Teachers’ Unions Are Radicalizing Not Educating

 

It is well known that America’s schoolchildren are woefully ignorant of their national history and government. Majorities of young adults no longer feel grateful to be an American, undoubtedly because they fail to comprehend the precious freedoms to which they were born.

So are the teachers’ unions who educate our children concerned about this deplorable situation? Do they have a plan to correct it? You know the answer.

Instead, the National Education Association recently voted to ensure that all American school children are comprehensively taught Critical Race Theory. This is the unscientific notion that white people are inherently, incorrigibly racist and thus America’s foundational values were and are bigotry and racial oppression.

As the NEA puts it, “all K – 12 schools should teach children that White supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigenity, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and anthropocentrism form the foundation of our society.” Furthermore “to deny opportunities to teach truth about Black, Brown and other marginal races minimizes the necessity for students to build efficacy.”

Not sure what that last means, but basically nobody is trying to prevent teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, or the struggles racial minorities have faced. It should be balanced with the recognition that America has come a long way in correcting injustices and that there are boundless reasons to feel pride and love for our country.

The NEA means business. They’re allocating a $70,000 addition to normal operating funds to push CRT. More ominously, they are funding an “opposition research” effort meant to smear parents and organizations opposed to racist propagandizing of their children. Charming.

These same unions also spearheaded the effort to keep schools closed long after it was known that schoolchildren were neither the victims nor spreaders of serious Covid disease. They demanded political favors, like forcing private schools to also close and limiting new charter schools, as the ransom for their return to the work they were being paid to do. Some schools are not open even yet.

The results of their mulish selfishness are trickling in. It’s bad. Students in every grade are failing classes and falling behind.

Preliminary research suggests that students will return with less than 50% of normal learning gains in math and under 70% in other subjects. Since these are averages, disadvantaged and disabled learners will fare even worse. Catching up this much academically is difficult, if not impossible. It will take years, if ever, to undo the damage.

Meanwhile, our nation’s teachers’ unions are doubling down on the effort to turn public schools into centers for radical indoctrination. History is now taught as the ceaseless struggle between oppressors and victims. A substitution of “race” for “class” is the only deviation from classical Marxist theory.

Students in biology are taught that gender is merely a social construct and that they are free to select theirs “don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Math instruction is threatened by “social justice” warriors who deem requiring one correct answer and showing your work to be “white.”

Great literary works are being culled, and our history obliterated, for lack of adherence to modern standards of political correctness. Shakespeare and Steinbeck are among those facing permanent removal.

Some teachers are refusing to teach “To Kill a Mockingbird” because of racist language and the depiction of a “white savior.” That’s rich. Arguably the most influential anti-racist novel of modern times is shunned because Atticus is a decent white man who helps blacks and that doesn’t fit CRT’s malignant stereotypes.

In a few months, they’ve gone from claiming CRT isn’t taught in K-12 to insisting that instruction must be universal. Fortunately, grassroots and parent groups are waking up and fighting back. They should consider resisting not only objectionable courses of instruction, but the politicized education system that creates them.

Clear majorities, Including 75% to 85% of minority parents, favor charter schools and other forms of school choice. Yet there is stiff political resistance to reforms like Educational Savings Accounts, which empower parents. Arizona’s legislative Democrats this session voted unanimously to deny parents these options, thus denying them leverage in their dealings with unresponsive unions and schools.

So is public education meant to benefit the big people or the little people?

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There are 9 comments.

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  1. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    I’ve been saying for 25 years that the most important reform our nation needs is to abolish public schools.  It’s still just as important.  Sadly, rooting out communists and fixing ballot fraud has taken on emergency precedence. 

    • #1
  2. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Can someone please tell me where our way overpaid teachers,  principals and administrators of our public schools have gotten the right to thoroughly and relentlessly indoctrinate our kids in radical, Anti-American thought?

    Have these people not seriously abused our children for decades? Should’nt all these braindead people who run our public schools be prosecuted for their heinous crimes and sent to hoosegow for decades? I know so many parents whose children are now estranged from them specifically because of the indoctrination their kids got at school.   Where  is the justice for these parents and these now brainwashed kids who are often left psychologically traumatized and without the skills to compete effectively in the real world  workplace?

    Instead of the Leftist/Marxist indoctrination that these criminals engage in, can you imagine the enormous pushback and wailing from the rooftops if our schools engaged in a similar indoctrination of the Evangelical Christian religion? Isn’t Marxism the psuedo-reiigon of the Left? Can someone please tell me the difference?

    Isn’t there such a thing as the ‘Equal Protection Clause” in our Constitution? Where is the enforcement of  our equal rights and  a right to an equal say in the education of  our children?

    • #2
  3. Max Knots Member
    Max Knots
    @MaxKnots

    This whole development is deplorable and entirely predictable if you are paying attention. Yes, it’s happening way faster than anyone expected. And no, everyone’s hope that when graduates are exposed to the real world they would mature and forget the nonsense inculcated in college has proven a false hope. Or overly optimistic.

    But I agree – public schools were designed over 100 years ago to produce factory workers who could work to a time clock. We need a different education, a better education than our public institutions are able and willing to provide. Let the money follow the students.  Let schools compete for students. Give poor parents the ability to choose the children’s teachers and schools. Eliminate the teachers unions. They promote and protect the lowest common denominator. Good teachers don’t need their protection. And I say this having known many good teachers, including my mother-in-law!

    • #3
  4. Dotorimuk Coolidge
    Dotorimuk
    @Dotorimuk

    I want them to stop shtupping the kids too. That seems to be trendy these days.

    • #4
  5. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Dotorimuk (View Comment):

    I want them to stop shtupping the kids too. That seems to be trendy these days.

    Well at least we can introduce some parts of Greek tradition. 

    • #5
  6. American Abroad Thatcher
    American Abroad
    @AmericanAbroad

    The problem starts with teacher training and certification.  My teacher certification program was nothing but leftist indoctrination taught by overwhelmingly radical professors, and that is the norm in university education departments.  Even if the NEA doesn’t officially endorse this nonsense, it still creeps into the classroom because that is how teachers are trained.     

    • #6
  7. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    American Abroad (View Comment):

    The problem starts with teacher training and certification. My teacher certification program was nothing but leftist indoctrination taught by overwhelmingly radical professors, and that is the norm in university education departments. Even if the NEA doesn’t officially endorse this nonsense, it still creeps into the classroom because that is how teachers are trained.

    A bigger post on this would be appreciated. Those experiences are useful.

    • #7
  8. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    I don’t understand why grown up states can’t just abolish public education.  Give the money to the kids to go to what ever school they choose. New Zealand did this and in a year went from the bottom of the western schools to the top.  Just do it.  They had to because their funder, the UK, joined the EC.

    • #8
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Tom Patterson: Some teachers are refusing to teach “To Kill a Mockingbird” because of racist language and the depiction of a “white savior.” That’s rich. Arguably the most influential anti-racist novel of modern times is shunned because Atticus is a decent white man who helps blacks and that doesn’t fit CRT’s malignant stereotypes.

    No surprise. Communists are stupid. They always have been. 

    • #9
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