Gramsci's cultural Marxism began to reach throughout society when Frankfurt University's Institute for Marxism -- renamed the Institute for Social Research and informally called the Frankfurt School -- fled Nazi Germany, took up temporary residence at Columbia University in 1933, and then, during World War II, began using Gramsci-derived "critical theory" to "deconstruct" American society. German-born philosopher-writer Herbert Marcuse and other Marxists carried cultural Marxism beyond Columbia, and progressives adopted the disease as a weapon of "change" to be deployed within the education system.
Education system, indeed. The Frankfurt School's specialty was political correctness. The goal was to control social discourse on culture, politics, and economics and hush debate over middle-class moral decay. A critical tactic dictated by political correctness -- demonizing people who question progressive wisdom -- is illustrated by today's Democrats and media calling tea-partiers racists and extremists for wanting to shrink government. The same kind of one-sided thought control renders schoolchildren captive to left-wing agendas.
In the mid-1950s, Marcuse drove political correctness to new depths, proclaiming it unacceptable to criticize any manner of sexual behavior. Marcuse's Eros and Civilization urged people to engage in "perversions" to soften the sting of capitalism's alleged enslavement. The new and improved political correctness became a darling of progressive education schools, rounded out the arsenal aimed at mainstream America, and ushered in early-childhood sex education that facilitates premature and unhealthy sexual experimentation.
Since the 1960s, Gramsci's ghost has been creeping throughout education schools on the backs of the rabid academic herd. A list of ideological progeny reads like a "Who's Who" of collectivist ideologues: Pentagon bomber William Ayers, anti-homework and anti-competition preacher Alfie Kohn, America-hater Noam Chomsky, communist Van Jones, and progressive Bible-thumper George Lakoff, to name a few. Education, social studies, and literature curricula burst with gibberish on social, environmental, and climate justice as well as multiculturalism, diversity, moral relativism, and moral equivalence -- all derived in some way from cultural Marxism.
Though cultural Marxism has gained momentum in education for forty years, the freedom-loving, self-reliant character of a reawakened America soul can stop the disease cold. So camouflaged has been the use of Gramsci's brainchild that most education school indoctrinees -- K-12 teachers -- have never really weighed the consequences of conditioning students to reject a moral and prosperous America. While education is home to a disproportionate number of anti-capitalist and often anti-American progressives eager to "change the world," the majority of teachers are traditionalists unconsciously following the herd. Loud and informed parents can sound the necessary wake-up call.
Parents have long known that something was wrong but have accepted the deterioration of children's morality and common sense for the sake of the "tolerance" that progressive educators demand. The self-censorship inherent in political correctness has silenced parents for fear of being branded "intolerant," "mean," "overly judgmental," or, heaven forbid, "conservative." Meanwhile, the accountability-killing approaches of John Dewey, Gramsci, Ayers, Kohn, and other leftist zealots have subverted school curricula and programmed collectivist robots to fill positions of influence in government, society, business, and education.
But traditional teachers who understand the treachery in setting children adrift in failed utopian constructs are growing restless. One of my readers, a teacher, tells of a school principal seeking not "traditional teachers," but "facilitators" that would "let the students decide what to learn, when to learn and how to learn." Another teacher describes "in-service days" during which consultants preach the need to eliminate deadlines, "promote collectivism," allow "cheating ... [as] cooperative learning," and use "progressive teaching methods." According to the teacher, frustration over the incessant nonsense runs so high that "if there were no fear of retribution, many [teachers] would let [their outrage] fly!"
But there is something else besides simple cognitive dissonance that moves progressive educators to promote cultural Marxism. What motivates someone to knowingly push collectivist approaches that cause guaranteed economic devastation and misery? In truth, the progressive psyche houses the unbridled arrogance required to believe that students indoctrinated by progressive teachers will be the first kids in the history of the world to march forth and tease beautiful miracles from ugly theory.
In the final analysis, though progressive educators cling to cultural Marxism, Gramsci's middle class-slayer, most teachers don't believe that Western society is bad, America worse, and capitalism the worst. Dear teacher, please gather your wits. Please behold the professors who taught you to fill students with contempt for the Western middle class. The professors harbor contempt for you, the Western middle class teacher. Dear parents, please abandon silence and support teachers who want to abandon fear in order to join you in bringing a close to the darkest decades in the history of American education.