Education Revolution Tour Reflection- A Comparison of a Liberal and Conservative Lesson on Thomas Jefferson

Tonight I was at an interesting event called "The Education Revolution Tour: Restoring America's Pride‏".  Brought to Michigan by Americans For Prosperity-Michigan, this event was a town hall that included Fox News commentators Dick Morris, Mike Gallagher, Levon Yuille and was moderated by Nolan Finley, Detroit News editorial page Editor. Over 700 people were in attendance and stayed for over two hours to talk and answer questions from the audience on a range of educational issues centered around the main concept of improving education in America. As a loyal union guy, I was there to keep an eye on things and make sure it didn't dissolve into simple union bashing, and as a conservative, I was there to gather new ideas on how to improve education, and as a blogger, I took notes so that I could pass on to my dear readers what sorts of stuff goes on at events like this, and over the next couple days I'll be relating and sharing some of what I heard and learned at this event.

One of the first points that I'd like to discuss relating to this event came from the discussion by Dr. Levon Yuille. Dr. Yuille said that one of the biggest problems that needs to be addressed in public education today was the use of classrooms by liberals as platforms to launch their agenda through their teaching, lectures, textbooks, tests, or curriculum. In a recent radio interview that I did, a liberal teacher attempted to take me to task for not spending more and more of my class time judging historical figures and making sure that my students know why a lot of the heroes of our past are in fact not heroes at all. This liberal teacher wanted to make sure that every student knew that Jefferson owned slaves, that Washington told lies, that Columbus killed the Indians, that the Pilgrims were hostile towards the Indians, and that all of the historical heroes of our past were not all they were cracked up to be. His goal was to bring 'truth' to the learning about the past. I argued that this is not the role of education, to teach 'truth', especially a liberal version of the truth, but that instead teachers should spend their time making sure students knew the details and importance of the lives and actions of Jefferson, Washington, Columbus, or the Pilgrims- that with such a limited time to reach students that it was wrong to use classrooms as a way to indoctrinate students with a liberal ideology. The liberal teacher argued with me, claiming that it was vital that we use our classrooms to teach the 'truth' (as the liberal saw it).

Dr. Yuille is right- classrooms should not be used to advance liberal interests and push on students liberal ideologies, because doing so is using valuable class time that could be better spent teaching kids important information that may be useful. Liberals view education as a means to transmit their ideology to the next generation- as a platform for creating more soldiers in their continual class warfare and war on human liberty and freedom. Conservatives view education as a means to transmit knowledge and information to the students so that they can make critical decisions on their own and freely choose sides in the battle to extend protections in life, liberty, and property, and as such spend much less of their time indoctrinating students than liberals do.

That being said, conservatives do spend some of their time indoctrinating students like liberal teachers do, and do so in a way that Dr. Yuille would likely support. Most conservative teachers have a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality and immorality, and through their teaching they communicate these values to the students, whether intentionally or not. Conservative teachers lack ambiguity and vagueness that characterize the mush of liberal teacher's logic and moral system- they do not recognize moral relativism that many liberal teachers use when issuing grades or punishments, or running lectures or debates.

Let's go back once again to the example of Thomas Jefferson and point to real life differences between how a liberal and conservative teacher might teach students about this key person from history. A liberal would teach students about Jefferson and what he did during his life, but would also point out that he was a hypocrite who did not free his own slaves, had a child through a slave, and really truly did not believe in constitutional government because he unconstitutionally purchased the Louisiana Purchase. Students might walk away from a lesson by a liberal teacher on Thomas Jefferson with a more true and honest look at him, but would have a decreased appreciation for what he wrote and what he did during his life, and certainly would be less likely to look on him as a hero to emulate and model their lives on. Instead they would search in vain for another hero, but the liberal teacher would run down most historical figures, so the student would turn to a celebrity or sports hero to model their life on, and that wouldn't likely be that great.

A conservative teacher, recognizing the limited amount of time available to teach about Thomas Jefferson, would make the tough decisions and decide that rather than advancing any sort of agenda about TJ, it would be better for students- they would have happier, more knowledgeable, more fulfilling lives- if they didn't learn about the slaves or the unconstitutional stuff and instead focused their limited amount of time and energy in the classroom learning about how revolutionary the Declaration of Independence was, how inspiring it was then and now, and how radical it was then and today to advocate for life, liberty, and property. They would learn to appreciate what TJ did and how important it was that he did it, and would walk away from this lesson with a possible inspirational hero to follow and model, providing they avoiding all liberal attempts to drag TJ through the mud and kill the young student's hero. The net affect of this teaching would be a much greater positive on society than that of the liberal teacher's lesson plan on Thomas Jefferson.

This one example hopefully illustrates some of the thinking and decision making that characterizes what really goes on in public schools, and how if schools are to improve and be a better positive for our society, schools probably need more conservative teachers in them teaching in a conservative way. Sometimes Dr. Yuille is correct- a simple attitude change and a return the the values that made our nation great might perhaps be a change for the better in our education system.