A new report from Defending Education shows the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Learning for Justice program contains educational materials to indoctrinate children into leftist and sexualized ideologies.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center has been poisoning pupils’ minds around the country for years with its toxic curriculum,” Defending Education President Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital.
Neily explained the SPLC’s effect on education, saying, “Issues such as queer theory, white privilege, and anti-racism have supplanted traditional coursework in history, social studies, and other core classes.”
The SPLC is infamous for targeting Christian and conservative groups with its “HatewatchBlog” and “Hate Map,” as well as its recent indictment by the Department of Justice for fraud and conspiracy, using donor money to pay leaders of racist groups.
But many do not know of its efforts to influence children with false and harmful gender ideology and critical race theory.
The SPLC has been influencing teachers and students for 35 years, introducing its Teaching Tolerance program in 1991. The program was rebranded Learning for Justice in 2021; it promotes identity politics, homosexuality and transgenderism in K-12 classes.
Defending Education is a national grassroots organization that informs parents about harmful agendas in public schools and promotes “the reestablishment of a quality, non-political education for all students.”
For their efforts to improve education and protect parental rights, the SPLC labeled Defending Education “extremist” and listed it on its “Hate Map.”
Defending Education’s exposé, “SPLC Curriculum in K-12,” explains the variety of ways SPLC materials have infiltrated our education system:
The organization’s website and documents can be found on school district webpages, in teacher professional development and trainings, classroom lessons, district-wide curriculums, Social Emotional Learning (SEL), social justice standards, and district antiracism and equity policies and resources.
In its research, Defending Education found 42 states, 189 school districts and 30 state government agencies promote the SPLC’s website and teaching materials. But this list “is not exhaustive,” Defending Education said, adding:
Unfortunately, the true scope of Learning for Justice’s impact on schools and districts is difficult to fully capture due to a lack of public access to curriculums, lessons, and textbooks. Additionally, because of the potential integration of the Social Justice Standards into several popular SEL curriculums, it is hard to track down all districts using the SEL programming that includes those standards.
The SPLC’s extremist education program has influenced many educators, as Family Research Council (FRC) reported in “The SPLC’s Radical Learning for Justice Program,” published in 2021:
The SPLC delivered 900,000 copies of their Teaching Tolerance magazine in 2019 alone. The group’s magazine has been in circulation since 1991. That’s long enough for an entire generation of children influenced by the SPLC agenda to become teachers themselves.
FRC, a conservative, Christian policy organization, was also named a “Hate Group” by the SPLC. That label led to an SPLC supporter entering FRC’s offices in 2012, bent on murdering as many employees there as possible. The building manager stopped the assailant but was shot in the process.
The report from FRC describes Learning for Justice’s (LFJ) emphasis on LGBT ideology:
LFJ has many classroom resources on sexuality and gender. Sexual advocacy is a high priority for LFJ – most often without parental notification. Time and again in the LFJ materials, teachers and administrators are reminded NOT to share information with parents that would “out” a student’s sexuality or gender to their parents. …
Learning for Justice’s “Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students” is a school climate guide that has been mailed to approximately 14,000 school districts in the country.
FRC explains:
The guide includes information on how to have a ‘gender-inclusive’ school dress code; … suggests integrating “Queer Voices” into the curriculum; provides DO’s and DON’T’s for managing a student who ‘comes out” to a teacher at school and offers advice for managing objections from family members or anti-LGBTQ legal organizations.
Learning for Justice also created the “Queer America” podcast for educators, “an exploration of the history of sexual identity and gender identity in the United States.”
Unsurprisingly, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), also push out SPLC educational resources.
The NEA has listed SPLC’s Learning for Justice in a variety of educator resources, including “White Supremacy Culture Resources,” “Racial Justice in Education Resources,” and “Bias Free Schools.”
According to Defending Education, the AFT also “promotes the use of Learning for Justice resources and lessons and has offered presentations to its members on how to integrate the Social Justice Standards into school curriculums and lessons.”
Defending Education lists districts and departments of education that have used or still use Learning for Justice as a teaching resource. The list is not comprehensive, so parents might want to check their school district or department of education’s website to see if the radical program is promoted for use in their child’s school.
Related articles and resources:
Cleaning House at the Southern Poverty Law Center
Defending Education: SPLC Curriculum in K-12: Learning for Justice/Teaching ToleranceTracker
DOJ Indicts SPLC for Fraud — Used Donor Money to Fund Racist Groups
Is ‘Critical Race Theory’ Being Taught in Public Schools? CRT Deniers Claim it Isn’t
Southern Poverty Law Center Finally Names Focus on the Family a Hate Group
SPLC Continues to Label Conservative Christian Organizations as ‘Hate Groups’
What’s Your School District’s ‘Transgender’ Policy?
If you’re concerned about what your child is being taught in school, check out this updated, free resource from Focus on the Family and Family Policy Alliance: Equipping Parents for Back-to-School.