I looked at the catalogue for grades 6-12 just now and I honestly don't see what you mean by left-wing brainwashing. I just saw a bunch of courses with titles like Geography and World History, Crafting the Essay, and Chinese/Spanish/Arabic Language and Culture. I recall from my own student days in the 1980s that my language classes always had an element of local culture. They had to: if you don't learn about the people who speak a language, you won't really understand how to use the language properly.
IMO, their courses seem to focused more on skills than on knowledge for educated citizens. By this, I mean that they lack courses of no immediate practical value, but immense long-term value. These courses would provide a background of knowledge that allows a person to understand the world we live in and how/why it came to be as it is. So classes along the lines of Philosophical Ideas through History, or The Scientific Revolution and its Origins. In that respect, I agree that Greek and Latin fit that category, and it's a shame that CTY dropped them. Given how education is defined today, it wouldn't surprise me if they were dropped due to lack of interest.
But honestly, if you want to blame a group for this situation, the so-called left-wingers wouldn't shoulder more than a small fraction of the responsibility. Look instead to individuals and groups who've created an overly competitive gig-economy society that's overly focused on perfect grades and test scores, checking boxes on CVs and transcripts, and compliance with expectations. This is then followed by too much focus on productivity and too little recognition that sometimes the slow way of working is the quick way to a result.
How can you ever learn to think if your focus is on getting As?
Last edited by Val; 01/08/19 02:35 PM. Reason: Clarity
