Children’s network Nickelodeon is well-known as a purveyor of propaganda, and now it’s participating in a new program that encourages kids to “change the system.”

It used to be that the stuff of children’s programming was Wile E. Coyote’s perennial hunt for the Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny playing it cavalier with the Tasmanian Devil, but those days are long gone. Now youth are treated to highly politicized fare, and one of the latest examples is a new program called “Get Schooled,” which was launched on Sept. 8 by, among other entities, Nickelodeon.

And disgorging ideology on steroids is completely in character for the children’s network. As pundit Michelle Malkin has reported, it once said that the Battle of the Alamo was fought so “white farmers could keep their slaves” and a few years later peddled pro-illegal alien propaganda.

Now, reporting on Nickelodeon’s latest effort at mind molestation, she writes that the kids’ network is “at it again, along with liberal philanthropists, bloggers, and the Viacom conglomerate — launching a new initiative in conjunction with President Obama’s education campaign....” A Reuters press release found here provides some detail about the program:

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Viacom (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with initiative partners AT&T, Capital One Financial Corporation and NYSE Euronext, today launched Get Schooled with a national broadcast and an education conference at the Paramount Pictures lot. The five-year initiative aims to generate greater awareness and engagement in addressing the nation's education crisis and to offer practical resources and support to students.

The luminaries quoted in the press release — people such as Philippe Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom; Arianna Huffington (cough, cough....), rumored to be a journalist; and Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education — say all the “right” things, at least by modernist lights, much like politicians promising hope and change. One representative example is Bill Gates, who opined, “The education crisis is damaging our ability to compete in the global economy, and we need to do more to engage all Americans....”

I could provide other such comments, but they’re all little more than corporate executives advertising their sponsorship or the hackneyed repetition of old mistakes as if they’re new ideas.

Worse still, the program is imbued with the spirit of activism. Writes Malkin, “Accordingly, Get Schooled features a “student bill of rights.” (Hey, how about just learning the original Bill of Rights?).” She also points out that, in typical Saul “the Red” Alinsky style, “There’s a 'Write your governor' action campaign for the junior lobbyists to press for more education funding and higher teacher salaries [emphasis mine]....”

Yeah, sure, this is all about the kids, isn’t it?

The relevant excerpt from the “Write your governor” campaign section states, “THIS IS A DEMOCRACY.... Drop an email on your Governor. Make it clear that you want effective teachers to be supported and rewarded....”

But where the program really shows its true (red) colors is when it talks about change. Malkin writes about this and provides a relevant snapshot from the program’s site:

And look, it’s the same “revolutionary” rhetoric perfected by Obama’s education “comrade” Bill Ayers and the recently departed Van Jones:

Thus, as with everything Barack Obama touches, change is a theme here as common as it is ill-defined. One part of the site, for instance, has three declaratory statements, “I WANT TO FIND AN AWESOME JOB,” “I WANT TO GET BACK IN SCHOOL” and “I WANT TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM.” Now, there are a couple of problems here. First, this encourages self-centeredness. The focus shouldn’t be on what kids “want” but on their duties (in reality, it should be not on doing my will but God’s. But, silly me, I forgot. We’re living in Gomorrah). This emphasis on “I” is one reason why we have overgrown, spoiled brats such as Kanye West running up on stage and disrupting a ceremony simply because he feels like it.

Moreover, what is this “change”? (I’ll give you three guesses.) We should always be leery of those encouraging ill-defined change, as they usually have very ill doctrine. We’ve forgotten C.S. Lewis’ very astute observation that change is supposed to be a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. That is to say, change involves movement toward a goal; thus, if one claims to be its agent but cannot describe that goal in detail and mount a case for why it is truly a “good,” the change made should be to ignore him completely.

And because change is irrelevant within the perspective that good is relative, no moral relativist — which means no one involved in the Get Schooled program — has any business even talking about it. Before someone can credibly claim change matters and that he knows what it should be, he must have well-defined doctrine, a cast-iron set of morals. Otherwise, he is like a person who claims that your diet must be changed while also denying that rules governing human nutrition exist. In other words, first get schooled in philosophy, Mr. Social Engineer, then we’ll talk.

It isn’t hard, though, to figure out what kind of change is really necessary in education. And here is the simple truth no one will utter: the first step is establishing discipline and obedience within the schools. After all, a child cannot learn from you unless he’s first willing to listen to you. Barring this, your efforts are wasted. You’ll spend three-fourths of your time trying to cajole students into doing work.

Just as bad is that today much of the remaining fourth is devoted to teaching material that is at best nonsense and at worst destructive misinformation (I’ve written much about this here, here, here, here, here, here and here). It’s an education in miseducation.

But G.K. Chesterton summed up the problem very well in his book What’s Wrong with the World, writing:

The trouble in too many of our modern schools is that the State, being controlled so specially by the few, allows cranks and experiments to go straight to the schoolroom when they have never passed through the Parliament, the public house, the private house, the church, or the marketplace.

Obviously it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school today the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself. The flopping infant of four actually has more experience, and has weathered the world longer than the dogma to which he is made to submit.

Chesterton wrote this in 1910, and still the cranks don’t get it. And they never will.

We don’t need new ideas. We don’t need old ideas. We need ageless ideas embraced by a new generation.  

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

 

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danwhitehead1 said:

	Now someone PLEASE explain to me - - - - - - how we are NOT rushing toward an exact replay of the Hitler youth movements.
	report abuse vote down vote up

September 17, 2009
Votes: +6