More "indoctrination": Conservative media attack Obama's proposal for more school
Glenn Beck and other conservative media figures are now attacking President Obama's proposal to extend the length of school days and the school year, adding to conservative media's recent penchant for fearmongering about children in order to smear progressives. Beck and Rush Limbaugh claimed government mandates for longer school days would give the government more time to "indoctrinate" kids, and Michelle Malkin said Obama is acting as "school czar."
Beck, Limbaugh, RedState.com attack Obama's school proposal as a time grab for "indoctrination"
Beck: "Longer school days, more indoctrination? I don't think so." On his September 29 radio show, Beck, presumably referring to YouTube videos of kids singing about Obama, said of Obama's school proposal: "We have the new indoctrination happening at school. Then, the president has come out and said that parents need to have their kids spending less time at home with the family and more time at school. He wants now to have longer school days. ... Longer school days, more indoctrination? I don't think so." Beck also said the government is "pushing daycare," which would also mean "they can indoctrinate." From the show:
BECK: We have the new -- we have the new indoctrination happening at school. Then, the president has come out and said that parents need to have their kids spending less time at home with the family and more time at school. He wants now to have longer school days. He wants them to go year-round.
I -- you know what? I don't have a problem with the kids going year-round. That's the way it happens in Utah, I believe.
PAT GRAY (radio host): Yeah, they do.
BECK: And it works. I mean, we no longer have to have kids go out and plow the fields in the summer. And that's the reason we had it that way, because the family needed help in the summer. They retain more. Longer school days, more indoctrination? I don't think so.
[...]
BECK: We now have the government coming in and saying friends can't drop, you know, their kids off at your house so you can get to work. This is crazy. Why would they want -- why would they want to stop somebody from doing that. Because, as we told you last week, they are pushing daycare. They are pushing daycare. That way, they can control the money that goes into daycare, which means they can control the environment, and they can indoctrinate. [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Show, 9/29/09]
Limbaugh: "[W]e all know why he wants this done. This is just more indoctrination time." On his September 29 show, Limbaugh said, "Obama is among those making a case that American kids aren't spending enough time in school; wants to get rid of the summer vacation and have kids in school year-round. Has anybody thought about -- we all know why he wants this done. This is just more indoctrination time ... more time to be indoctrinated into Obamaism and so forth."
RedState.com: Longer school day pitch is "Obama-speak" for "gosh darn it all, indoctrination takes time!" On September 29, RedState.com contributor "mailloux" purported to translate Obama's statement about the proposal -- what he referred to as "Obama-speak" -- into "everyday English." Mailloux wrote that Obama meant that he "would like to lengthen the time I hold them as a captive audience." From the post:
Translation from Obama-speak into everyday English?
Any revolution worth its salt knows its future depends on how well the youth are indoctrinated. And, gosh darn it all, indoctrination takes time! So, instead of strengthening families which will surely draw your children away from me, I would like to lengthen the time I hold them as a captive audience. You know ... stretch out the school day, shorten the summer, and maybe even make them attend Saturday sessions. Families are overrated anyway. It's the village that counts. I heard that somewhere ... oh yeah, and did I mention I'm the village chief!
Townhall.com: "Year-Round Indoctrination?" On Townhall.com, Matt Lewis wrote, under the headline "Year-Round Indoctrination?" that "President Obama wants longer school days and a longer school year." He then wrote, "Will more time at school = more time for this???," linking to a FoxNews.com article about a YouTube video of New Jersey schoolchildren singing about Obama.
Malkin: "Obama plays summer school czar." In a post on her website titled, "Obama plays summer school czar," Malkin wrote of Obama's proposal, "If schools wasted less time on 'social justice,' 'Everyday Math' crap, eco-zealotry, field trips to gay weddings and illegal alien day labor centers, rappin', revolution, and radicalism, and searching for children's 'inner Obamas,' they wouldn't need to make up all the squandered days and weeks during the summer."
Media recently fearmongered about New Jersey school kids "SHOCK VIDEO" as evidence of "indoctrination"
Conservative media: Video is evidence of "indoctrination." Numerous media figures, including Fox News' Monica Crowley, Bill O'Reilly, and Beck, and CNN's Lou Dobbs, claimed a video -- originally flogged by the Drudge Report -- that purported to show "[s]chool kids taught to praise Obama" was evidence of "indoctrination." Others compared the kids' performance to what might happen in a dictatorship. Beck said that the song sounded like "a hymnal for a dictator." Limbaugh compared the school activity to those seen in Cuba and Venezuela. MSNBC's Contessa Brewer said it's something "you might see coming from North Korea." On Fox News' Hannity, guest S.E. Cupp said, "It's like Havana elementary school," and Nina Easton claimed, "Mao would be proud."
"SHOCK VIDEO" timeline: From YouTube, to conservative blogs and Drudge, to Fox News. Taking cues from conservative blogs and the Drudge Report, Fox News and its online properties flogged the video. Indeed, in discussing the significance of the story, Fox News host Megyn Kelly said that the video, which the school's superintendent has said was unauthorized, "is getting attention on the Drudge Report website this morning."
Conservatives fearmonger about kids to smear progressives. Beck and other right-wing media figures have recently fearmongered about how Obama and progressive policies will harm children; among other things, Beck and these other media figures have repeatedly accused Obama of "indoctrinating" schoolchildren, aired unauthorized videos of children singing Obama's praises, and attacked Obama's "school safety czar." On his September 28 television show, Beck continued the trend by hosting 9-12 Project mothers, along with their children, who are "concerned" about "their kids' futures."
Transcript
From the September 29 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: So you had kids here singing the songs -- and we meant to get to this yesterday, and I didn't get to it. Obama is among those making a case that American kids aren't spending enough time in school; wants to get rid of the summer vacation and have kids in school year-round. Has anybody thought about -- we all know why he wants this done. This is just more indoctrination time. Plus, it's a way to get raises for the teachers, which is a big union supporter. More raises -- I mean, they gotta teach year-round? Oh, we need more money. Oh, of course, that's the whole plan. And more time to be indoctrinated into Obamaism and so forth.
Seriously, why do these people hate school kids so much? Were they all bullied as kids? Cuz you know none of them were tough enough to actually do the bullying themselves.
Kind of like 'shrinking the size of the public school system until it can be drown in a bathtub'.
And it is absolutely up to the President to decide how much time your kids spend in public school. The Department of Education is under the Executive Branch; that's the Presiden't part of the Federal Government, if you didn't know.
That's what they're afraid of. Do you think they want an educated, informed, and logical electorate?
Or so I heard on Newsmax.com. ;)
As a secular, science based homeschooler, I always find that contradiction to be so fascinating. Or is it the hypocrisy of believing that parents are best - except for those ones that are different from 'us'?
After 5 years as a parent with kids in the public school system and 15 years homeschooling I'm pretty sure the problem is a little deeper than most people want to admit. The problem isn't that we need to spend more time doing what clearly isn't working. The problem is that children are not cars and an assembly line education is never going to work for all of them. Oh, sure it will work for the dead average ones. But having dealt now with kids on both ends of the spectrum, two gifted, one developmentally delayed I am pretty sure this one size fits all education we are trying to provide IS the problem.
We need to look outside of the box and find a better way, and when we find it, it is going to look a whole lot more different than just adding time to the current school year.
All I can say is that the truth hurts.
Good for everyone at Fox News.
Opinion if free.
Kissing up to OBAMA and the rest of the idiots in not good.
If the average person is not afaid to give an opinion, why should watch networks that kiss up to an administration.
I feel that OBAMA and his administration has an CASTRO/SADDAM complex and would like to be held up to that status.
All the people led to believe that if its for free its for me,and or steal from the rich and give it to the poor are in for a very big surpise that will hurt them in the future.
I notice other media started to side with issues just to get praised media ratings, but at least FOX NEWS, has the attitude that truth is worth more than kissing up to an administration.
I am not rich, and just an average person and I'd rather fight for the freedom my ancestors worked hard for to make this a great country.
Now our children are being to taught to praise a no body in school just like in Cuba.
I also resent Obama and the administration using blacks and latinos like we are some kind of dummies that need to be ruled by them or our lives are screwed.
Stop kissing butt, and if the followers of this administration want to live in a dictatorship, they should move to Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, etc.
I suggest that ABC, NBC, CBS, SNBC, MSNBC, and all the Obama Administration ARSE Kissers, do their jobs to inform the Americans in a truthful manner rather than just trying to save their media outlets by kissing up to an Administration that wants to make America a Dictatorship.
I am sick and tired of all the urgent programs filled with PORK and so urgently necessary that only fool and screw with american folk.
Get real, get a life, get over it.
MISSY T
What?!? What in god's name are you talking about?? This is exactly why people on the left talk about the right being racist.
We need to stop throwing the charge of racism around, because it's in danger of losing its meaning. Also, the fear mongering about "Republican racism" is pretty cheap. Minorities should vote for Democrats because they have the best policies, not because they're scared of Republicans. That's the same tactic that Bush used, saying Democrats are weak or even secretly favor terrorists, and getting votes through fear. We ought to be above that.
Poor to lower midddle class kids get stuck in government schools with virtually no way out. Which is why people are turning to homeschooling. If our corrupt teachers' unions, who only care about pay, tenure, and job security, didn't have such control ovr the democratic party, then maybe competition and merit pay could be tried. The unions stand in the way of these reform efforts.
I can't speak for all states, but high school is absolute garbage in Texas. I only graduated from it last May and am enjoying the University of Texas at Dallas now. A good student sits in there for 7 hours a day and do actual work or learn something for about 2 hours, and that's if s/he has a good amount of AP classes with good teachers.
Huge amounts of time are wasted, not much work or learning is done, and most of the work that is done outside of AP classes is the definition of busy work.
I am sitting here at UTD with a full tuition scholarship. I would not be here if school days in high school were 2 hours longer, or if there were more school days. I would have dropped out. I seriously considered it even in my senior year, because I could not take sitting in class for 7 hours a day doing almost nothing. It was driving me nuts. I wanted to get a GED and do something better with my time, instead of listening to brain-dead coaches babble on in a supposed "English" class.
I am not simply being lazy. I got 21 hours of AP credit in high school, studied Latin and German, and was on the newspaper staff. But this doesn't matter. Most of the students would not be helped at all if they had to go to school more. More would drop out, the rest would just skip more classes. The classes are all very easy to pass for the lowest common denominator of students. More time spent in high school does not help ANYONE. Not good students, not bad students, not black students, not white students, not boys, not girls. The schools would have to be actual institutions of education instead of glorified baby sitting. In that case, they wouldn't need to increase the hours, because then we'd probably be competitive globally.
This is not a solution. I would rather he just dump more money on the schools than do this. Maybe then they could hire real teachers.
Again, this *may* just be Texas, but I highly suspect that this is how most schools are, especially in the South. In the long run this would just make the backwards south and the north/west contrast even more, as education would be worse in the South with this sort of law.
Does this really have some huge political payoff? We're not talking about anyone who's going to be able to vote in 2012, so praising a specific person wouldn't really have much of a tangible effect. Is that really worth adjusting our educational schedules for?
In over eight months, out of all the schools in the country, there are only a couple of reports of this "indoctrination". If this was a daily occurrence, surely we'd have thousands upon thousands of accounts of such teachings. So even giving this any credibility at all, we're probably looking at something going on once a month or so. If that's the case, then why lengthen the school year? All they have to do is bump it up to once every three weeks.
And even if it was a daily occurrence, how much would children really need? Is nine months really inadequate? If you get to June and kids aren't on board, the extra three months probably isn't going to make much difference anyway, and it's time to give it up altogether.
Even if I bought into the ludicrous premise of indoctrination, the idea that it's a motivating factor for lengthening the school year is completely nonsensical.
Guess you didn't hear that Obama has plans to lower the voting age to 7. Geesh I thought everyone knew that !
Also, let's be honest here, if these children had been made to sing these songs to George Bush back in 2002, we would be concerned and call for an end. Instead we dismiss all their concerns, laughing them off.
And "indoctrination" happens in churches a few hours a week, so I think nine months hours a day would be plenty of time (of course its a non issue since there is no indoctrination campaign).
Have you volunteered in a public school lately?
Didn't think so.
And no, I haven't volunteered in a public school lately, I spend more time doing Habitat for Humanity, which I find more satisfying. My grandmother (who is quite conservative by the way) is part of a mentor ship program for inner city children, and she's made a big difference for some of them - but I haven't personally. That sort of volunteer work doesn't suit my personality.
now kids cant even go to school to learn and be more educated because the wingnuts are paranoid about fake claims of indoctrination.
I have read a lot the past month and I know they don't want/like socialism, capitalism, fascism, communism, mccarthyism (did I leave any out?)...which freakin' "ism" do they WANT???!!!