Thousands of students graduate each year, from even the most prestigious schools and colleges in the country, with no real knowledge of history and no real analytical skills at dissecting opposing views. It was once the proud boast of educators that “We are her to teach you how to think, not what to think.” But today, all too many educators see the classroom as a golden opportunity for them to indoctrinate a captive audience.
The specifics for their indoctrination are not the biggest problem. Quite aside from the merits or demerits of the specific indoctrination—whether “global warming” or the new trinity of “race, class and gender—what the indoctrination process does is get students used to hearing one side of issues and being urged to reach conclusions and act on that grossly inadequate basis. Such an “education” sets them up to become victims of the next skilled demagogue who comes along and who knows what kinds of rhetoric will get them to respond as automatically as Pavlov’s dog.
Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America, pg.72
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