Does SNHU Think Its Students Are Political Mules?

UPDATE: October 13, 2017.

Apparently SNHU president LeBlanc has acted on his promise to turn SNHU into a complete indoctrination center for leftist politics. Please see the course description graphic that has been added to this article as a followup.

Manchester, NH — For those of you who insist this is not happening, we present clear evidence that schools are used for the purposes of indoctrination, at all levels, with administrators as willing advocates and enforcers.

Do you ever wonder why most college freshman cannot write well, or why high school students cannot make change at the cash register?

The President of Southern NH University may have just given us the answers to those questions. He has openly suggested that the the teaching of “social justice” should be done under the guise of teaching “critical thinking”. Now one can understand why there is such an emphasis on “critical thinking” studies and less on academics. His recent speech at the “Unity in the Community Dinner” at SNHU was posted to his blog. And his words reflect much more bias than any of us could ever have imagined.

The title says it all: “Critical Thinking and Social Justice in America”. Here is where Paul LeBlanc commits to the idea that critical thinking should be the means to teach social justice; and insinuates that institutional bias against minorities still exists, with all the fault attributed to “Republicans and tea party people”.

http://blogging.snhu.edu/leblanc/index.php/2014/09/critical-thinking-and-social-justice-in-america/

So far all comments have been censored.

This paragraph, which apparently outraged more than a few people, stated:

“As our country becomes more Latino, we see institutional racism at work there too and particularly in the immigration debate. We now see some of the worst racist and xenophobic tendencies this country has ever exhibited, especially from Republican and Tea Party zealots who pander to those far right sensibilities in order to win primary elections.”

As most understand, the movement known as the tea party is not a political party, doesn’t run or fund candidates, and doesn’t ”pander” in primaries or even get involved in elections. Their mission is geared toward issues that affect all of us, not party politics. How could the President of a major NH university NOT know this?

LeBlanc goes on to say what needs to be done: “We need to do it through critical thinking and analysis, and giving people the tools to understand systems and change them.”

Sounds like he believes himself to be what is called an “agent of change for social justice” and that his mission as an educator is to make activists out of students.

The problem? He has based his concerns on faulty premises.

Many groups who influence education today admit their purpose is to “apply advocacy skills” to accomplish such things as stopping “impending federal cutbacks”. Adult education is not exempt from this tainted practice of advocacy. One has to wonder how the Chairman of the NH State School Board can claim he knows of no political indoctrination going on in our NH schools. And all of this has trickled down into the public schools, which are in the sorry state we see today.

LeBlanc goes on, proudly mentioning the titles of many politically biased and controversial books. We’ve already seen the blowback from the inappropriate use of some of these books. He cites them as “critical thinking” material and laments the fact that his school is not doing enough to promote them. He says the challenge to his faculty will be to “use this year to address the critical thinking skills of our undergraduates across all disciplines.” And, “to do so through the lens of social justice” and “to structurally embed that effort within the curriculum”. (Silly us. We always thought critical thinking employed logic and common sense.) And he means to make it a requirement that “every department and every major ... show how they address the question.” See how that works? It’s not going to be a choice. Oh and let us not forget the money. There is always more money involved. LeBlanc says “I have to find the money and hold us accountable.”

In this second piece, in defense of things he said in the first, he doubles down on his assertions which become even more wild-eyed and far fetched.

http://blogging.snhu.edu/leblanc/index.php/2014/10/attacking-all-republicans/

Once again, comments are censored.

LeBlanc explains what he meant by “zealots”. He says, they are the people that sensible Republicans like Karl Rove and John Boehner do battle with. That is interesting since the tea party has no representation in DC. Perhaps he’s talking about the rare strong Republicans who were sent there to uphold the party platform but are continually obstructed by the Roves and Boehners of the world?

In another complete spew of misinformation he states, “These are Republicans who were willing to let the United States go into default on our debt. Who were willing to let the country go bankrupt in a fight over Obamacare.”

How interesting. We had no idea that Obamacare was being instituted to prevent us from going bankrupt. Most people have found their insurance premiums have gone up, the quality of care has gone down, and the choices in doctors and hospitals are limited. Many can’t afford the “affordable care act” at all.

LeBlanc says that the tea party would rather close down government and “play political games with the US economy”. Really? It is ludicrous to think the tea party had this much power. There was really no government shut down that we know of, perhaps a few vindictive directives for park and memorial closures coming straight from the top, while the IRS, military, federal reserve and many other ABC agencies and illegal departments we would like to see eradicated permanently remained fully funded and in full force. We know of no Republicans who are cuddling up to the movement, since it is non-partisan and has no (and wants no) connection to the GOP. But now the tea party movement is at fault for all of this as well as the country’s debt, and the overspending of Obama and every president and congress before him? Who knew!

LeBlanc’s statements pandering to the extreme left should have discredited him fully by now. But he doesn’t stop there.

To LeBlanc, some Republicans are bad because they see the country is going wrong, going further into debt, and are trying to stop that. Then predictably he praises some very notable RINOs either for their progressive thinking on education or their neocon positions on more war. In every case his answer seems to be that Republicans, in order to be acceptable to him, should just become more like Democrats.

At this point you have to ask yourself, is this lecture, which seems to be more like a speech from a tent meeting of the Cult of Progressive Neocons, an appropriate thing to be preaching to the SNHU community? What place does his personal political view have other than to express it separately from school policy?

Consider this not so uncommon example...

One would think given all of the money accepted from the government by way of student loans, colleges would be required to show that their graduates have had some level of success in gaining employment. One would also think that colleges might bend over backward when unemployed graduates come to them asking for assistance with job placements. A recent graduate of Master’s degree program, the valedictorian of his class, wrote to tell us that was repeatedly given the run around when he asked his school for assistance in securing a clinical residency, something they normally do for all their graduates. From this lack of action on the part of the college, and from having it repeatedly said to him in class that his ”personal variables” (i.e. white male, conservative, etc) would make it difficult for him to have a career in human services, we can only conclude that this is a clear instance of institutional discrimination.

What would an administrator like LeBlanc do about this kind of institutional bias? Will a similar climate develop at SNHU? Is this what the government calls equal opportunity? Or is merit not good enough?

When it comes to political bias and discrimination, if we were ever to judge the president of SNHU by his own rules, he would no longer be employed. Sadly, we have seen this hypocrisy everywhere, for years. And administrators like LeBlanc are enabling it.

Update 3.30.2015

LeBlanc to date has refused to allow comments on his blog postings.

Further proof that discrimination of the same sort is institutional can be found in this article as well:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/closing-campus-mind_899943.html

Related:

Schools No Longer Deny Political Indoctrination
http://www.oswego.edu/~prusso1/Russos_what_does_it_mean_to_teach_for_s.htm

Even Math is Politicized
http://radicalmath.org/

What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
http://www.girardatlarge.com/2014/11/whats-wrong-with-our-schools/