A Conservative Kid Runs the Liberal Gauntlet: 7th Grader Decries Liberal Bias in Classroom

In the April 9, 2007 issue of the Weekly Standard, Mary Eberstadt’s article title, “Do Campuses Tilt Left,” initially appears to be a rhetorical question. After all, any conservative who attended college in the past 40 years could attest to the fact that all public university faculties and many private school faculties as well not only tilt left but do so openly and proudly. Thus my interest in Eberstadt’s title question with the obvious answer known to all was piqued. All, that is, except the left-leaning universities themselves, who apparently cannot recognize how homogeneously liberal their faculties have become.

In recent years, conservatives have produced several books aimed at exposing liberal bias on college campuses, such as David Horowitz’s newest title, Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom. These books contain hundreds of specific examples of college professors and administrators actively teaching personal political opinion as fact and universities uniformly supporting liberal causes, liberal candidates, and a liberal curriculum. Yet according to Eberstadt, in a new study sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO, liberal educators have published an attempt to discredit conservative authors who expose liberal indoctrination on publicly funded campuses. According to the study conducted, of course, by educators and researchers beholden to liberal employee unions, there is no accurate quantitative method available to determine the percentages of Democrats and Republicans among faculty and administrators, thus there is no bias.

By that same logic, there is no accurate quantitative method available to determine the percentages of terrorist and non-terrorist Muslims in America, thus there are no Muslim terrorists in America. Actually, many professors, like Ward Churchill, already think there are no terrorists in America except President Bush and that our government staged 9/11 as an excuse for war, so perhaps this type of circular logic makes sense in a demented way.

The liberal study’s criticism of conservative books claiming liberal bias on campuses, ironically, was expressed in these words: "passing off personal opinions as facts is not science." I found that statement fittingly hypocritical, since even high school and middle school students today are suffering through anti-conservative lectures and diatribes that are blatant examples of teachers “passing off personal opinions as fact.”

Conservatives attending graduate school, sadly, expect such treatment and steel themselves against it. In some ways, being forced to defend one’s viewpoint is beneficial, as it develops confidence and clarity of thought, since one’s positions are constantly under attack. Sadly, even middle school children who consider themselves conservative must constantly be vigilant in filtering liberal bias from what should be objective classroom teaching, particularly of history, government, and current events.

Spy The News! is pleased to welcome a guest contributor today, who is uniquely qualified to report on current liberal indoctrination efforts on school campuses, and can assist Eberstadt in debunking the AFT and AFL-CIO study that claims there is no proof of liberal bias in academia. Today’s guest reporter is the lovely and talented O-Be-Wise Daughter #1, who is a 7th grade student at what most would consider a high quality public middle school in a metropolitan DC suburb. O-Be-Wise Daughter #1 is an aspiring writer, who is developing interests in history, politics, and government, following in O-Be-Wise’s footsteps. Her favorite teacher in this 7th grade year is her U.S. history teacher. This teacher, however, suffers from an academic flaw: “passing off personal opinion as fact is not science [or in this case, history].”

When asked over the weekend to write about her experiences as a young conservative student in a liberal classroom, O-Be-Wise Daughter #1 wrote the following, edited here for spelling:

As a middle school student in the 7th grade, I often experience political pressure from students and teachers. I know, first hand, that this pressure starts much earlier than middle school. When I was in 3rd grade, I was taught by my teacher that Christopher Columbus was a “bad man.” We were read stories about Columbus kidnapping Native Americans and taking them to Spain to work as slaves. The images of scared little Indian children and sad men and women were pasted into our minds. Lucky for me, I was able to go home and receive the truth from my parents. But how many of my classmates, still to this day, believe that Columbus was a mean and evil man?

Now, once again, I face an even more obvious political pressure. My history teacher is a perfect example. She almost always incorporates some reason why Republicans are unintelligent, and also incorporates rude comments and apparent disgust toward President Bush into our lessons. Our class has wasted multiple class periods discussing reasons why President Bush isn’t a suitable president. What makes it worse is the fact that the other students are being subjected to liberal ways of thinking, as well as the utmost disrespect for our president.

As one student put it after sharing a rude joke about President Bush, “I’m a Republican, but these jokes are just too funny.” Is it funny? I certainly don’t think so, and I know a few other students who don’t either. My honest question is: are we attending school to receive political opinions, and hear rude commentaries, or are we here to learn and gain an education?

It is plain that Americans have many different political standpoints. But I feel it’s unnecessary to bring these opinions into the school environment in such ways. No student should feel like they have to be in favor of a certain political party just to “fit in,” and they especially shouldn’t feel pressured. I for one will never change where I stand in politics. I will remain a conservative child in a conservative family.

The AFT and AFL-CIO study would have us believe that middle school exposures to liberal indoctrination like these described above do not occur. Spy The News! thanks O-Be-Wise Daughter #1 for her courage in standing up for herself and conservative principles at some risk to her grades, and for bravely sharing her experiences with an international audience of readers.
A disheartening aspect of this student's experience is her observation that the few other conservative children are finding humor in the Bush-bashing and they, like the proverbial frog who slowly cooks to death as the temperature in the water pot increases, are slowly embracing the marginalization of their conservatism. Despite our best efforts to convince them otherwise, children often believe their teachers know more about school subjects than parents. When history is presented only from the liberal perspective and the student does not go home and discuss it with parents, parents may never become aware of what their children are learning, or not learning, in all those hours under the influence of liberal teachers.

Eberstadt recently edited a new book titled Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys, which contains essays by former liberals who were so put off by the overwhelmingly liberal bias they experienced in college that it pushed them to investigate and eventually embrace conservatism in response. With attentive and active parental involvement, perhaps a new generation of conservative youth can be shepherded safely through the increasingly liberal gauntlet of American academia and bring the concept of “fair and balanced” to faculties and administrators that so desperately need it if they wish to remain credible in the public eye.

Previous posts discussing liberal bias in schools:
Can Teachers and Professors Hide Personal Bias? AZ State Senator’s Bill Would Require It

Avoiding Mistakes in Iraq by Revising “Quagmire Quixote” Histories of Vietnam War