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View Full Version : Teach for America: A Secular Religion




Lucille
09-24-2013, 03:20 PM
Bizarre.

I know I say this all the time, but I really, truly can't wait until the whole filthy system collapses.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/09/mailvox-secular-religion.html


MP emails an account of a woman quitting Teach for America (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/i-quit-teach-for-america/279724/) and notices its similarities to a religion... or a cult:


This is a fascinating account of the religion that is Teach for America and the women that inhabit it. This passage was particularly interesting because it shows the religious nature of the TFA girls:

"I am shifting my weight uncomfortably in a plastic classroom chair on an Atlanta summer afternoon. Our adviser interrupts lunch by asking us to pause to spend a few minutes reflecting on what brought us to TFA in the first place. After the requisite reflection time, and after turning off the room’s lights, Alicia begins to share a story about growing up with a single mother, culminating in an emotional appeal to do whatever we can to help "our kids" in the future. Although I have always found Alicia to be rather stoic, she suddenly begins sobbing when relaying this story. After regaining composure, she makes it clear that we are meant to follow suit. One by one, until the 12th person has spoken, we deliver either tearful accounts of personal hardship or awkward, halting stories recounted by people uncomfortable with the level of intimacy. While talking to other TFA teachers from different schools over dinner, I learn that other groups had nearly identical sessions."

This is the classic "testifying" step in poor fundamentalist Christian church services in which the various converted sinners are invited to testify about their sinful past and how low they were before they "came to Jesus". They recount all the bad things in their past and how it all changed when they "came to Jesus". Each person who is testifying get kudos and respect for how deeply they had fallen and therefore how much farther Jesus raised them from sin and degradation before they were redeemed. Lots of weeping and wailing, and "Praise Jesus!", particularly by the women in the congregations.

It reminded me of accounts I've read of both Womyn's Studies classes and Maoist reeducation sessions. You really have to read the whole thing. It is like music to the ears of those of us who anticipate the collapse of the public school system; one would feel bad for the young women being so perfectly set up to fail if they weren't such a poisonously destructive collection of mindlessly self-perpetuating leftbots.