#2071: Kyle Olson

Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalismis the title of a book by Kyle Olson. It’s hard to see how further comment could be necessary, but at least the book was praised by Rick Green on Wallbuilders Live. As an example of the kind of subversion the book is about (mentioned on the show), Olson highlighted an episode in Texas where a teacher used the book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Typeto – allegedly –promote a “pro-union” message. Then David Barton helpfully explained that the book was also an “anti-Creation book” because it makes kids think that cows are equal to humans. Barton’s hardwon insights into how kids get moved to think in certain ways is at least helpful to understand how Barton’s own thinking is working.

Beside the book, Olson is the founder of Education Action Group, a Michigan-based anti-union-propaganda-in-schools organization (apparently), which claims that public schools ought to promote traditional American ideals instead of the progressive ideals of collectivism and centralized government (apparently the latter is an insidious effort led by bogeymen Paolo Freire, Bill Ayers and Howard Zinn, whom wingnuts by entirely predictable and idiotic causes have come to think are powerful influencers on American K-12 pedagogy), that public schools “have a spending problem, not a funding problem”, and that administrators and teacher unions are responsible for poor performances in public schools. He’s also written for BigGovernment and TownHall.

Diagnosis: Same old paranoid shit. Over and over again.