Parents are now “domestic terrorists,” according to the National School Boards Association.
The NSBA has since apologized for the statement, and rightly so.
The reality is far different. Leftist school boards — not parents — are threatening education in America.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, children transitioned to online schooling. Suddenly, parents saw, like never before, what their children were learning: bizarre theories about sexuality, racial identity, and gender.
As the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin once said, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
The public school system has already started to tear the nation apart with critical race theory, which argues that America is dominated by white supremacy, and opposes the idea of western liberalism.
The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in America, voted to conduct opposition research against groups that oppose teaching critical race theory, such as the Heritage Foundation, this summer. The same union voted down a resolution to “re-dedicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning” in 2019.
But of course, teachers aren’t pushing critical race theory in the classroom, according to American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Unions are simply preparing to sue anyone who tries to stop them from teaching their version of “honest history.”
Despite Weingarten’s denial, schools are pushing critical race theory. In fact, Oregon’s statewide curriculum reveals that this divisive ideology, with a stamp of approval from many school boards, is even being taught to elementary schoolers.
The state’s 2021 Social Science Standards mandate the teaching of “ethnic studies” beginning in kindergarten and continuing through high school. Starting in third grade, students learn about “systems of power, including white supremacy, institutional racism, racial hierarchy, and oppression.”
The leftist agenda in education expands even farther than race, reaching as far as gender, abortion, and sexuality.
In an “LGBTQ Inclusive Classrooms K-5” presentation, the Oregon Teachers Training Institute partnered with the Oregon Department of Education to train teachers in gender ideology.
The presentation claimed that “colonialism (in the U.S.: white, European, Christian, etc.) has attempted to erase vibrant and culturally unique understandings of gender.”
The presentation also educated teachers on terms such as “pansexual,” “genderqueer,” “asexual,” “gender-expansive,” “queer,” and “non-binary.”
On a slide entitled “Let’s Hear from Parents,” OTTI showed teachers a video called “Jodie Patterson on Raising a Transgender Child in the Black Community.”
The training also cites Advocates for Youth, a pro-abortion group that supports Planned Parenthood.
In fact, the Portland-area Beaverton School District derives its entire sex-ed curriculum from Advocates for Youth. The district also adopted its own health standards, which include teaching kindergarteners about HIV/AIDS prevention, “potentially unsafe body fluids,” and gender identity.
School boards are local powers with the ability to institute their own curricular standards. Local school boards could choose to resist extreme curriculum from the state level, but instead, they choose to push it even further.
“After our experience with sex education curriculum, it was apparent that the school board does not listen to its community,” Oregon parent Kim Walters said.
School districts often play the blame game to avoid taking responsibility for pushing their agenda in place of education, she said.
“The state level likes to say ‘Each district has local control, it isn’t up to us,’ and then the school board likes to blame the state for things they are ‘forced’ to implement,” Walters said. “School boards have way more wiggle room than they like to admit.”
Make no mistake: the public education bureaucracy is tearing American society apart.
Leftist school boards have a clear agenda: advance division at all costs and enable political revolution. This is the goal of Marxism.
Parents are fighting back. Republican Glenn Youngkin won the election for Virginia governor Tuesday night after campaigning on parental control of education. The state has become a point of national controversy in recent months, as parents have protested the Loudoun County School Board for allegations of sexual assault and teaching critical race theory.
Hillsdale College has a history of fighting to save the union. When the Confederacy seceded, denying that all men are created equal, Hillsdale students joined the fight. Today, as Marxism sows division, we must meet the challenge.
So, leftist school boards: parents aren’t threatening America, you are.