Daniel Buck
National Review, June 10, 2024
“While it’s tempting to wonder whether — even hope that — Columbia is an outlier, its school of education is not only influential; it’s emblematic.”
The campus tantrum at Columbia University exposed for all to see the institution’s commitment to the fringe political philosophies of postcolonial theory and of DEI more broadly.
Perhaps lesser known to the general public is that Columbia’s education department — aptly named Teachers College — is the oldest and arguably most prestigious education school in the country. It is the Yale Law or Julliard of teacher-prep programs. The ideas that students imbibe there and the content that the school’s professors promulgate reflect the elite consensus in American education. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a review of courses offered exposes an obsession with the same radical politics as the campus protesters.
Scrolling through the course catalogue (both its undergraduate and graduate courses offered at Barnard College and Teachers College, respectively), one hopes that prospective teachers and school leaders will find classes on the practicalities of teaching, such as classroom management, or the principles of the so-called science of reading. Instead, the courses offer a veritable catchall of the worst kinds of progressive neuroses.
One course, Critical Pedagogies, focuses on the works of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist who cites the Maoist and Russian Revolutions as ideals; students in the class will investigate “power dynamics and structural inequalities.” The goal is to raise the “critical consciousness” of future teachers — a term of art coined by Freire that implies a Marxist understanding of the world and its various oppressions. Its instructor, Fawziah Qadir, is herself an adherent to critical race theory and anti-racist pedagogy. … [To read the full article, click here]
