Teen Vogue tries, fails to explain how education is not ‘indoctrinating’ students
June 2, 2023
In a new article, Teen Vogue reports that Black Studies are, in fact, for everyone.
The subhead actually says “Rather than ‘indoctrinating’ me, it’s done the exact opposite.”
The full title is “Black Studies Is Under Attack by Conservatives, but The Teachings Are for Everyone.” The problem with this is that the teachings that everyone gets from Black Studies are, in fact, indoctrination of a particular and very Marxist kind.
We need to take a little step back. “Critical studies” is not a study of how to criticize. Instead, it’s the modern academic phrase meaning to look at everything through a Marxist vision of power structures. Everyone’s oppressed by The Man and even men by the capitalists and this is why we can’t have nice things.
This is what leads to those ludicrous claims that climate change is because of capitalism – when actually existing socialism was always vastly more polluting. And so on and on – and to all those claims that we can solve racism, solve climate change, solve inequality and so on if only we were to kill off capitalism and markets.
The code word “critical” turning up in education means that this is the worldview that is being taught. As here in Black Studies. “When I was 18, my first encounter with Black studies… I began to examine the white order I live in and asked why it is this way.”
This is the standard critical studies approach. Everything bad is because they, them over there, are oppressing.
“Black studies has helped me understand that loving political work starts at home, “ and so we start the fight against capitalism as a result of having done Black Studies. “In the past few months, conservatives have attacked Black studies, the newest front in their war on teaching critical thinking in schools.” Critical thinking is a subset of critical studies. There is no other teaching within critical thinking than that Marxist description of power relationships from critical studies. It really is simply propaganda.
When the College Board changed the new AP Black Studies course, it “justified the absence of theory-heavy secondary sources” which does raise the question of which theory are those sources heavy in? The standard progressive academia critical studies of course. “…by saying it is prioritizing primary sources about Black people’s experiences. “ That’s what the complaint here is. The new AP course tries – at least, is better at – teaching about reality and less about Marxist theory. This is the very thing that is being complained about here.
“But some scholars have long argued that Black studies goes beyond facts or content about Black people to include critiquing the power structures that govern our everyday lives.”
Well, yes, and those scholars are those progressive academics who want everyone to be taught the Marxist doctrines of critical theory. This all revolves around this one single point.
“Black intellectual Cedric Robinson said that Black studies is a radical “critique of Western civilization,”
“Radical” is another of those synonyms for Marxist.
“These lessons aren’t just for ethnic studies majors in college. “ And everyone must be propagandized of course. For unless everyone is a Marxist the Marxist utopia will never arrive, will it?
“The insights and orientations of Black studies can’t be limited to any one AP African American studies class. Around the country, anti-racist teachers in all subjects are revamping curricula and pedagogy to avoid teaching ideas that uphold white supremacy, and to equip students with the critical thinking skills to hold dominant and counternarratives against each other’s light.”
And that Marxism, that class struggle, that critical thinking, must be the foundation of all education in all subjects. Which is to say that the propaganda must be unceasing. The propaganda must be across all subjects.
Teen Vogue tells us that it exists to “educate the influencers of the future”. This is a pretty good example of what they mean by educate too – that all must be propagandized into believing the thoroughly Marxist tenets of critical theory. Which, maybe and just possibly, might not be exactly what we want our children to be taught, either at school in Black Studies classes or in the media.