Woke is everywhere now
It's worse than you could have possibly imagined
In my previous post, we saw how critical consciousness is the latest iteration of communist indoctrination, that it means having class consciousness in solidarity with other classes, that it's a synonym for the colloquial term woke and that it's a euphemism for radicalisation.
I promised to document the many instances of critical consciousness and widespread this idea has become. To be honest, I could spend a whole week doing this and not even make a dent. I would encourage you to do your own research - once you understand some of the vocabulary used to describe (hide) these ideas, they're easy to find.
Let's get into it. We can start with the National Center for Biotechnology Information (USA), why not. Their core mission is bio-statistics.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
Sounds intetresting and useful. Surely something as specific and scientific as this can’t be woke?
The education system has been heralded as a tool of liberation and simultaneously critiqued as a tool of social control to maintain the oppressive status quo. Critical consciousness (CC), developed by the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, advanced an educational pedagogy to liberate the masses from systemic inequity maintained and perpetuated by process, practices and outcomes of interdependent systems and institutions.
- Critical Consciousness: A Critique and Critical Analysis of the Literature, The National Center for Biotechnology Information (emphasis mine)
Oh great, they’re spending American tax payers’ money on advancing critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is even in the title and they even mention Paulo Freire by name. You couldn’t make it up. But wait, there’s more!
Critical consciousness, or its derivative, transformative potential, could be used to inform the structure and content of urban education to address oppressive conditions for those most impacted
- Critical Consciousness: A Critique and Critical Analysis of the Literature, The National Center for Biotechnology Information (emphasis mine)
They even helpfully provide the new name for critical consciousness - transformative potential. Good to know, I’ll have to go and look that one up. I cant wait to see what new horrors that will reveal. (Notice the keyword transform which you may remember from my previous posts was a favourite of Lenin and Freire.) Anyway, nothing to be concerned about, it’s only a public health body for the world’s largest democracy promoting communist indoctrination. As it happens, the same institution published an even more insane paper.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased attention to the critical mathematical literacy of citizens in the United States and around the world. A statistically and mathematically literate society is crucial for ensuring that citizens are able to sift through political rhetoric to maintain life-saving procedures such as social distancing and other infection dampening efforts. Additionally, recent civil unrest due to the disproportionate killings of Black men by police provokes investigation into the public’s mathematical literacy. In this paper, we investigate adolescent students’ critical mathematics consciousness and mathematics literacy as they reason through two interview tasks on the coronavirus and police shooting data. Drawing on Frankenstein’s program of Critical Mathematics Education, we introduce an analytic framework for documenting the critical mathematics consciousness of adolescent students.
- People use math as a weapon: critical mathematics consciousness in the time of COVID-19, The National Center for Biotechnology Information (emphasis mine)
There’s so much going on here, it’s hard to get your head around. Firstly, a reminder that the core mission of this organisation is to do bio-statistics on genome processing (and stuff like that). I guess COVID might just about be in scope. Or it would be if they were actually sequencing its genome. They get off to bad start with the title of their paper describing math as a weapon, which is incredibly weird framing. But then they go off the deep end about critical mathematical literacy and how it somehow relates to social distancing. And then seamlessly switch to police killings of black men, as if that’s somehow related. And to top it all off, they cite someone who’s literally called Dr. Frankenstein. I mean, this has to be a joke! Or maybe a hoax? I’m actually crying with laughter. I think I need to lie down for a bit. I would encourage you to read the whole thing, it really is something to behold.
Once you’ve recovered from that absolute catastrophe of a paper, let’s head over to the National Science Teaching Association (USA). Their core mission is to improve science and technology education. A noble goal.
We are a dedicated and passionate community of professionals, who believe that an appreciation for science can be fostered in every student and a passion for professional growth lies within every educator. Our vision is a world where science literacy and education are recognized as vital to the future of our society and each member of our team—staff and leadership alike—strives to make that vision a reality.
Well that sounds pretty good - I might even sign up. Oh wait, what’s this?
Critical consciousness is an important dimension of integrated science and engineering, or STEM, learning. Education is never neutral—it either supports students in conforming to the status quo, or it engages youth in a practice of liberation (Friere 1971/2000). Critical consciousness calls attention to how learning involves an awareness of understanding how inequality operates in society, including its structural roots, and the agency to engage in action toward social transformation. It is a powerful way to connect classrooms and communities toward the goals of justice-oriented STEM education (Upadhyay et al. 2021).
- Critical Consciousness in Engineering for Sustainable Communities, National Science Teaching Association (emphasis mine)
Critical consciousness, Freire, justice-oriented? They’ve also gotten into communist indoctrination! Don’t worry, they’re just the world’s leading associate for STEM education with over 40,000 members that are actively involved in childrens’ education on a massive scale.
Let’s turn next to the National Science Foundation (USA). I wonder what they do?
The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories.
NSF was established in 1950 by Congress to:
Promote the progress of science.
Advance the national health, prosperity and welfare.
Secure the national defense.
- National Science Foundation (emphasis original)
Secure the national defense - sounds important. I’m sure they’re serious, responsible people. Hang on, what’s this article they published?
Engineering students in the U.S. commonly receive instruction concerning a limited subset of what constitutes social responsibility. Indeed, research reveals that students fail to recognize and analyze real inequity challenges as they arise in engineering contexts. This is troubling as history is filled with examples of engineering projects that have exacerbated inequality— particularly along racial and social class lines. To address these issues, engineering programs need to be able to assess and measure progress in students’ critical consciousness. Towards this goal, this study describes the development of a Critical Consciousness Scale for Civil Engineering Education (CCSCEE). Critical consciousness centers on how people understand and analyze how power and oppression operate to inform what steps they take to work towards more just, equitable relations. The CCSCEE instrument provides a way to assist engineering instructors in assessing if students are becoming more socially aware engineers. Additionally, CCSCEE provides an alternative and reflective way to help students learn and achieve ABET’s professional learning outcomes. The paper provides an overview of the four domains/constructs for CCSCE including obliviousness (no awareness of inequalities), deficit-minded (awareness of inequalities but finding them as justifiable), misguided (awareness of inequalities but actions taken have unintended negative consequences), and critically consciousness (awareness of inequalities and actions takes are focused on root causes and expertise of those impacted by inequalities). The CCSCE will be tested with undergraduate civil engineering students during the summer and fall of 2020.
- Development of a Critical Consciousness Instrument for Civil Engineers, National Science Foundation (emphasis mine)
So the National Science Foundation is now spending its precious taxpayer resources on indoctrinating civil engineers. Seriously, civil engineers! They even describe the radicalisation pipeline of how they’ll take students from obliviousness (normal and sane with an interest in civil engineering) to critical consciousness (total nut-jobs who couldn’t care less about civil engineering). But not to worry, they’re only the people that build bridges and skyscrapers and stuff. I mean, does it really matter if a few of those collapse here and there?
In case you thought it was just the USA that’s gone insane and you were somehow safe, let’s head over to the UK to see what’s happening there. If it’s one thing you can be proud of, as a Brit, (apparently) it’s the NHS (National Health Service). I guess that means you should also be proud of its subsidiaries such as the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research). They guide the best practices for the NHS after all.
We fund, enable and deliver world-leading health and social care research that improves people's health and wellbeing, and promotes economic growth.
Good quality health care is a positive for everyone. I’m sure this is something we can all get behind.
One way in which clinical teachers can promote an integrated approach to patient care that is able to effectively challenge health inequalities is through adopting a critical approach to education. This involves fostering the development of critical consciousness amongst learners.
Critical consciousness is a concept that was developed by Brazilian philosopher, Paulo Freire, who advocated for critical pedagogy (an approach to teaching) as a way of empowering individuals to effect societal change through awareness and questioning of power and privilege.15 Critical consciousness goes beyond traditional notions of cultural competence (focused on developing competencies and knowledge of particular patient groups) to concentrating on deeper levels of self-awareness and understanding of the social, cultural, historical and even emotional dynamics in health care.16 For learners, deeper levels of awareness involve critical reflection on how power and privilege manifest within health care: both an awareness of one's own power as a health care professional and an external awareness of how minoritised patients hold little power within health care systems. Critical consciousness also entails deep and sustained exploration of biases and values at the root of health inequalities and engaging in action to achieve societal change
- Supporting critically conscious integrated care: A toolbox for the health professions, National Institute for Health and Care Research (emphasis mine)
Oh look, it’s the same shit. And here’s our friend, Paulo Freire again. Amazing, he gets everywhere! This might be a good opportunity to remind yourself of some of the insightful things he said about education.
So it appears that the National Health Service of the UK is also involved in communist indoctrination. And just like the National Science Foundation they’ll convert medical students exhibiting obliviousness (normal and sane with an interest in treating patients) to ones with critical consciousness (total nut-jobs who couldn’t care less about treating patients). But don’t panic, it’s not like this is an institution with a monopoly on healthcare in a major Western country or anything. And this is only healthcare we’re talking about, it’s not exactly life or death!
What about medical research in the university sector? That’s independent from government, right? Maybe they’re doing some quality work regardless of what the NHS is up to?
Based at UCL, one of the world’s leading research universities, our primary outputs are scholarly monographs and edited collections, but we also publish textbooks, journals and other innovative research outputs. Our books have been accessed more than 5 million times by readers across the world.
Pretty impressive. Viewed by more than 5 million people. That’s quite some reach they have. Let’s take a look at some of this leading research, shall we?
In this article, we describe the pioneering efforts to decolonise the undergraduate medical curriculum at UCL Medical School (UCLMS), London, by a group of clinician educators and students, with the aim of training emerging doctors to treat diverse patient populations equitably and effectively. Throughout this process, students, faculty and members of the public acted as collaborative ‘agents of change’ in co-producing curricula, prompting the implementation of several changes in the UCLMS curriculum and rubric. Reflecting a shift from a diversity-oriented to a decolonial framework, we outline three scaffolding concepts to frame the process of decolonising the medical curriculum: epistemic pluralism, cultural safety and critical consciousness. While each of these reflect a critical area of power imbalance within medical education, the utility of this framework extends beyond this, and it may be applied to interrogate curricula in other health-related disciplines and the natural sciences. We suggest how the medical curriculum can privilege perspectives from different disciplines to challenge the hegemony of the biomedical outlook in contemporary medicine – and offer space to perspectives traditionally marginalised within a colonial framework. We anticipate that through this process of re-centring, medical students will begin to think more holistically, critically and reflexively about the intersectional inequalities within clinical settings, health systems and society at large, and contribute to humanising the practice of medicine for all parties involved.
- Decolonising the Medical Curriculum‘: Humanising medicine through epistemic pluralism, cultural safety and critical consciousness, UCL Press (emphasis mine)
This is all starting to sound familiar. Almost tedious. More communist indoctrination. In case you don’t fluently speak communist word-salad, let me translate this for you - tribal witch-doctors are just as good as modern medical doctors and we need more of them. I wish I was joking. In case you’re wondering where the reference to Paulo Freire is, don’t worry it was just a bit further down in the article.
The concept of ‘critical consciousness’, developed and popularised by the Brazilian educator, philosopher and activist Paulo Freire (1973), integrates critical theory with pedagogy and social justice within a three-component formulation: (1) critical social analysis and reflection; (2) political efficacy, that is, perceived ability to enact political change; and (3) participation in civic and political action, that is, praxis
- Decolonising the Medical Curriculum‘: Humanising medicine through epistemic pluralism, cultural safety and critical consciousness, UCL Press (emphasis mine)
You don’t think they’d forget Paulo, do you!
Where shall we head to next? Let me just spin the giant wheel of insane woke bullshit and see where it lands…and we’re heading over to Australia! The weather’s great at this time of year though watch out for all the poisonous animals. Surely those brash Australians wouldn’t suffer any of this nonsense? Unlike the UK, I’m sure their universities teach useful things. Like Bond University who specialise in applied subjects such as Architecture and Business, Commerce and Entrepreneurship and Actuarial Science and Data Analytics. Sounds like my kind of university where students graduate into adult life with actually useful skills.
A deliberately different university
This isn’t your standard university experience. At Bond, you will embark upon a transformational journey to realise your potential – and stand out in your career.
Sounds good. Although I’m uneasy about the use of the word transformational. Having said that, normal people use that word too so maybe it’s just an innocent coincidence?
Law Reform and Critical Consciousness is an elective subject in undergraduate programs offered by the Faculty of Law. This introductory level interdisciplinary subject critically evaluates law and the role of lawyers in the context of our contemporary global challenges and opportunities. Students will explore and critique the nature of the legal mindset and the dominant networks and norms that inform law’s current logic and values. The subject assesses notions of rationality, objectivity, sustainability and equity in law…Adopting best-practice with a diverse stakeholder and inter-disciplinary perspective, students will ultimately develop an informed, practical and principled skill set for effecting law reform.
- LAWS13-122: Law Reform and Critical Consciousness (emphasis mine)
It’s not a coincidence! They’re even worse! They’ve gone further and have actually got an undergraduate course fully dedicated to communist indoctrination. In other words, it’s so entrenched that it’s solidified as a specific undergraduate course.
Since we’re Down Under, let’s nip over to New Zealand. That’s a notoriously beautiful and friendly place. It’s also highly remote so maybe all this woke communist stuff hasn’t made it there yet?
Decolonising education
Engage in a critically conscious curriculum both for yourself and for your students. What is critical consciousness? Critical consciousness involves:
reflecting critically on the imbalance of power and resources in society
taking critical action in the pursuit of equity
disrupting the status quo to address oppression and strengthen equity.
Taking action
Conscientisation is becoming aware of the part I play in keeping things the same. How I support the status quo, how I perpetrate that. And becoming very conscious of how and why I am doing that and what are the implications of my actions.
… Conscientisation may make me aware but if I’m not going to do anything with that thinking, I’m of very little help to Māori students. Resistance is the “doing” following the disruption to my practice on account of the conscientisation.
Wow, it seems that New Zealand is even further along this path than other countries. This is the Ministry of Education (i.e. the direct government) very explicitly using taxpayer money to get communist indoctrination into schools. The use of language is much more explicit and aggressive than the previous examples. Disrupting, perpetrate, resistance, disruption. This really is not good. If I were a parent in New Zealand (which I am) then I would be very curious about what they’re teaching my kids (which I am). I might even try to get on to the school board so I can see behind the scenes and maybe even steer the school away from radicalising the children.
Well I’m tired of travelling around all these different countries. I’m just going to go for all of them at once. Let’s see what the folks at the United Nations have to say! Maybe Carlos Alberto Torres, former UNESCO Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, can talk some sense into these lunatics?
It starts by considering the phenomena of globalization and the UN Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), which aims at furthering global citizenship, to highlight the relationship between GCE, “global-peace”, global commons, and common good. Building on the assumption that GCE should be about learners’ emancipation toward critical consciousness, the dialogue concludes drawing a parallel between the “mission” of GCE in contemporary educational institutions and Paulo Freire’s notion of critical consciousness.
- Global citizenship education at the crossroads: Globalization, global commons, common good, and critical consciousness, Carlos Alberto Torres (emphasis mine)
They’re at it too. In fact, they’re probably upstream on this issue. But wait a second, his name sounds familiar. Could it be? Yes, that’s it - he was the main speaker at Cambridge University’s Paulo Freire Centenary festival from my first post!
It will open with an introduction to Freire’s legacy presented by Professor Ana Maria Saul (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo) who worked with Freire when he was Municipal Secretary for Education in the city of São Paulo in the 1980s and 90s; and Professor Carlos Alberto Torres, a distinguished political sociologist, one of the founders of the Paulo Freire Institute, and his principal biographer.
- Faculty of Education News, Cambridge University (emphasis mine)
And we’ve come full circle and are right back where we started. It turns out that the United Nations might love Paulo Freire even more than Cambridge University! They even appointed Freire’s official biographer as their education chair. You’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry.
Let’s recap. This article could have been hundreds of pages long. I used less than half of the links I prepared during my research for this article which only took me about ten minutes. Even just the ones I documented here should be deeply concerning. But ask yourself this: if it’s made its way from the social sciences and humanities into things like math, science, medicine, civil engineering and business education then where wouldn’t you expect to find it? I think the answer is obvious. Almost nowhere. In other words, it’s almost everywhere.
Thank you so much for these posts. I have been looking for something concise but detailed enough to show a friend who thinks I’ve become a “UN conspiracy theorist”. He doesn’t understand the extent to which the philosophical underpinnings of this push to woke is completely orchestrated from the top down.