If you answered on a test that Judiciary Branch makes the laws, you would fail the class.

People used to understand little details like that, but not so much anymore.

Just ask your kids to look for disconfirming evidence. Ask them who benefits and who pays. It’s an easy habit to instill and it lasts a lifetime.

I’d be very happy with Jefferson’s system, where public education was only for those who could not afford a private one. But now that we are stuck with this public system, the absence of this ideological content in the curriculum leaves a vacuum that is filled with liberal thought presented simply as “the truth.” That’s why so many Democrats, not to mention the mainstream media, think they are right and everyone else wrong, selfish, mean-spirited, and/or morally deficient.

“The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity. In general we do not test the validity of an assertion or information by tracing its sources or its origin, but we test it, much more directly, by a critical examination of what has been asserted – of the asserted facts themselves.

Thus the empiricist’s questions ‘How do you know? What is the source of your assertion?’ are wrongly put. They are not formulated in an inexact or slovenly manner, but they are entirely misconceived: they are questions that beg for an authoritarian answer.

The traditional systems of epistemology may be said to result from yes-answers or no-answers to questions about the sources of our knowledge. They never challenge these questions or dispute their legitimacy; the questions are taken as perfectly natural, and nobody seems to see any harm in them.

This is quite interesting, for these questions are clearly authoritarian in spirit. They can be compared with that traditional question of political theory, ‘Who should rule?’, which begs for an authoritarian answer such as ‘the best’, or ‘the wisest’, or ‘the people’, or ‘the majority’. (It suggests, incidentally, such silly alternatives as ‘Who should be our rulers: the capitalists or the workers?’, analogous to ‘What is the ultimate source of knowledge: the intellect or the senses?’) This political question is wrongly put and the answers which it elicits are paradoxical [see selection 25 below]. It should be replaced by a completely different question such as How can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers (whom we should try not to get, but whom we so easily might get all the same) cannot do too much damage? I believe that only by changing our question in this way can we hope to proceed towards a reasonable theory of political institutions.

The question about the sources of our knowledge can be replaced in a similar way. It has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all ’sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’

The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, ‘How can we hope to detect error?’ may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth.”

How can we then organize the educational system so that these authoritative sources of knowledge have as little ability as possible to indoctrinate students? The simple answer is, by leaving public education out of the political formation of students. You yourself in your rough definitions of the left and right have made, what I believe to be, some outrageous gaffes, and I wouldn’t trust either you, or any public “servant” to impartially educate my children on such an important topic. Either the teacher might not know the material adequately to teach it, or s/he may be biased, or s/he may have an agenda.

Same thing with sexual education: the teacher may not know, or may have a bitter experience/opinion of sexuality, or may be a pervert. These things should be left to the family to teach children.

Instead, they put it into everything – even math books have to be politically correct (read: leftish correct). American herstory has become a story of oppression, and the success and contributions *only* of the oppressed (women, blacks – err… African Americans, Indians…- err, Native Americans, etc).

The failure of political education in America is due both to the ideological persuasion of teachers and the educational elite, and the general incompetence of both.