My Point of View by Aaron Farris

 

Liberal bias in America’s schools, which we hear so much about on cable news, has unfortunately arrived in Albert Lea. As a student at the high school, I have had a firsthand account of the liberal bias that is infecting Albert Lea High School.

In this column, I will not name names out of respect for people’s professional careers. I also want to make clear that it is not every single teacher that is infecting ALHS with liberal bias. It is also not the school administration itself.

Throughout the 2018-19 school year, I’ve heard and seen many examples of liberal bias in ALHS classrooms. This is not what teachers are being paid tax dollars to teach. We had one teacher during the 2018 election cycle wear a Blue Wave Rising T-shirt during class; very inappropriate. Students in multiple classes are forced to watch “CNN 10,” which is the version of the liberal news network meant to brainwash America’s students. To be quite frank, I couldn’t care less what teachers do outside of school. They can be a part of as many political campaigns as they want. It’s their right to do so. However, bringing it back to the classroom with them is not only unprofessional but unethical.

One reason that other students don’t speak out against this immature behavior is because students feel like they are unable to talk with teachers and have a civilized conversation about political issues and events. This is blatantly true when teachers reply to students’ personal opinions on these issues with comments like “No, I don’t think you get it,” or “I don’t think you understand what you’re saying.” These comments are not only insulting to the intelligence of students, but completely contradictory to the purpose of the teacher asking for the student’s opinion.

ALHS is a great school at which to learn. The principals and school administration do a great job of making sure that you are given every opportunity possible to learn. It would be great if the teachers spreading liberal beliefs on a daily basis would do the same.

As young Americans preparing to head out into the world on our own and vote in elections that directly affect us, we should be given the arguments of both sides. We should be allowed to make decisions on what we think about those issues on our own. Some teachers at ALHS believe that instead of giving us the information and then letting us decide, it would instead be better and more beneficial to us to simply tell us what to believe and how to vote.

There are teachers at the high school that are constantly taking shots at President Trump, Republican members of Congress and Conservative beliefs in general. What they don’t realize, however, is that they’re hurting their case more than helping it by taking shots at menial, unimportant and irrelevant points such as “Have you seen Trump’s crazy hair? No one with that kind of hair can be a good president!” Sadly, I’m not kidding. That’s an actual statement that one of the teachers made! Teachers also take digs at President Trump without mentioning him by name. These actions by ALHS teachers continue to be more and more disturbing as I hear about and see them.

When I was in eighth grade, I had a teacher that, while we were discussing the topic of immigration, gave us an assignment that asked what we thought should happen with all the illegal immigrants in the US. Immediately after handing out the assignment, she said that if any of us put “deport all of them,” she would call our parents down to the high school, sit us in the dean’s office and have a discussion with our parents because there’s “something seriously wrong with us.” What’s the point of asking for our opinion if there’s a wrong answer? As far as I know, no one was planning to put that as their answer. Thankfully, this teacher is no longer employed at the high school.

During the 2018 midterms, then-candidate Tim Walz and state house candidate Terry Gjersvik were invited to Southwest Middle School. Why? It would have been OK if they were already in office, and visiting to see how they could help. That’s not why they were there. They were there to fill the minds of students with far left liberal beliefs.

It is time for the ALHS teachers to realize that we will not listen to their political bias. We are not immature for being Republicans, and we are not part of the problem. They know that what they are doing is wrong. If they are reading this, they know who they are, and I want them to know that I look forward to seeing them in the fall, hopefully bias free.

Aaron Farris is the secretary of the Freeborn County Republican Party. He is the party’s youngest activist.