The public school system is beyond repair, and amazingly, parents don’t seem to notice or care. It all needs to change - the awareness, the caring, and most of all, the system itself.
At the core of the problem, educational programs are guided by social justice theory and therefore reforms within classrooms and districts are guided by a revolutionary lens of racial reckoning and economic redistribution. As social justice cannot be reconciled with facts, science, or merit, this is ripping apart the very notion of traditional learning expectations. Part 1 of this series explored that conundrum vis-a-vis student management and the physical harm your child faces when they attend school. As it stands, actual student violence is tolerated at the same time as a traditional pedagogical, let alone conservative, philosophy is deemed dangerous. Up is now down.
In the second installment of this series, we dive into an overview of what a typical student can be expected to learn once they leave the confines of your America-loving, God-centered, and traditional values-focused home. Spoiler: It’s not good.
At its core, social justice theory has multiple targets. Racism is the most well known, with the concurrent threads of anti-racist work and conversations around white privilege, but capitalism is equally seen as poisonous to leftist tenets. The term “Marxist” might sound alarmatory and extreme, but it is 100% accurate. The work being done does not occur in isolation, and the “work” centers around the typical banners of race, class, and gender, with every so-called oppressed group, including blacks, women, the poor, the disabled, immigrants, whatever. They just need anyone and anything to fight the monolithic White Man. (You know, because all whites, and especially all white males, are just living their best lives at the expense of everyone else).
On the front to combat racism, the claim goes that American public schools are the by-product of white culture, a remnant of how white men needed a way to perpetuate their white power and dominance in society. Public schools therefore reinforce whiteness by exacting the characteristics of it. This includes hard work, adhering to the scientific model, merit-based success, and proper English. If it sounds silly, that’s because it is.
On the battleground for economic transformation, there is also the belief peddled that schools, as we know them, were established so that the selfish capitalists could ensure a steady flow of mind-numbed automatons. Insofar as the rise in factories coincided with the establishment of public schools, the claim is now made that greedy free marketers saw an opportunity to manipulate students to prepare for life at the helm of a monotonous machine by expecting obedience from them in school. Therefore, when students are expected to sit still in class or work quietly, what teachers are really asking is for compliance in preparation for their life as thoughtless worker bees.
Nowadays, any notion of compliance and “blindly” following simple teacher directions are expectations of this whiteness, both in their feature of allowing whites to remain unchallenged atop the hierarchy and in continuing the legacy of capitalist greed. Did you know that you were perpetuating all of your white economic privilege by demanding respect and politeness from you child?
What no one ever admits is the fact that many successful adults are successful precisely because they were productive students along the lines of working hard, taking responsibility for their schooling, and interacting appropriately with teachers and peers. Moreover, even leftist bumpkins’ actions indicate they want them when it benefits them. I don’t care what we call that - good traits are good traits. For any leftist that believes or promotes this bilge that only white culture values hard work and intelligence, the next time you’re on a plane or getting a medical consult, unless you choose the drunk illiterate black woman to be your pilot or doctor, then you are completely full of it. I guarantee when you show up expecting a professional outcome, you are looking for all of those white traits to present themselves. Why do we pretend these are bad things in school?
Can you imagine if all white people, in whatever public role they fulfill professionally, just began acting in a manner opposite of all of those so-called white traits when they interacted with everyone else. Customer complaints would jam the system! And ironically, they’d be called racists. You can’t win. So, do they really want to abolish whiteness, or are they just making noise?
Many teachers also live in the communities they serve. When the social order devolved into lawlessness in American streets this past June, there were white staff in many schools who expressed justifiable concern for their own children, families, and homes in staff debriefings and check ins. After all, they are caring people who want to be safe and secure. Isn’t that the complaint blacks have with police interactions? They don’t feel safe? Well, this was received by school leaders of color as a manifestation of their white privilege. Our black families don’t feel safe all the time, they said. Just like the examples in Part 1 about students punching adult staff, apparently being white and wanting to be safe are mutually exclusive, lest the woke crowd call you out for voicing your privilege.
Who could forget when the chairperson of the Minneapolis city council appeared on CNN earlier this summer and said her expectation of safety during the height of protests was her white privilege? These people are insane, and also hypocritical. When her own home was vandalized a month later, she immediately called the police (whom she voted to dismantle) and expressed disappointment that people would engage in such nefarious behavior. The same goes for Chicago’s sanctimonious mayor, Lori Lightfoot, who won’t allow the protests on her streets even though the rest of the city burns. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t even begin to explain how these people wrestle with such pathology.
As insane as it seems, these philosophies play out exactly this way in front of children. The messages of racial consciousness, white privilege, and the rest of the insipid platitudes toward people of color ultimately mean that your child cannot learn math, literacy, grammar and history without a complete infusion of social justice. Math is just a reflection of the whiteness spoken about earlier; since there is only one “right” answer, it is just an exercise in limiting one’s critical thinking. The attempt to change the elemental understanding of mathematical properties is downright Orwellian. Proper grammar is inherently racist (apparently it is not racist to suggest that black people are incapable of speaking like everyone else).
English class, once full of Alighieri, Goethe, Hugo, Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain, is being overcorrected to make sure that the race and sex of the author is given more weight than the historical or cultural weight of the content. Are students more equipped to analyze literature and understand the human condition now that they removed Shakespeare in favor of a contemporary black lesbian women? Reasonable minds would concur with a resounding “no.”
Social science classes as a whole have devolved into community conversations about social justice issues. In and of itself, conversation, and by extension debate, is a fantastic exercise. Most readers will probably recall an experience during school-age years where a room was split into two, with opposing viewpoints sat across from one another and taking turns defending their position. Debate is not only healthy (see: cancel culture), it helps to develop a more mature and nuanced opinion on matters. It might even change open minds, and isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t we accept the best answer?
Alas, such openness is no longer tolerated. Where once a back-and-forth existed, now only one-sidedness does. For starters, all topics are introduced as problems. Policing, particularly in black communities? The criminal justice system? America’s COVID response? Gender wage gap? Abortion? Trump as president? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, apocalyptic. There is no such thing as competing ideas nor the concept of searching the best possible solution in a world with no perfect answers. Now, as any thinking person sees regularly in the media or political sphere, there are immaculate leftist articulations and then there are Fascist Trumpian Tweets.
As devout leftists, why would school leaders and teachers waste their time on the intellectual tug-of-war when they are so clearly right, and we are so clearly wrong?
While teachers may introduce this filth, students are equally given a space to lead with their voice. What that means is that even if a teacher does want to review Chapter Ten from the autobiography of Fredick Douglass and discuss its implications in its historical context and how those words might resound today, a student can easily hijack the conversation and stress that discussing the current social ills of society is more pressing than the words of Douglass, who despite overcoming bondage and illiteracy, nevertheless exuded whiteness because he advocated for working within the system outlined by the Constitution.
As there is no recourse for countering leftism - only with further leftism - at this point the teacher is powerless and needs to submit to the greater leftist need. To silence the student is to be an oppressor and thus perpetuating whiteness in schools. Gasp! Never mind that the student could be white, because then the intersectional demands would still find a way to be aggrieved. Is the student a female? Consider it an example of the patriarchy showing up in schools. Is the student an English Language Learner? Just one more example of American bigotry and intolerance. Is the student gay, lesbian, or trans? Chalk it up to a violent cis heteronormative school culture.
That railroaded conversation would only end if a second student voice took it a step further by demanding a die-in that lasted eight minutes and forty-six seconds.
Timmy, what did you do in school today? We laid on the floor for almost nine minutes. Can you read yet? No, but I was told America is bad and that I somehow made it just a little bit better today. Oh, maybe we’ll find you a different school for 2nd grade.
The single worst offense in education, and that is saying a lot, is the rewriting of American history. Many readers will no doubt be familiar with the 1619 Project. It is a shameless and dangerous manipulation of history that, if disseminated, will certainly spell doom for America. Quite simply, no country can expect to surivive if its own citizens see it as an accomplice to murder and villainry. A short denunciation of its many historical inaccuracies can be found here.
As with all other facets of the Maoist reeducation occuring in our tax-payer and government-mandated schooling, history is being redefined in a Machiavellian fashion to meet the goals of fundamentally transforming society.
As part of the larger message to students that America is evil, this historical dumpster fire contends that America is evil because it was founded on the backs of slaves by white men. Note that it is able to touch upon the talking points of today’s Democrat Party. America is and always has been both sexist and racist.
Major urban centers across the country are already incorporating the 1619 Project into their curriculum. As always, it makes sense to have school content reflective of a particular school’s demographics. If a school is predominantly Hispanic, students should be reading texts by Hispanic authors. The same goes for black students being immersed in more engaging content by black authors. That being said, the left always goes too far, so instead of making important additions to the curriculum, it decided to go nuclear and reimagine learning from an intellectual wasteland.
Most commonly, these inculcative measures are assumed to occur in high schools, where students have the deluded sense of world-awareness and orientation towards justice as they are led to define it. This could not be further from the truth. To wit, familiarize yourself with a few books your kindergarten student can expect to be read or your 6th grader can expect to be assigned. The full list from which these titles were procured can be seen here, but by no means is this list exhaustive of the damaging literature being assigned to your young one.
All The Colors We Are: The Story Of How We Get Our Skin Color/Todos los colores de nuestra piel: La historia de por qué tenemos diferentes colores de piel. Among other things, the book’s focus is on anti-bias, anti-racism, and explaining the role skin color plays in society. Nothing like teaching 5-year-olds they are either privileged or oppressed by their peers.
IntersectionAllies: We Make Room For All. According to a Pre-K teacher in New Jersey, she likes this book because it’s written in a rhyming way that’s pleasing to the ear, but then also has a powerful message of intersectional feminism as well as smaller stories of students identifying as gender fluid, disabled, or language learner.
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Black Boy. This one is aimed at first- through third-grade students. The complaint in society is that we negatively portray black males - in interactions with police, in the criminal justice system, as the loud and unruly kids in schools - this book seeks to provide a light on all the good things they do. It doesn’t change the fact that black male students are statistically likelier to engage in loud and unruly behaviors, or commit most violent crimes and thus necessitate greater police involvement in their lives, but hey, now you know some of the good things happening, too.
Harbor Me. This young adult novel “brings in many aspects of the injustices Black and brown people face,” according to a small bookshop owner that recommends this book. Nothing like cramming the narrative of racial oppression on impressionable and developing young people.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. This is the watered-down of a title of the same name by Ibram X. Kendi, the truly scary czar of antiracist work. This man has so much hate in his heart for white folk he’s like the evil knight Kato from The Land of Faraway. As with all of Kendi’s work, the book goes into great detail about how awful America is, how it was founded on racism and slavery, and how if white people had the chance they would enslave black people all over again. The only thing your kid is learning from this “non-fiction” is how to grow up and aspire to be like the clueless brats in Portland throwing Molotov cocktails.
These are just a few samples of books your little ones will likely encounter in school. It goes without saying that the learning of whiteness does not stop at these books, either; the message of privilege and antiracism is constant throughout the day and embedded in the curriculum. These books simply highlight tangible teaching points.
All of this - books, curricular goals, expectations in class, mindsets - passes for “education” today. The most absurd feature of it is that it is not only condoned but celebrated by district leaders. School administrators, blinded by their singular purpose and lacking meaning in their lives outside of pathetic activism, encourage students to rise up and give power to their voice. They keep asking themselves: What is the purpose of school? And instead of arriving at an answer of something like, enabling students to become independently successful and equipped with basic skills that they can use as adults, they prefer to see the world through a prism of carnage and oppression, and that the only purpose of the school system is to create mini-Leninites that will take America back to the dark ages.
What does this mean for you?
As a parent, you need to become informed. Ask the people in your child’s district, the superintendent, director of curriculum, principal, and the classroom teacher, a few guiding questions:
What is the role social justice theory plays in your school philosophy and/or curriculum?
What are the school’s responses to student misbehavior?
How would you handle a question or comment in class that is supportive of President Trump or the Christian faith?
I notice you are considering Ibram X. Kendi as a credible source for learning history. What other sources do you use to teach American history that offers a researched and competing perspective on our founding and achievements?
Do you permit teachers to express their [usually leftist] political views, including support for Black Lives Matter?
What role do you see race playing in the design of instruction and in informing your classroom instruction, as well as teacher development?
At any point, if the response leans towards affirming any social justice initiative, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, and an awareness that the United States is inherently racist, you can expect your child to learn to hate you, the family model you’ve created, and the country as a whole. In ten years, when this child returns from college, don’t expect a hug from them. Instead, you can expect them to criticize every loving action you’ve taken, which concludes with “you allowed systemic racism to continue!”
As I stated before: Now you know.
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