Ever listen to Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett or some other right winger speak of the "liberal bias" that has recently found a home in America's grammar, middle, and high school classrooms? I know for many people, their first reaction is to dismiss those concerns and consider them another plank of a right wing extremist platform. Well, while playing with two friends of mine, who are nine and twelve, I started thinking back to my grammar, middle and high school years and eventually back to this "liberal bias" that supposedly doesn't exist. It was then that I realized that this liberal bias is so strongly present and so vehemently covered up, that it is a wonder that any product of the U.S. education system has the ability to form any separate views from those that were taught to them throughout their schooling.

To understand my examples, it is extremely important that you try to put yourself in the frame of mind of a 9-year-old fourth grader. Firstly, I'd like to give the example of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In no way is this supposed to trivialize the celebration this campus prides itself on, but it is meant to provide strong evidence of a liberal bias in education. When you were in fourth grade, what did you understand about Martin Luther King Jr.? You understood exactly what your teacher told you to understand...and that was MLK was a great man. He fought and won the rights of blacks and his struggles are reason to have a day off to celebrate. That is basically the extent of it, correct? Well, why doesn't any teacher tell you exactly where he fought for rights, what exactly his struggles entailed (beyond the "I have a dream speech"), what rights blacks did and did not have and which rights were not enforced? There could be many different answers: One possibility is that your teachers didn't know themselves, and they in the past had fell victim to the same education that you receive. Another possibility is that some students might question the validity of the civil rights movement altogether. No teacher can allow their students to question anything multi- cultural, especially the civil rights movement, so these teachers fall back on false impressions and withholding information in order to get students to think the way they're "supposed to". While most students would ultimately judge the civil rights movement favorably, it is the job of the liberal bias in schools to make sure that they don't have the opportunity to make this judgment for themselves.

Example number two...John F. Kennedy. When you're in 4th grade, who's the number one candidate for favorite modern president? That's right, JFK. When I was nine, I was fairly nonpartisan as most of us were and knew nothing of party politics. However, I was taught to see JFK as a martyr, a patriot, a man who sacrificed his life for his country. It wasn't until my senior year that any teacher even touched upon the Bay of Pigs invasion and I had to learn on my own about Nikita Kruschev, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody let me believe that maybe Ruby killed Oswald so Oswald wouldn't blow a coverup, so I continued to believe that Ruby killed Oswald because he was angry that Oswald had assassinated his president. When I was young, I was never given the opportunity or the information needed to make my own judgments on JFK and his politics. It is the liberal bias that continues this cycle today.

One final example. In a conversation with a friend of my family that I remember distinctly to this day, she told me that Americans can be whatever they want to be and gave the example of Richard Nixon's father. "He pumped gas, and his son grew up to be president," she said. I still remember my immediate reaction - "Nixon doesn't count, he was a bad president because he was forced to resign." To this day, I don't even know why I reacted that way. I knew nothing of Nixon's policies, foreign or domestic, and had no real grasp of what Watergate was. It never occurred to me that he must have done something right to defeat both McGovern and Humphrey. It was part of that liberal education I was taught in school. Even now at this school, people will tell you Nixon was a crook, cheated the country, was a bad man. If you ask one of those people what being a crook has to do with stealing files, you get blank stares and a comment reiterating, "Nixon was a bad president." In conclusion, I urge you to take your friends, sisters, brothers and children into consideration. Beware of the liberal propaganda running rampant on campus that you just may not see. Help break the chains of the liberal bias in the educational system. No matter what you decide to believe in, let them be your thoughts, your ideas based on facts that you've analyzed and do not buy it because your liberal teacher tells you to. The time has come to start thinking for yourselves.

Christina Hassinger '01