Las Vegas Review-Journal - Opinion

Monday was the first day of the new school year, and it proved to be more of a learning experience for me than it was for my fifth-grader. He brought home a pile of papers last week that included the 12-page school district booklet, "Elementary Students: Behaving Positively at School."

I opened it, wanting to make sure I was familiar with the guidelines regarding bullying, drugs, classroom disruptions and other legitimate school concerns. Instead, I was greeted by a full page of mind-numbing, politically correct mumbo-jumbo under the headline, "The Challenge of Excellence -- Be Positive!"

The page highlights the "six qualities believed to be basic to positive human conduct": integrity, respect, responsibility, courage, justice and empathy. Worthy enough -- to a point.

Unfortunately, most of the 34 bullet points that follow have nothing to with those six qualities, and certainly have nothing to do with helping kids master their multiplication tables and learn how to spell. A sampling of the pap includes (keep in mind, this is for elementary students):

-- "Working for peace in the global village"

-- "Acknowledging prejudices and striving to overcome them"

-- "Displaying the courage to be imperfect"

-- "Practicing diligence"

-- "Striving to change long standing habits and replace them with open, searching minds"

-- Providing "opportunities that enable them to be fair to themselves and others"

-- "Struggling with unsettled questions to gain understanding or insight"

-- "Recognizing the interdependence among peoples"

-- "Seeking social justice"

Those last two nuggets aren't character-development tools -- they're political ideals. "Social justice" is the new rallying cry for egalitarianism, the belief that everyone should enjoy the same social and economic standing regardless of their abilities or contributions. It is a philosophy, increasingly embraced by far-left Democrats, that seeks not merely equal opportunities, but equal outcomes through the redistribution of wealth and the imposition of racial, ethnic, gender-identity and sexual orientation quotas on darn near everything.

It's this kind of rubbish that makes parents, taxpayers and employers question whether school systems are focused on indoctrinating students instead of educating them.

"This is what we're looking for, with the goal of producing responsible citizens," school district spokesman Michael Rodriguez said of the page. "These are the kind of citizens that society ultimately expects from its education system."

Really? Did I miss the vote on that? Yes, society counts on children becoming law-abiding, productive adults, but it expects parents and families to provide that guidance, not schools.

The sheet's list of bullet points includes behavioral no-brainers such as "treat others as you would like to be treated" and "thinking about consequences of decisions," but most of the claptrap is redundant or contradictory, unfit for a self-help paperback. Under "integrity," kids are urged to embrace "working with people of different views." Under "courage," they're told to value "listening carefully to others with varying viewpoints," and under "empathy," the message is "building rapport by appreciating other's (sic) ideas and opinions."

But the "integrity" heading also advises "taking a stand on issues."

In elementary school? Are these people serious?

"This is something that goes back to the Carlos Garcia years," Associate Superintendent Edward Goldman said of the sheet and the district's former chief executive, who quit in 2005. "We have literally thousands of documents, and unless something comes up, we don't update them all. We have to get direction from the brass to change it."

Don't expect that direction to come from the School Board. Last year, voters chose Linda Young, the district's longtime director of the Equity and Diversity Education Department, over Ronan Matthew, one of the finest high school principals this valley has ever had, for the District C seat. Young has made an entire career out of emphasizing feel-good gobbledygook over academic substance.

Her interview with the Review-Journal's editorial board last fall was quite revealing. Young was discussing what she thought were the qualifications most important in a good teacher, and was asked where she would rank a teacher's knowledge of subject matter among those qualifications. Young said that actually knowing what you're supposed to teach ranked somewhere between fifth and eighth, far behind making kids comfortable in class, being able to understand their feelings, and being able to tell whether they're eating properly.

Seriously.

There's irony in the fact that most teachers roll their eyes and laugh about this nonsense. Goldman said elementary teachers probably have never even seen the sheet that my son brought home. These instructors are far too busy managing their classrooms, moving through material and handing out discipline to worry about whether little Johnny is spending enough time "working for peace in the global village."

Rather, this blather is reflective of the culture that dominates the administration of public school districts. These are people who've been subjected to years and years of soul-crushing windbaggery in this country's colleges of education in order to receive the master's degrees and doctorates required to climb the leadership ladder and bump up their pay.

If anyone in the administration were ever brave enough to question why the district was wasting paper -- and the time of parents -- pointing out the "six qualities believed to be basic to positive human conduct," they'd be exposed as heretics. They'd be punished.

UNLV's Office of Diversity and Inclusion -- headed by a radical education professor -- actually lobbied the Legislature this year to greatly expand the time spent on a "comprehensive multiculturalism curriculum" in all Nevada elementary schools. Thankfully, the legislation died.

These people don't trust you to take the time to talk to your children about all the differences that you and your kids don't notice and don't care about. So it leaks into public education -- sometimes in drips, sometimes in gushers -- through politically correct textbooks, worksheets and booklets from headquarters.

All this serves as yet another warning to parents that if you don't take the time to impart values and explain the world we live in, the state will be more than happy to do it for you.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.