Our public schools are teaching Marxist philosophy

Dear editor:

The root of the word "educate" is from the Latin, ducere, meaning to draw or lead. The prefix "e" means "out of." The teacher draws out of the student his potential, versus indoctrination where the teacher "puts in."

What we see today in public schools is indoctrination: State-favored theories taught as facts that promote a false narrative used to advance Marxism. Simultaneously, the false narrative is fortified outside of school by a web of self-validating, overlapping pseudo-authorities. They echo one another casting the roles of victims and suspect. They proclaim social justice as the remedy for the Big Lie about the sinister character of the American people. Challenge the narrative and you are a hatemonger.

If I said that we are living in the equivalent of pre-WWII Germany you might dismiss it as crazy talk. Is your rebuke the product of your own independent historical research and reasoning or is it The Narrative -- an involuntary ("indoctrinated") reflex to a politically incorrect claim (modern heresy)?

Interestingly, PC is largely a self-policing intellectual paralysis. We dodge the painful consequences of dissent by self-censorship, yet we identify ourselves as a free people. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

How did our minds become so locked down?

Answer: Generational Soviet-style Indoctrination.

John D. Rockefeller was instrumental in setting up the "General Education Board," forerunner to the U.S. Department of Education. Outwardly presented to the public as an effort to improve education for America's children, its goal was actually Orwellian-style thought control.

Consider this quote from the General Board's Occasional Letter No. 1, issued in 1904:

"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands."

The corrupting influence of the Rockefeller Foundation on American education was so alarming; a Congressional Committee headed by Carroll Reece of Tennessee attempted to hold a full investigation. Powerful interests in the nation's capital thwarted its efforts.

Rene Wormser was the Reece Committee's general counsel. After the disbandment of the committee, Wormser wrote an expose titled, Foundations: Their Power and Influence. Wormser stated that based on the facts the committee discovered "...leads one to the conclusion that there was, indeed, something in the nature of an actual conspiracy among certain leading educators in the United States to bring about socialism through the use of our school systems...."

They are still at it. Common Core is the name of a UN-inspired effort to standardize education nationally. The sales pitch might sound good to you, but peel back the layers of the onion and you might cry over what you learn. Idaho has already signed on to Common Core. Like most things it is tied to federal funding. Will Mountain Home's two new board members embrace Common Core and promote it as an exciting new frontier for "education" or will they have the intellectual discipline to investigate the matter and the moral courage to expose it and restore true education. The intellectual rebellion can begin anywhere, why not here and now?

Freedom depends on an educated and moral people.

-- Doug Traubel