A college professor paid by taxpayers to “educate” students caused a scandal by offering extra credit to her victims if they helped oppose the Trump-backed tax reform plan going through Congress. After making headlines and sparking a massive outcry, the supposed educator backed down from the plan. But the scheme nevertheless offers important insight into the disaster that is today’s government “education” system.
According to various news reports, Kutztown University Professor Mauricia John urged students to participate in a protest against the Republican plan to reduce taxes and simplify the tax code. “Please join your faculty as we rally against the GOP Tax Bill that has serious implications to you and on Higher Education,” wrote John, a professor in the far-left Anthropology and Sociology Department. “This is an opportunity to gain additional extra credit.”
The email featured a bolded subject line promising students “Additional Extra Credit Opportunity!” for their political activism on behalf of big government, the byzantine tax code, and higher taxes. Reports suggested other professors at the taxpayer-funded Pennsylvania university may have also offered extra credit to students, although specific examples have not yet emerged.
Printed advertisements for the protest, organized by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, urged people to “rally with us against the tax bill!” “This bill threatens tax increases on our students,” the ad said, without explaining how people who pay no federal taxes, and whose existence and studies are oftentimes funded by taxpayers, would face an increase in taxes.
“Tell congress to make education affordable to all,” the ad continued, without citing a provision of the Constitution that would authorize Congress to do anything involving education at all. “Defend not defund higher education.”
Eventually, once the extra credit “rent-a-mob” tactic was exposed in Campus Reform and other media, the professor backed down. The university also released a statement dishonestly implying that the extra credit assignment involving protesting a political action somehow served a legitimate educational purpose.
Politicizing students and manipulating them to become activists for Big Government is happening at colleges and universities all across America. In fact, it is happening in K-12, too, with teachers adhering to government decrees mandating that they terrorize their captive audiences with tales of “Mother Earth” sending hurricanes, sea level rise, global warming, climate change, and other evils to repay humanity for its carbon-dioxide sins. Some schools have even urged children to have their parents contact Congress.
It is, of course, highly inappropriate for teachers to abuse their authority and the students they have been entrusted to educate in order to advance political objectives. And yet, the entire $1-trillion plus “education” system in America has been geared toward fundamentally changing America — politically, religiously, culturally, and beyond — since socialist-humanist John Dewey and his Rockefeller backers hijacked the school system.
It’s time to return to what worked in education, and ditch the politics.
