Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education Credit: Gage/Skidmore Wikipedia
The number of private schools that get taxpayer funds via school vouchers or tax credit scholarships is rising rapidly, but few states keep tabs on what these schools are actually teaching. In a recent investigation for Huffington Post, education reporter Rebecca Klein shone a light on three popular textbooks used by private religious schools. While she found materials touting creationism over evolution, or teaching that homosexuality is a sin, Klein also encountered right-wing propaganda embedded throughout these K-12 curricula.
In the latest episode of the Have You Heard podcast, AlterNet education contributor Jennifer Berkshire and co-host Jack Schneider talk to Klein about the extreme ideological teachings on offer at private religious schools, now being funded by public tax money.
The following is an edited transcript. Listen to the entire interview.
Have You Heard: You set out to try to figure out how many kids are now attending ‘voucher schools’—private religious schools paid for with public funds—and what those kids are being taught. What […]
We are all being taught propaganda from the moment we enter school. In these cases it seems to be even more severe, and more one-sided (the republican side). What we need is to learn to question everything; to teach ourselves how to learn from our own experiences as well as from our mistakes. We need to have open minds and willing to read everything we can about all subjects, even if they are taught in public schools, as well as private ones.
And, of course we need to learn to meditate from an early age and incorporate a method of meditation into our daily lives for our entire lives, in order to realize our goals in life and to achieve them. Our beliefs are not as important as our actions.
My motto:
ignorance is it’s own punishment;
Wisdom is it’s own reward.
I guess the right wing propaganda would be to counter all the left wing propaganda that has been going on in schools forever..
Rev. Dean is right..we are all being fed propaganda from birth. The lies run very deep especially in the education (indoctrination) system. Question all of it.