While some people consider the controversy in Jeffco schools over AP history standards to be a distraction from the debate over performance pay for teachers, the former issue will have a greater impact on students and the future of the nation in the long run.
If students do not receive an accurate and balanced foundation in history and civics prior to high school graduation, they may enter college ill-equipped to handle the biased information they will likely encounter there.
Ward Churchill is the poster child for classroom propaganda, but liberal bias is rarely so obvious. Having just finished a master’s degree in political science from the University of Colorado Denver, I speak from experience.
As an older student, I had some 20 years of life on the average student in my political science courses, which often included both graduate and undergraduate students. Age has its advantages. When a professor extolled European socialism, I had the latest Wall Street Journal article on European Union economics and a few firsthand observations to share about the less-than-ideal life under the welfare state. When a professor denounced globalism and free trade, I could explain how the free market has lifted more people out of poverty than any other human advancement. And I had the statistics to back it up.
Had I not been there, students would have received a decidedly lopsided lesson. Most students lacked the background knowledge to ask probing questions, much less outright challenge the professor.
In one class, a professor insisted that Karl Marx was right about human destiny. I asked why she still believed, despite the loss of 100 million lives from communism and its failure everywhere it has been tried. She replied, “Its time has not yet come.” In another class, I found myself the sole defender of the existence of good and evil. The professor claimed that modern psychology had disproven good and evil as social constructs. Human conflict, he said, was merely the result of people fighting over material goods, a vicious cycle that will cease when technology replaces labor and capitalism is no more. Although it hasn’t yet happened, human nature was going to change for the better.
None of these lectures will ever make YouTube because these professors aren’t little Ward Churchills. They’re nice people who are considerate to students, even vocal conservatives, fair graders and gracious with their time before and after class. Far from trying to brainwash students, these professors see themselves as teaching truth as they see it. They share their great faith in government and human progress because they believe it will create a better world. Professors deceive students not out of malice, but because they themselves have been deceived.
I once asked the department chair if there were any conservative faculty members in the department. As it turns out, there are none. Helpful as ever, he suggested I might find a conservative in the economics or business departments. That there might be a conservative professor somewhere on campus doesn’t excuse the lack of intellectual diversity in the political science department.
Sadly, the lack of diversity is systemwide. A 2014 CU System Climate Survey found that 59 percent of CU faculty consider themselves liberal compared to 13 percent who embrace conservative thought. Some professors are able to put their political and philosophical biases aside when they teach, but not all. Some professors have students read original documents and come to their own conclusions, but not all. Some professors present the costs and unintended consequences of public policies rather than just praising their intentions, but not all.
For this reason, the public must demand that students are equipped with this knowledge before they graduate from high school.
Krista Kafer (tokrista@msn.com) is co-host of “Kelley and Company” airing 1-4 p.m. on 710 KNUS.
