The Trojan Horses of Education
Last time I described what I could find about the “Quiet Revolution” plan for medicine through the eyes and minds of the Bravewell Collaborative and Christy Mack, wife of the multi-millionaire or billionaire CEO John Mack. The idea seemed two-pronged; “humanize” physicians and medicine generally, and integrate folkway, sectarian and “alternative” methods into the system. What bothered me more, having become inured to patient philandering with quackery, was the brazen attempt to re-educate physicians and indoctrinate students into the political and social views of wealthy idealists. The entry below, one might conclude, has little to do with medical quackery and pseudoscience, but I beg your indulgence for this series as I attempt to connect dots between the stalls of the seemingly unrelated steeds of political indoctrination in universities and the proposed med school re-education camps of Bravewell. For several years a controversy has roiled at the University of Delaware over a program of educational activities for the dorms called Residence Life. The program structures student time with a number of usual activities – games, talks, discussion groups – but the content of the discussion groups and interpersonal counseling upset some students, who complained to an off-campus conservative organization, and got to the attention of faculty, which pressured the administration to stop the program last fall.
To outsiders such as we, the program looked like a feel-good, beneficent guidance tools. To the complaining students and critics the discussions seemed more like indoctrination groups, with political agendas taking on disguised roles as helpful guidance for student angst. Students complained about invasion of their privacy through group and leader pressures, and the faculty saw indoctrination and invasion of their educational duties (turf) by student counselors bearing ideological messages with little qualification.