Inside the echo chamber...

Currently there seems to be a rippling disruption in the right-wing blogosphere regarding an Arkansas teacher’s recent assignment to have students perform an academic exercise to “rewrite” the Bill of Rights. The text of the assignment is available in several places and, while not exactly perfectly written, clearly suggests, at least to me, a hypothetical case with hypothetical parameters. The use of hypotheticals is a common tool for teachers. I know because I used them a great deal (and to good effect) in my classrooms. Perhaps this teacher didn't point this out to students. I don't know.

Anyway, this particular assignment makes the following (I believe hypothetical) statement: the government of the United States is currently revisiting the Bill of Rights. Please note the lack of quotation marks, which is intentional.

Meanwhile across the country, an educational initiative is underway, called Common Core, to standardize curricula across state lines and among states, and is being sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Even as a majority of states have adopted these Common Core standards, a majority of conservative groups are, perhaps not at all surprisingly, criticizing these standards. Moreover, some in the conservative media (Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, among others) have suggested Common Core is a naked power grab by President Barack Obama, referring to it as "Obamacore."

Now, back to the assignment. Doing a simple Google search on the text string, the government of the United States is currently revisiting the Bill of Rights, I found it, verbatim, in the following places: infowars.com, prisonplanet.com, storyleak.com, facepunch.com, personalliberty.com, endtimebibleprophecy.wordpress.com, ashtarcommandcrew.net, grasscity.com, dailycaller.com, 3rdeyevision.wordpress.com, thedailysheeple.com, darkpolitricks.com, oldironsides-thesilentmajorty.blogspot.com, freerepublic.com, abovetopsecret.com, mminutemennews.com, conservativesagainsttyranny.wordpress.com, patdollard.com, beforeitsnews.com, thomhartmann.com, baptistboard.com, askmarion.wordpress.com, rickmick.com, sodahead.com, and drhotze.com… to name just a few.

Almost every one of these sites is commonly viewed as a conservative, right-wing site or blog, with the exceptions perhaps being inforwars.com, beforeitsnews.com, and prisonplanet.com, which to some might qualify as pure wack-job hate sites, but this isn’t my point.

My point is that all these sites and blogs have picked up and run with the “quote” that… the government of the United States is currently revisiting the Bill of Rights (again, please note my lack of quotation marks), and have put it out there as proof undeniable that the US Government is running amok (is there ever another way to run?), that Barack Obama is behind it all, that our rights are being taken away (some are, I admit, but this has been ongoing since the whole “war on terror” began in the last administration and is another issue), that children are being indoctrinated by said government, and that the end times are upon us because of Common Core, Barack Obama, and a falling sky in the form of, God forbid, educational standards.

But let’s be clear. The real source of the assignment's original statement, the government of the United States is currently revisiting the Bill of Rights, is never disclosed in the assignment, further suggesting, at least to me, it’s a hypothetical academic exercise to get students to think critically and to actually read something (in this case the Bill of Rights), which are two fundamental skills that far too many teachers struggle to get students to master. (And raise your hand if you’ve actually read the BofR all the way through yourself. Uh huh… see?)

More importantly however, the true source of the statement (aside from pulling it from the teacher’s assignment) is never offered (or, conversely, questioned) by any of the blog sites or websites on which this statement appears, because there isn't one! And this is exactly the issue: a teacher wants to get students to think critically, even as dozens of conservative bloggers and pundits prove there is a real need for critical thinking skills by not thinking critically, by not questioning if the assignment is a hypothetical exercise, and by, instead,  repeating a statement as if it’s gospel, as if it’s a direct quote from someone in the US Government who is “currently revisiting the Bill of Rights.” Rest easy, dear reader: the echo chamber continues to function perfectly.

My hunch is that this whole assignment imbroglio is a function of all these folks believing yet another Obama-as-tyrant shaggy-dog story, and faithfully repeating it as if its gospel via the echo chamber.