ok, a couple of things here. First off, I'm not quite sure if you stated where I am contradicting myself and would like further clarification. Second, what exactly do you mean that "most of your schools are private organizations"? They are called "public schools" for a reason and they far outnumber the amount of private schools in America. Public schools by definition are funded by the government. The government therefore pays the wages of your average public school teacher, who is then unionized, and therefore might have more incentive to lean left. However, I'm not sure how much that plays into the problematic bias I see created when you have a vast majority of teachers who are left-leaning. I can't speak for other countries. I'm not sure how their systems work and would have to do more research into discovering if they are in fact more politically neutral--and even if they were, I doubt the fact they were government funded is the reason. 1
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I'd have to disagree. I work in a large university and I see political aspects on both sides. Schools/Universities do strive to maintain a balance that is beneficial to the student and staff, sometimes things slip through and sometimes I've noticed when one can't get something a particular way (ie...safe zones) they claim political bias or whatever various 'ism' they wish to claim. I'm not claiming that is what you are doing, I don't know your situation. It's simply that the university isn't here to handle anyone with kid gloves. As a student of a university the onus is on you to see all sides of an argument or stance and question everything, including your professors and peers and learn to think for yourself. I'm actually glad you disagree, actually. And I will be the first to say some schools are better than others on being neutral. But I'm not saying we should be handled with kid gloves at all--just the opposite, actually. What I feel is that due to, statistically, so many people in academia are on the left, students are influenced toward the left and never have that stance properly challenged. For instance, if you look in the news, it's not hard to find a story of a teacher being silenced by the school for expressing worldviews contrary to the majority (which is left leaning). I'm not saying instances like that happen all the time but I feel it happens enough. It's true the onus is on students to weigh both sides of every argument but, well...if everyone is agreeing with you, a person is not so eager to seek out challenge. And so they don't. And it doesn't help that the opposite argument is not so easily available in a biased situation. If you want an example of what I am concerned about, there is a video on YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/ |
