Who Protects LSU Students from Bullying Attacks...from their Professor?

The current administration has made it an educational priority to eliminate bullying from public education. As the Washington-Post reported in October 2010:

The Obama administration is launching a campaign to prevent anti-gay bullying and other harassment at school, advising educators that federal law protects students from many forms of discrimination.

The advisory from the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, to be made public Tuesday, does not break new legal ground, officials said. But the officials described it as the federal government's most comprehensive guidance to date on how civil rights law applies to the sort of campus situations that in some cases have led persecuted students to commit suicide. President Obama is expected to help promote the initiative.

"We've got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage," Obama said in a video posted last week on the White House Web site.

"Our goal here is to provide school districts, colleges and universities with details about when harassment can rise to the level of a civil rights violation and what they should be doing about it," Russlynn H. Ali, assistant education secretary for civil rights, said Monday.

The article talks about two kinds of bullying; those based on sexual orientation and religious beliefs. I think most people believe bullying is primarily perpetrated from one student (or students) to another student. Do these anti-bullying guidelines also apply to other types of bullying AND to teachers or college professors who bully certain students?

Consider this story about a college professor who bullies students in a Solar Systems Class at Louisiana State University. It is reminiscent of a previous posting on our site, "The Assassination of Children and Critical Thinking as Presented by Choice Architects":

Education in the K-12 grades is the perfect time to advance an agenda. Remember this video from the group 10:10? (Disclaimer: graphic content). Is this not a shining example of choice architects using fear to further their agenda? Take a different position and you are exterminated. This English reporter likened it to Eco Facism.

The video is a clear example of choice architecture and what we are facing in the re-shaping (aka "transformation") of our public education system. We are to go along with the choice architects or face extermination.

Do you remember that video? Children who did not agree with the teacher were literally "blown away". Fast forward the global warming agenda from elementary school to college and you have an actual example of a professor not tolerating differing opinions in a classroom in LSU. The video from this classroom exercise shows Dr. Bradley Schaefer exhibiting bullying tactics:

At the end of the class he has the students do a group exercise and gives each section different questions for which they must present an answer to the class. The group on the right side of the room (the group that believes the "US should do nothing" in regard to global warming) is given a piece of paper that says:

Your professed policies have a substantial likelihood of leading to the death of a billion people or more. (A) Estimate the probability that you personally will be killed in an ugly way because of your decision? (B) What is the probability that any children of yours will die in ugly ways due to your current decision.

Die in ugly ways? This professor has decided to try to weed out anyone who disagrees with him by using scare and guilt tactics. He sustains the violent imagery through the entire class, telling students, “Blood will be on your hands,” and pooh-poohing deaths from September 11^th (“3,000? Whatever.”) in light of the toll global warming would take. Toward the end of his lecture he indicts the students who prefer no new legislation on climate change:

So, you see, the trouble here is the people on that corner [points at right side of room]. They’re wanting to do nothing. They’re wanting to let global warming take its toll. People decades from now will have deaths in the billions if we do nothing, and that will solve the problem.

Dr. Schaefer doesn't push a button and blow students up, but he intimidates and bullies them for their beliefs. Where is the legal protection for these college students from ridicule? They might want to obtain legal counsel for bullying relief as it doesn't seem as if the college administration will protect their interests:

What about Professor Schaefer? Will he be held accountable? Not likely. The LSU department chair told the Chronicle he did not think any action would be taken to punish or even reprimand Schaeffer. He did say that he would take seriously any student complaints if he hears any.

But why wait to hear from students, who may not complain if they want to preserve their grades, when all the evidence is in? The footage from this class is a smoking gun, and LSU is too deeply invested in maintaining the politically correct system to take responsibility and do the right thing.

Why have civil rights legislation that applies to a select group and not another?

I have two questions: Is there such a thing as critical thinking allowed in public education at ANY level today and why is this professor talking about global warming in "Astronomy 101: The Solar System"?

The Assassination of Children and Critical Thinking as Presented by Choice Architects

I'm fascinated in a horrified way about the choice architects who are running our educational system. As we've noted in previous blogs, it's not only in education, but also in health care, the financial world, and in climate theories. I'm wondering how much the politicians are running the show vs the special interest groups.

Here's an interesting blog on choice architecture that focuses on how this affects children and advertising. Expand the author's contention and relate it to the choice architecture set forth in Missouri (and other states) in terms of education; in fact he talks about this in terms of education in his opening paragraph:

There are people in the world whose sole mission is to consciously engineer, direct and influence every decision our kids make, from the time they get up each morning, to whom they associate with, to what they manipulate us to buy for them, to what college they go to, or if they go to college at all. These “missionaries” operate as society’s “Choice Architects.”

I like the term he uses..."missionaries". The definition of missionary is:

"someone who attempts to convert others to a particular doctrine or program"

This describes these choice architects to a tee. Mark Brady writes how they get people to start believing what they want them to believe, even though those same people can see the fallacy of what the choice architects are pushing. We know increased federal funding doesn't work for increased test scores, we can see the results over the last forty years. So why would we buy the idea of Race to the Top and common core standards as the answer to our educational woes? Chris Nicastro, Missouri Educational commissioner believes we need to be nudged because we can't make correct decisions ourselves. But I would like to ask Ms. Nicastro: who has directed the increased spending with no increased test scores? That would be the Federal government, NOT the people who are so allegedly misdirected.

Choice Architects are attempting to transform our culture. They will show us why we are wrong and why they are morally and ethically superior to our individual beliefs. Brady states fear is a potent factor in choice architecture:

Choice Architects know that one of the greatest threats we fear is social ostracism, to which we are especially vulnerable as teenagers.

Education in the K-12 grades is the perfect time to advance an agenda. Remember this video from the group 10:10? (Disclaimer: graphic content). Is this not a shining example of choice architects using fear to further their agenda? Take a different position and you are exterminated. This English reporter likened it to Eco Facism.

The video is a clear example of choice architecture and what we are facing in the re-shaping (aka "transformation") of our public education system. We are to go along with the choice architects or face extermination. We are told we are incapable of fixing our own problems and this forced "belief" results in governors and Boards of Education handing over our local and state control to the centralized government to fix it for us. Rather than focusing on mandates and teacher redistribution and more standardized testing and the loss of individualism and the republic, I would suggest the goal of the Department of Education should be the following:

...we need to teach our children that the decisions and choices we are tempted to make in response to fear in our lives, really needs to be respected – respected in the sense of the original meaning of the word: to look once again. Kids need to learn to trust in fear as a signal calling them to pay closer attention, and that it’s probably best to delay fear-based decisions and get other people’s perspectives to help us manage our own limbic system and beat the Choice Architects at their own game.

I think in common sense language "to look once again" and "delay fear-based decisions and get other people's perspectives to help us" is called critical thinking. This is what students need to be taught and this is exactly what choice architects themselves fear. If our students are taught to think for themselves instead of being nudged, the choice architects will find themselves ostracized and ridiculed. But don't be fooled, they don't go away. Now that Al Gore has been proven wrong in many "facts" of his research, "global warming" has now been renamed to" global climate disruption":

The White House wants the public to start using the term “global climate disruption” in place of “global warming” — fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is.

White House science adviser John Holdren urged people to start using the phrase during a speech last week in Oslo, echoing a plea he made three years earlier. Holdren said global warming is a “dangerous misnomer” for a problem far more complicated than a rise in temperature.

Is the fear factor at work? Are you seeing a pattern?