Forget about free speech. There's not even freedom of thought for prospective teachers at the University of Minnesota

We read:

"A branch of the University of Minnesota may require all education students at the school to understand and accept that they are either privileged or oppressed and that they be well-versed in issues like "white privilege," "institutional racism” and the "myth of meritocracy in the United States."

Critics are condemning the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which proposes making race, class and gender issues the "overarching framework" of all teaching courses.

The task group, formed as part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative at the state university, aims to change how future teachers are trained, based on the assertion that the teachers' lack of "cultural competence" contributes to minority students' poor grades.

But the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) says the Race, Culture, Class and Gender group is going beyond addressing how teachers are educated and is trying instead to mandate their beliefs and values. "Unlike what many schools of education have in terms of cultural competence, this task group really wants to invade the minds of future teachers and demand that they hold the 'right' values attitudes and beliefs about society, about themselves, and about race, class, culture, and gender, to a degree to which it really violates the freedom of conscience of future teachers," Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program, told FoxNews.com.

Kissel wrote a letter last week urging the university to reject the group's proposal on the premise that "as a public university bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the university is both legally and morally obligated to uphold this fundamental right."

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Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).