One of the most-overlooked realities of the nationwide effort to indoctrinate the nation’s children by pushing far-leftist ideas into its public schools is that in order to influence the kids, you have to first indoctrinate the adults around them. We already see the outworkings of these efforts, but it is also important to understand how it starts.
It starts with the teachers and school staff.
Public school districts across the nation have leveraged training and seminars – typically delivered by expensive consultants – to steep educators and administrators in ideas inspired by critical race theory and progressive gender identity. One of the most recent cases occurred in California. Big surprise there, right?
The Hayward Unified School District (HUSD) paid an education consulting agency called “Woke Kindergarten” $20,000 for an ongoing training program on “anti-racist” and anti-bias curriculum in elementary schools. The contract abstract, obtained by the Washington Examiner, said teachers and staff will “learn how to use Woke Kindergarten’s resources and pedagogical approaches in practice as a way to disrupt whiteness, white dominant/settler colonial narratives and anti-Blackness in the Glassbrook community.”
Sounds just peachy, doesn’t it?
The focus on whiteness is actually one of the easiest ways to debunk those claiming elements of CRT are not being taught in classrooms. The concept of “whiteness” is featured heavily in material written by the theory’s proponents – it comes directly from folks like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell.
The consultancy, based in Maryland, was founded by Akiea Gross, an “abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator” who is “currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create.”
Here’s another shocker: She identifies as a “Black, queer, nonbinary and trans abolitionist” whose pronouns are they/them/nutjob.
Okay, I might have added that last one in there.
According to slides used in the presentation, participants are taught that “liberation is the goal, abolition is the journey.”
It also compares school rules regarding dress and routines to those that are instituted in prisons. The slide says, “school is like prison” because they both use an “authoritarian structure” and “dress codes, require walking in lines, and maintain a regimented schedule for eating and other activities,” according to the Washington Examiner.
“The prison industrial complex manifests in early childhood in a variety of ways and anti-racist teaching and reform just isn’t disruptive enough,” the slide reads.
It’s not only California schools that are indoctrinating their teachers and staff. In June, Tredyfrrin/Easttown School District (TESD) in Pennsylvania hired an educational consultant to provide critical race theory training to educators and staff, according to documents obtained by America First Legal. Some of the material offer explanations about “What is Whiteness” and how CRT can be worked into “Equity/Anti-Racism School Transformation Action Planning.”
It has a slew of training featuring far-leftist ideas on race. This includes one titled “Using Critical Race Theory to Transform Leadership and District,” and “Introduction to the Theory of Transformation and Systematic Racial Equity Framework.”
Fox News reported:
The TESD district website says at least 150 members of school staff have participated in trainings put on by the PEG, including a “two-day seminar designed to foster thoughtful exploration of how race influences culture and climate of our schools and to practice strategies for engaging in conversations around issues related to race.”
Components of the school’s initiative included a “District Executive Equity Leadership Team (DELT),” a “Leadership for Racial Equity Team (LEADS),” a “Site Equity Leadership Teams (E-Teams)” and “Students Organized for Anti-Racism.”
The reason why so many children have been indoctrinated into progressivism is that the left has done an effective job of indoctrinating the adults around them – namely, the teachers that they spend most of their days with. I’ve had several conversations with conservative-leaning teachers and they have told me most of their colleagues have guzzled the progressive Kool-Aid. These people are true believers who think they are doing something helpful for the children in their care.
This will be another area of the battle against the dissemination of radical Marxist ideas in public schools. While we are making progress on the political and legal fronts, we have to also influence those who are charged with teaching our children. Moreover, we must figure out how to compel school districts to reject these indoctrination efforts. Taking over school boards is a viable strategy – but it is a long-term strategy that will take years to yield results. But there could be other ways to prevent those in charge from allowing this type of brainwashing – conservatives would be wise to develop creative solutions.
