Training Children to be Activists

 

Our children have already been brainwashed in our schools with the dogma of Leftism, including the hatred of America, its Founders and its values. But the indoctrination has become more extreme than I thought: We are teaching our children to be activists.

I’m not just talking only about teenagers; I’m talking about grade school children being taught about social justice, about hating conservatives and about denigrating those who think differently than they do in a formal curriculum. Some people are having doubts about the process:

Yes, I want my children to understand injustice and the mechanisms through which it persists. I want them to be able to identify when they or their friends are being treated with small-mindedness and have the tools to reject it. Most of all, I want them to know that we all share the responsibility of fixing what is broken in our world.

Still, despite all this, and the fact that I’ve spent much of my professional life pushing for change, I’m hesitant about mixing children with activism. My biggest fear? Their certainty. I don’t want them to grow up sure of their righteousness and that if they are the good guys, well, the other guys must be bad. I worry about how tribalistic America is becoming, the degradation of our civil discourse and the us vs. them, zero-sum thinking that has found its way into debates, large and small. I hear toddlers refer to President Donald Trump as a ‘monster,’ and although I’m not a fan of his policies or demeanor, I cringe. I really don’t want to help perpetuate this for another generation.

Many parents have no clue that they’re children are being taught in this way. In some instances, children are repeating the radical language that their friends are using, or they are mimicking their parents.

Have you forgotten the school walk-outs for gun control? Teachers and administrators decided to either sanction these activities or try to downplay them. But they are now essentially encouraging the formation of cults:

The country doesn’t know the worst of the grade-school protest abuse because it takes place in ultra-progressive schools where all parents are of the same mind, and no one blinks an eye at it. In rare occasions when some parents oppose it, they keep quiet or resolve issues on the local level for their kids’ sake. Conformity rules.

And conformity or not, these kids are not ready for the public forum. Their opinions and defenses are not well-formed. We’ve all seen it: ridiculous signs, silly clothes, shanty towns erected on public land. All of it is particularly sad when it involves hapless teens many of whom will either come to regret their sweet innocence splattered all over the webs, or end up having their future ruined by ideology — possibly both.

Black Lives Matter has been active over the last couple of years in placing their curriculum in schools all over the country:

In 2018, school districts in more than 20 major cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle incorporated BLM at School Week into their curricula, and still more participated this year.

Incorporating BLM’s ideas into K-12 school curricula extends beyond one week of each school year. In a letter of support, BLM co-founder Opel Tometi describes the effort as ‘a new uprising for racial justice’ in the nation’s schools.

The editors of Rethinking Schools, a trade publication dedicated to advancing the agenda of the social-justice left in classrooms, declare: ‘We need to transform our schools into sites of resistance to a system that devalues Black lives.’

At one time we might have thought that protests were harmless. But we know now that they can turn violent and hateful in just moments, essentially becoming riots:

A protester is swallowed by the masses, chanting, singing, agitated. He makes acquaintances with friendly strangers, all of them are moved by the same cause. He feels a sense of belonging; the righteousness of a cause is confirmed by the — usually overestimated — size of the crowd, and since the cause is righteous, he feels justified in doing anything he deems necessary to advance it. All of a sudden, he finds himself acting out something only an hour ago he found unconscionable, like chanting an embarrassing ditty, burning a flag or throwing a rock. His self is broken, and he is ecstatic.

There are now online schools at all levels that offer an activist agenda. Social justice is part of their curriculum:

A wide-ranging concept, social justice is concerned with any mistreatment of an individual by society. In the case of student activism, this may relate to student mistreatment by the school administration. Issues span from racism and sexism to access to healthcare or education, and students often join with larger activism groups to amplify their collective voice.

Sounds innocent, doesn’t it? But we know that “amplifying their collective voice” can go beyond the idealistic and collegial.

The Leftist agenda has invaded our schools; it’s difficult to know if there is any way to remove that curricula. But now they are taking indoctrination to the next level which engages students beyond the intellectual and theoretical: our children will be in the streets promoting these Marxist and anarchist ideas. Who knows which protests will become riots?

Have we lost our children completely to the Left’s agenda?

 

Published in Education
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  1. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

     

    • #61
  2. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter. 

    • #62
  3. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Giulietta (View Comment):

    One point that might be worth mentioning is the ability of immigrant parents to even understand what their children are engaging with in school. Most of my Hispanic students in public school were the 1st generation children of Mexican or Central American parents. I kept in touch with several of them after I left and noticed many of them turn into self-proclaimed “activists”.

    The school I had worked for allowed these students to hold walk-outs for causes like gun control stemming from school shootings, and after a veteran teacher made a comment that the students decided was in appropriate, they were allowed to take over the main hallway for a raucous multi-day sit-in. They also participated in the nearly 2 week-long strikes with the teachers last fall. No wonder they declared themselves activists- they had barely done any studying all year.

    These students without exception came from working class families that emphasized hard work and education to get ahead, their parents worked multiple jobs and were incredibly busy, and spoke just a few words of English. Their ability to keep tabs on their children and understand the political waters that their kids were veering off into- that would seem to require more time and cultural understanding than some of these parents, with the best of intentions, might have.

    Dennis Prager once mentioned that his parents were so busy working that American culture had to raise him. Parents today don’t really have that option. Or rather, they shouldn’t take it.

    • #63
  4. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    TBA (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter.

    I’m not on Twitter and suspect I’m not missing anything crucial . . . 

    • #64
  5. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    TBA (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter.

    How can anyone tell anymore?

    • #65
  6. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter.

    I’m not on Twitter and suspect I’m not missing anything crucial . . .

    You don’t have to be ‘on it’ to look at a feed. 

    And you’re missing this: 

     

    @TitaniaMcGrath

    Aug 23

    Children are never too young to learn about the evils of whiteness.  I’ve just chained my four-year-old niece to the gazebo in the garden and told her to think about her complicity in the slave trade. She started crying immediately, which is just evidence of her white fragility.

     

    • #66
  7. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):
    Dennis Prager once mentioned that his parents were so busy working that American culture had to raise him. Parents today don’t really have that option. Or rather, they shouldn’t take it.

    Henry, having listened to Prager for many years, I suspect that the “culture” included many people who had strong values and a love of America. That’s a big difference.

    • #67
  8. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    TBA (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter.

    I’m not on Twitter and suspect I’m not missing anything crucial . . .

    You don’t have to be ‘on it’ to look at a feed.

    And you’re missing this:

     

    @TitaniaMcGrath

    Aug 23

    Children are never too young to learn about the evils of whiteness. I’ve just chained my four-year-old niece to the gazebo in the garden and told her to think about her complicity in the slave trade. She started crying immediately, which is just evidence of her white fragility.

     

    Good grief. Horrible. These kinds of people are monsters.

    • #68
  9. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

     

    It’s actually a parody – give the preview a looksie and consider looking at Titania McGrath on Twitter.

    I’m not on Twitter and suspect I’m not missing anything crucial . . .

    You don’t have to be ‘on it’ to look at a feed.

    And you’re missing this:

     

    @TitaniaMcGrath

    Aug 23

    Children are never too young to learn about the evils of whiteness. I’ve just chained my four-year-old niece to the gazebo in the garden and told her to think about her complicity in the slave trade. She started crying immediately, which is just evidence of her white fragility.

     

    Good grief. Horrible. These kinds of people are monsters.

    Susan, “Titiana McGrath” is actually a comedian named Andrew Doyle, who has been winding up the SJWs for a little while now. 

    No four-year-old nieces were harmed in the production of this snippet of satire.

    • #69
  10. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Edit: What Percival said.

    • #70
  11. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    TBA (View Comment):

    Edit: What Percival said.

    I apologize for repeating the point but please note that it is quite difficult to tell what’s parody anymore. When I first heard a transgender female wrote a book saying that looting is justified I assume it was a Babylon Bee joke. Titania McGrath seems disturbing real. Check out Dr. Bastiat’s discussion of hippies taking a shovel away from a little girl. 

    • #71
  12. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    Edit: What Percival said.

    I apologize for repeating the point but please note that it is quite difficult to tell what’s parody anymore. When I first heard a transgender female wrote a book saying that looting is justified I assume it was a Babylon Bee joke. Titania McGrath seems disturbing real. Check out Dr. Bastiat’s discussion of hippies taking a shovel away from a little girl.

    I know. Sometimes the lunatics catch up.

    • #72
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