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from club, and encourage students to recruit others into the club.
"Usually, the students who joined the club were from my classes, but
they also involved their friends?"
Use the club to unite students around the teacher's values. "As the
club's faculty advisor, I was able to both encourage students to see
themselves as activists and to help them learn through experience how
to organize for social change."
CHARTER THE CLUB SO YOU CAN HAVE ACCESS TO THE OTHER STUDENTS ON
CAMPUS AND IN THE CLASSROOM. "As a chartered student group, [Singer's
club was] entitled to receive some school funds; to do fundraising in
school; to distribute a newsletter and leaflets; to hang up posters;
to make and sell political buttons; and to use rooms, copying
machines, and computers. It gave us access to other students, the
ability to meet with parent groups, and the right to send speakers to
classes to report o要 club activities."
ENCOURAGE STUDENT PARTICIPATION BY GIVING STUDENTS "COMMUNITY
SERVICE CREDIT" FOR PARTICIPATING IN ACTIVIST EVENTS. "An elected
executive committee met regularly (sometimes daily during heated
campaigns) and we tried to hold monthly meetings of the full club.
Students actually received community service credit for their
political involvement."
BUILD THE IMPRESSION THAT THE CLUB HAS AN EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE. "As
a student club, [Singer's club] had to have a clear educational
purpose." "Academic" activities included being guided by the faculty
advisor o要 how to do the following to develop and promote advocacy
positions: "researching issues and presenting information in writing
and o要 graphs, exploring the underlying ideas that shape our points
of view, giving leadership by example to other students, and taking
collective and individual responsibility for the success of programs",
like getting news "coverage of pro-choice demonstrations" and other
club activities led by Singer.
DEVELOP METHODS AND PROCESSES THAT PROTECT THE CLUB ACTIVITIES FROM
OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE. "Despite efforts... we were not completely
protected from interference [from parents, administration, and others
who might question his activities]," Singer writes, citing cases like
the following as outsider attempts to obstruct his campus activism:
- Being pressured by the district to present alternative points of
view in workshops led by select socialist speakers;
- Being "asked to invite an anti-abortion speaker to balance a
presentation by the National Organization of Women";
- Having to "silence" a "small group of 'pro-life' students" and
teachers during an abortion workshop for children;
- Being "pressured... to cancel a club trip to Washington to
participate in a pro-choice demonstration." In this case, Singer
writes that the district backed off when he had the students
"[threaten] to take the issue to the newspapers".
- When your ideas are too difficult even for your activist trainees
to stomach, back off a bit. Sometimes, when students don't agree with
the activist teacher, "you have to back off," Singer advises. For
example, when his students resisted his efforts to have them
participate in "anti-war activities while troops were involved in
military conflict", he decided to stop pressuring them. Singer even
admits that taking students to protests puts them at risk; so much so
that, o要ce, he chose not to bring students to a protest because he
heard there would be "hostile counter-demonstrators".
AN INDOCTRINATION MODEL THAT LASTS
Singer has taken his activism-not-academics approach to Hofstra
University, but there are plenty of teachers stepping in to fill his
shoes. For example, o要e of Singer's former "students has successfully
used his own variation of [Singer's club] to promote student
activism," through which he used his students to protest the pledge of
allegiance in their school.
Singer may be o要ly a single example, but he's representative of
entire movements that seem to be enveloping our government school
systems with programs to promote sexual, political, and social agendas
to children -- frequently without parental knowledge. This movement is
seemingly being institutionalized even in state and federal law. For
example, during the week prior to his recall, California Governor Gray
Davis signed into law SB 71, which essentially allows special
interests virtually unrestricted access even to kindergarteners.
IS IT "A BIT NUTS" TO ADVOCATE FOR OUR CHILDREN?
At first blush, we might think ourselves "a bit nuts" when we start
noticing that some activist-teachers are using the classroom as a
recruiting ground to promote their personal interests -- especially
while everyone else seems oblivious. But, like the administrator who
came to realize that entrenched social predators were exploiting his
students for their personal interests, we might find that the problem
is far worse than we could imagine. Then, the absolutely insane
approach would be for us to become silently complacent in the
violation of our own children by entrusting them to social predators
-- and allowing the social predators to operate with neither exposure
nor opposition.
A more rational approach might be for us to stop abdicating our
responsibilities to virtual strangers at a government facility, and to
start taking primary responsibility for and heightened interest in the
formal education of our children. In addition, we may want to start
demanding that teachers exhibit competence and dedication to academic
development of children. Most importantly, we may want to give our
children the emotional and cognitive skills necessary to shield
themselves from social predators, starting with being aware and
involved ourselves. In short, we parents should join true teachers to
promote education, not indoctrination; demand academics, not activism.
(c) 2004 Freedom 21 Santa Cruz (http://www.freedom21santacruz.net)
Previously published in Advance Bulletin
(http://www.advancebulletin.net). Permission to distribute and
republish this article is granted on condition that copyright notice
remain intact. Please inform author of intent to republish:
adonnach[at]sbcglobal.net.
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