פרופסור אמריקני: מערכת החינוך מלמדת כיום תכנים חסרי תועלת, שלא באמת עוזרים לתלמידים להתפתח ולהפוך לאדם מועיל ובעל יכולת

Is America's public education system failing to teach basic civics while increasingly encouraging political activism? Joining us now to discuss this is Nicholas Gordiano, professor of political science at Suffolk Community College, New York, and campus reform higher education fellow. So, Nicholas, good afternoon to you. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Can you just start off by telling us what are some of the patterns that you're seeing right now for the public education system that you're particularly concerned about? Well, over the last 20 years of being in the classroom, I have noticed that students are coming in with increasingly less knowledge of American government and civics. They don't know the very basics of who is considered the father of the Constitution, how many branches of government, what does checks and balances mean, simple concepts that used to be reinforced throughout a K-12 system. And as time has gone on, the results have gotten worse and worse. I see it every single semester when I issue my citizenship exam, most students will fail it. In fact, the overwhelming majority, 94% will fail it. And over the years, students used to get three, four, five, six questions right. Now I'm lucky if students get one or two questions right. So I'm on the front lines. I see it every day. And at the Leadership Institute Campus Reform, we show how activism has replaced education and it's about indoctrination. For example, you have UC Santa Cruz that just put out a new course where legal immigration is considered violent affirmation of settler sovereignty. And then you look at UC San Diego where they have this gender minor that students can take. It's useless courses that don't really help a student develop into a productive and capable person that's gonna go out into the workplace and contribute and be a productive member of society. So at the same time, we're teaching less American government and civics. What we see is more ideology being infused. And a lot of students today view America through the prism of its sins, as opposed to the totality of America. The good and the bad are sins, as well as the accomplishments that help right some of those sins wrong. Okay, a number of things I want to follow up on. I'll start with the questions that you're talking about students couldn't answer. Are these difficult questions or are they simple questions that most people should know? These are questions that every single American should know. These are questions that are taken directly from the United States citizenship exam. And so you would think that after 13 years, because that's what they are when they get into my classroom, they've had 13 years of education, you would think they could answer the very basics of our government. And the purpose of the exercise is to show students, we have opinions on all these different issues out there. But if we don't know the very basics of our government, the structures and how it's set up, well, then how can we say the government should or shouldn't do something? But more importantly, what we've seen is this hostility towards America throughout the education system, and that's what concerns me more. Okay, so about what you said that these classrooms are teaching certain ideologies, are these isolated cases or do you see them as sort of a broader thing, a phenomenon that's impacting the overall public education system? The way it started off was when we did this refocus of the education system on STEM, they started to downplay subjects like social studies, literature, grammar, and that really had an impact. But then the ideologues took control and they started introducing things into the curriculum that aren't worthwhile. So we know that 4,500 schools since 2020 adopted the 1619 Project, which gives this slanted view of America. Historians on the right and left have condemned it and said it's inaccurate, and yet schools have adopted materials. You also have these in texts that have been adopted as well, which again, it portrays this mischaracterization of America. So it's an effort that has been put in place to devalue the United States and push this leftist agenda. And by the way, these students will eventually become voters, teachers, they're going to potentially have businesses, and some maybe even become policymakers. What are your concerns for the long term? Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? I mean, these students are going through this education system, they're graduating, eventually they're going to become the business leaders, the doctors, the policymakers, the new teachers that go to reinforce this stuff. And we're seeing the impacts now, just, I live in New York State, New York State Congressional District 13, you have an individual that won her primary that called for the eradication of Western civilization. You go back 25 years ago, and that would have been a disqualifier. You wouldn't have gotten any votes, you wouldn't have survived an election. And yet here we are, we're seeing these candidates that preach values that are opposite to America and our founding. They go against concepts like liberty and freedom, concepts of capitalism, self-reliance, and they push this socialist agenda, and people are supporting it. So I think we are seeing the results of what's taking place. And if we don't get a handle on it now, it's only going to get far worse, because these individuals are looking to remake the United States into what they deem as their utopia. But we have seen throughout history, everywhere this has been tried, the socialist experiment has failed. So why are we trying to adopt it here in the United States? Well, it's because students haven't been educated on the principles of the United States, as well as the economic system like capitalism that has allowed billions to flourish around the planet.