Twelve Thousand Hours of Indoctrination: How K-12 Education Went Wrong

“What we’ve effectively done is handed over a curriculum to the people on the left here, and they have just indoctrinated. Twelve thousand hours hours is about the amount of time a kid spends in school,” John Droz told The Gateway Pundit in an interview.

Droz is a physicist who retired from regular employment at age 34 and has been involved in education for more than 20 years. He applies his skills of scientific inquiry to analyze how the K-12 education system has gone wrong, both in failing students academically and in indoctrinating them into Marxism. In 2012, he spoke on the subject before the U.S. House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

“They’re indoctrinated with left-leaning ideology, whether it’s in history, whether it’s in mathematics, whether it’s in English, but particularly in science,” he said, explaining that he believes the ideology has come to dominate not only the social sciences but even the hard sciences and mathematics. He described the current curriculum as teaching liberal ideology that is anti-American and anti-science.

The greatest defense against any ideology is reason, but Droz argues that children are no longer being taught to reason. In fact, the traditional “Scientific Method” (the linear five- to seven-step process often found on classroom posters) is being replaced in many states by a framework called the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Proponents of the NGSS argue that the new “Practices” approach is more inclusive. They believe that by focusing on how students’ own observations and cultural backgrounds relate to science, rather than memorizing a Western-standardized five-step list, they can better engage students from diverse backgrounds.

There is a substantial body of literature coming out of Harvard and other top universities on the concept of scientific racism, which NGSS is meant to counter. Proponents argue that the classical five-step scientific method acts as a “filter.” They claim it prioritizes a specific Western, linear way of documenting results and often ignores Indigenous knowledge or communal observation styles.

They further argue that because it is rooted in a historical tradition associated with the Enlightenment, it can make students from other cultures feel like “guests” in a house they did not build. Some also describe the traditional “Scientific Method” as a “dumbed-down” version of reality.

The formal scientific method dates back approximately 400 to 500 years and has been used in the construction and development of major inventions and innovations, from the steam engine to the moon landing to toaster pastries and Starlink. If it were merely a “dumbed-down” version of something superior, it is reasonable to argue that this would have been demonstrated by now.

Droz refers to NGSS as “Not Good Science.” In reviewing available materials, I was unable to identify a specific invention or innovation developed using NGSS as a methodological framework. No satellite has ever been launched based on inclusion.

He explained that around 2010 a group drafted two documents: the NGSS, which outlined science standards for each grade level, and a 400-page companion document called the Framework, which provided explanations. The Framework introduced “Three-Dimensional Learning” and emphasized a shift toward “Practices.” Inclusion and diversity are discussed in Chapter 11.

Teams consisting of a scientist from the National Academy of Sciences, a representative from an organization called Achieve, and a teacher affiliated with the National Science Teachers Association presented these standards to state boards of education. As of today, 48 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council 2012).

A 2013 report by the Fordham Institute evaluated the science standards of all 50 states and assigned grades. Fordham rated the NGSS a C and ranked it 23rd among the 50 standards evaluated. Among the criticisms voiced by the Fordham Institute was: “The NGSS’s focus on ‘practices,’ on what students do, too often comes at the expense of what students know… The standards frequently fail to integrate the mathematics that is essential to any serious study of physics and chemistry.” Despite this evaluation, 20 states had standards rated higher than the NGSS but adopted the NGSS anyway.

In conclusion, Droz said that the problems in K-12 education will not be fixed unless someone addresses them. “The universities get most of the attention, and I think a lot of people are overlooking the fact that the schools are the real problem.”

Children are in school all day, five days a week, nine months per year, for twelve years. “We have approximately 4 million graduates a year,” Droz said, arguing that what the left has arranged is that “these people who are graduating are, number one, instilled with a whole extensive amount of Marxist ideology, and number two, they’ve been trained to be non-thinkers, so we have unthinking progressives.”

He said that shortly after graduation, they become voters. “If you just look at the statistics and say, let’s say if we’re adding 3 million Marxist, non-thinking Marxist voters to the voting rolls every year, what are the implications of that to America?”

The post Twelve Thousand Hours of Indoctrination: How K-12 Education Went Wrong appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.