Amerika

The old song — Teacher! Leave my kids alone! — still reverberates across the Western world as more and more parents prefer homeschooling. With government now joining the chorus against parent teaching, we might resurrect a lost educational requirement: political education.

Of course, the teacher won’t understand because they also did not get political education. This means the children, the parents, the teachers, the universities, the government controlling the universities, and voters that elected government representatives, and the representatives themselves, did not get basic political education.

Apparently, opinionated people at The New York Times lamenting the loss of America’s Political Center of Gravity in 2019, were really concerned that the Republican Party is not moderate and unprincipled any more (as it should have been apparently).

The Republican Party’s position among the European far right is especially striking because of the United States’ two-party system, which leaves less room for fringe groups. As a result, parties are “forced to deal in platitudes, usually in competing for the center,” said Richard Bensel, a professor of political science at Cornell.

But, he added, there’s “something very strange happening in recent American politics”: Theory says that two-party systems generate “moderate, unprincipled parties,” but the Republicans and Democrats have grown more distinct.

“Democracy doesn’t work with that kind of polarization,” he said.

This is a gobsmacking revelation because apart from nobody realizing it, such a short sentence could mean so much that to explain it will essentially require a book, teaching courses and even a new dispensation for guiding our (now) strange society.

Here are Five reasons we need political education :

1) We don’t get class politics in school.

2) Political education builds democracy within the organization.

3) We use political education to define our politics.

4) Political education is where we learn to argue our politics and convince others to join us.

5) Political education helps build our campaigns.

Personally, I would like to add a few more important reasons such as founding principles, but apparently the deep state doesn’t like principles, because principled people are never moderate. But nobody complained about this during their education, did they?

To get a slightly more balanced (academic) view if that was possible, from way back in 1999 Britain, about the idea of political education as follows:

Internationally, the issue of “political education” or “education for citizenship” has been made urgent by a number of recent transitions. Since 1989 the hitherto state socialist and authoritarian one party systems of central and eastern Europe and Asia have shifted towards market and capitalist economies, democratic political institutions, and the rule of law.

What this have to do with political education in one’s own country is unclear. But here is the localised version:

From the point of view of social scientists and educationalists a pressing question is: what aspects of the educational process make a difference to individuals’ political identities and levels of engagement and by extension to political culture? From the point of view of political theorists, a pressing question is: what level and what kind of political engagement is necessary and desirable if legitimate systems of government are to preside over just and stable societies? And, for political philosophers a central question is: what model, what meaning, of politics is implicit in the term political education; and, further, is this a justifiable concept of politics?

Now you know why nobody educate their children politically, well, no conservatives do though, because liberals have no problem setting up a  Center for Political Education in case you wondered.

Center for Political Education (CPE) is a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. CPE’s approach is non-sectarian, democratic, and committed to a critical analysis of local, regional and global politics. We believe that movements are strongest when their organizing and activism are grounded in historical knowledge, strong theory and rigorous analysis.

Republicans have nothing to compete with this.

Fortunately other countries such as Uganda are more vigilant with respect to educating the military/police/security in a more conservative way, strangely using the exact same wording expressed so beautifully as Political Education is our Center of Gravity in a mobilization drive because they found that soldiers have lost focus (after losing a few battles in the Congo and Somalia), or as they put it:

Chief of Defence Forces mobilisation drive was put in place following a decline in terms of the correct ideology for soldiers.

This correct ideology was then described as follows (UPDF – Uganda Peoples Defence Force):

He observed that commanders were no longer preaching their UPDF way of thinking and therefore the CDF deemed it fit to have further engagement with the forces to reflect and remind themselves of the right way using political education.

Brig Mugisha thanked the CDF for initiating and implementing the mobilisation drive which is aimed at increasing ideological awareness and creating frameworks that liberates the minds of members of the UPDF.

The exercise also reminds us of our mandate as enshrined in article 209 of the Constitution which is to preserve, defend, cooperate, foster harmony and engage in productive efforts in order to facilitate socio-economic transformation of Uganda

At the same function, the SFC commander also presented to the troops a paper on the UPDF code of conduct, conduct injurious to the defence forces such as quest for cheap popularity, intrigue and double talk; corruption and cry for soft life.

Gen. Gureme said upholding the core values of conscious discipline, teamwork, persistence, creativity, frugality and Pan Africanism is the precursor to the UPDF’s unending successes.

What they learn first will color how they interpret any other data in the same topic area, but children now start out with hard Leftist propaganda and as a result, may never leave it. Significant improvements are required for the American citizen, but if there ever was a time to start the real political education process, then it is now.

Tags: education, political education