“Progressive” schooling loves to make a virtue of “critical thinking”, but that doesn’t mean they actually teach it. Actual critical thinking involves rational, sceptical, and unbiased analysis of facts. The whole point of critical thinking is to overcome our innate biases and, in Richard Feynman’s words, to learn not to fool ourselves — because, “you are the easiest person to fool”.
But that’s not what “progressive education” teaches. Instead, it merely conditions students to parrot rote-learned criticism of unacceptable ideas.
Chief among them, the heretical notion that abortion might not be anything except an unalloyed good.
An Indiana High School student has filed a discrimination and libel lawsuit against her school for barring her from starting a pro-life club at the school.
The high school freshman, who is a student with the Noblesville School District, located about 27 miles from Indianapolis, alleges the school has infringed upon her First Amendment right to free speech and that it engaged in intimidation and bullying tactics as a way to get her to drop her anti-abortion club proposal.
At least they’re honestly calling it “anti-abortion”. At least some of the cant around abortion could be cut right through if the opponents were honest enough to call themselves “anti-abortion” or “pro-abortion”, instead of hiding behind euphemisms.
But intellectual honesty is the last thing on a “progressive” teacher’s mind. Instead, they’re all about enforcing orthodoxy with all the zeal of an Inquisitor.
The student named more than a dozen teachers and faculty in the suit and accuses them of harassment and making libelous comments against her on social media.
In criticizing the student’s proposed pro-life club on Facebook, an assistant teacher at the school wrote “there is no place for a club that endorses misogyny, bigotry, and conspiracy-driven politics in our public schools.”
The assistant also posted a question on social media: “So out of curiosity would you be good with club posters in the school for the Black Student Union that said ‘Defund the Police?”
Well, funny about that… the school does in fact have a Black Student Union Group which endorses the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement with its posters. A number of BLM activists, it might be noted, have been responsible for unprovoked murders of police.
So, what violent, intolerant material did the anti-abortionists promote?
According to Kester, at the center of the controversy are pictures of the student used in flyers to promote the club. They included a picture of students in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington DC holding signs that said, “we are the pro-life generation’ and ‘Defund Planned Parenthood.”
Pass the smelling salts! A dozen “progressive” teachers just fainted dead away!
Kester said the student took the pictures of the feminist club to show that the school had not objected to clubs with views on abortion and pictures used by them.
“NHS is teaching its students that the First Amendment does not apply to some government actors, granting them unbridled discretion to discriminate against student speech because of their viewpoint,” the lawsuit charges.
The Epoch Times
Well, yes — we all know that. The sooner this upstart conservative learns her lesson, the better.
Otherwise, she might start getting ideas that she has “free speech” rights or something.