Fighting for the Next Generation: School Board Elections and Extremist Education Ideology

This is the third in a series of articles about key issues in schools and the importance of engaging in local school board elections. Here are the first and second stories in the series.

In school districts across the country, parents have discovered that administrators are pushing radical ideologies on children of all ages – from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Here are three recent examples:

In Massachusetts, parents with children in Wellesley Public Schools were shocked to find that the district hosted a segregated “healing space” which excluded “students who identify only as White.” Students were also “encouraged to report incidents of discrimination ‘or any concerning pattern of biased behavior’ to any district staff member or a trusted adult,” reported National Review. Parents have now filed a lawsuit against the district “to protect students’ rights to be free of racial discrimination and their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.”
More than 7,554 teachers have signed a pledge to defy laws, passed or being considered in at least 27 states, that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT). The radical, Marxist Zinn Education Project sponsored the initiative and believes this “truth” about the United States of America: It was founded on dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, structural racism and oppression; and structural racism is a defining characteristic of our society today.
After a school superintendent in Ohio said that CRT was not being taught in his school, a student recorded a teacher explaining concepts from the book Stamped, by activist Ibram X. Kendi. The book says that racism was stamped on America from its very beginnings, and it teaches elementary school students that “assimilationists are people who like you only if you act like them,” while anti-racists “love you because you are just you.”

Each of these stories – and there are many more we could share – exemplifies why parents and other concerned citizens should be aware of where school board candidates stand on what children should be taught about these issues.

While many school administrators, teachers and board members are terrific – and many of them are believers – some have a political agenda which they want to impose on school children. Parents should understand that CRT:

Is an activist movement, rooted in radical Marxist ideology.
Views everything in Western Civilization through a narrow lens of race, racism and power.
Holds that the most important thing about you is your race.
Teaches that society is made up of oppressors and the oppressed.
Assumes that racism is ordinary, permanent, everywhere, and unacknowledged in all social institutions.
Through the concept of “intersectionality,” it introduces children to other “identities” based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

CRT can be found in teacher and staff trainings for “diversity, inclusivity and equality.” It is incorporated in some classroom textbooks, resources and curriculum; school library books and internet databases; and supplemental assignments and readings.

One school curriculum that promotes concepts from CRT is the Zinn Education Project. Howard Zinn was a Communist/Anarchist who wrote A People’s History of the United States – a best-selling high school and college textbooks that puts forward a demonstrably false, plagiarized, anti-American view of history. It’s now been adapted for K-12 schools. In 2019, there were over 100,000 educators who were registered to teach the curriculum at the Zinn Education Project.

The New York Times’ “1619 Project” is another example of a harmful curriculum being foisted on schoolchildren. Taught in over 4,500 schools, it teaches that our nation began in 1619, with the first ship bringing slaves to what was to become the United States of America. The Project asserts that the Revolutionary War was primarily fought to preserve slavery.

Christians certainly know the flawed history of our country, but we also know and are grateful for the fact that our nation was founded with many Judeo-Christian values. As Dennis Prager writes, “Every major Founder (again, with the possible exception of Jefferson) believed in the God of the Bible who heard prayer, acted in history, judged people in the hereafter, demanded ethical behavior, and without Whom morality did not objectively exist.”

“Most importantly,” he continues, “they all believed that in order for a functioning democratic republic not to descend into tyranny, it was necessary to link freedom with God.”

School board members are responsible for which view of America will be taught in schools – an ideology rooted in Marxism or one rooted in appreciation for our country and a true understanding of its founding.

That’s why it’s important for concerned citizens to get informed about the issues and vote for board of education candidates who share their values.