Conservatives invade the classrooms

More like conservatives have already invaded the classrooms. From an essay on one of America's major ideological battlegrounds:

For years, conservatives have spouted claims of liberal bias within academia. David Horowtiz, a conservative who founded the deceptively named Center for the Study of Popular Culture, claims, "In the nation's universities Republicans (and conservatives) have become almost as rare as unicorns. In most schools, Republicans are less well represented than Greens, Marxists and sects of the far left."

Horowitz is not alone. Many figures on the right, from Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter to the Heritage Foundation and Accuracy in Academia, are part of a large movement to shift education away from perceived liberal groups like the National Education Association. The movement is simple: pundits like Coulter and Horowitz use rhetoric to create a semblance of a problem, while interest groups like Accuracy in Academia provide slanted research to justify pundits' claims. Finally, the Christian Right provides ground troops, money and moral authority.

Conservatives have always taken aim at education, and in 1994's Republican Revolution, it seemed conservatives had their window of opportunity. Freshman lawmakers, unsuccessfully, tried to drop or significantly cut the Department of Education. The reforms failed, however, because the American public felt uncomfortable with education cuts. Republican lawmakers shifted their strategy to more overt ways of diminishing the government's role in public education: reeducation and privatization.

For more on conservative textbook "purification," evolution bashing, "abstinence based" sex ed, and vouchers-as-funding-siphons, click here.

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