Think about the three people who affected you the most growing up. For a lot of us, I’d bet at least one is a teacher or coach. It speaks to the influence and importance schools can have on our lives and education. Teachers are difference makers who help us, as parents, educate and develop our kids. But just as we don’t need Washington to tell parents how to parent, we don’t need federal bureaucrats telling our schools how to teach. Many classroom decisions are best left up to our leaders at the local level.
Last week, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, announced it is following through with a campaign promise to rethink the size and scope of the Department of Education. I think it’s beyond time to return those powers and decisions to the states and restore local control, giving families more freedom.
Since the Department of Education was formed as a standalone department in 1980, we’ve seen its budget and workforce bloat — but we haven’t seen improved outcomes for students, parents, or teachers. We clearly aren’t getting what we’re paying for.
For a decade, I served on the Board of Regents for the University of Nebraska system, getting into the weeds of education policy and decision making for our state. One of the philosophies I brought with me from that experience into the governor’s office is that we need more accountability in government.
Just like a teen staring at a phone screen, too often the U.S. Department of Education’s bureaucracy has been distracted from its mission, and American education has suffered for it. We can’t predict the future, but we have to change something. Our kids’ education is too important for us to keep pursuing mediocre results that cost us billions.
For starters, American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding controversial culture wars through our schools. We should expect that our investment will be spent on teaching kids the essentials: math, reading, science, and civics.
There is a simpler, better path forward. By sending education back to states, we let those nearest to the student have the biggest influence. This is a pro-kid, pro-parent, pro-teacher, pro-school position. No matter the style of schooling families choose — public, private, homeschool, or hybrid — our lessons should be focused on helping our youth succeed, and you don’t need federal government mandates to do that.
In Nebraska, I know the type of people who serve in our schools. Our teachers devote their lives to our kids. We’re human, and we’re not going to get things right 100 percent of the time, but I’m confident in our ability to lead and ensure we’re addressing the needs of our students, teachers, and schools.
Because technology and research constantly change the way we learn, educators must be able to move fast in the classroom in ways some faraway cubicle worker in Washington can’t. Teachers and administrators are closer to the action and better prepared for this type of work.
In my state, we’re leading by making localized decisions: We’re rethinking how we invest and fund K-12 schools, raising awareness and doubling down on special education opportunities, and working with students and schools to ban the distraction of cell phones bell-to-bell.
Secretary McMahon’s stated goal is to make the state of education in America “freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.” That’s a mission all of us should be able to get behind because there’s no politics in it.
Let’s focus more on how to help the teacher in the classroom who is giving our kids this week’s spelling test. Let’s figure out ways to better support dynamic, inspiring lessons. Let’s support the guidance counselor who is helping our students navigate adolescence while they make big, life-long decisions.
Let’s let our country’s kids — and education — reach the world-changing potential they have. That should be the American tradition. The Department of Education just needs to get out of the way.
On Tuesday, Wyoming became the 15th state to enact universal school choice into law with Gov. Mark Gordon’s signature on the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act.
The Cowboy State joins a rapidly growing group of states that have passed laws giving all (or nearly all) families statewide choice concerning their children’s kindergarten through twelfth-grade education. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
The act grants families who choose to participate with an education savings account of $7,000 per student per year to allocate toward approved K-12 educational expenses. Education savings accounts with universal eligibility are the gold standard of school choice programs due to the flexibility they provide parents to select the best learning avenues for their children.
It also expands eligibility of the state’s existing pre-kindergarten education savings account program from parents with a maximum income of 150 percent of the federal poverty line to up to 250 percent. The amount provided to qualifying parents is $7,000. According to Gov. Gordon, “early education builds a very strong foundation. It’s important that when kids get to kindergarten, they have the grounding that’s necessary to be able to move forward, thrive and really do well.”
Wyoming Speaker of the House Ocean Andrew is a defender of education freedom and under his leadership the bill promptly passed the House by a 39-21 vote on Jan. 29. It then headed to the Senate.
Mid-February, President Trump applauded the leadership of Senate President Bo Biteman and urged every state senator to vote in favor of the bill. On Feb. 19, the Senate passed the bill with a vote of 20-11. As part of the Wyoming legislative process, a Joint Conference Committee was tasked to successfully negotiate the policy differences between the Senate and House, which was completed on Feb. 27. The following day, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate both signed the bill, sending it to Gov. Gordon for signature.
Wyoming State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, who was voted into office in 2022, has been instrumental in providing a strategic plan for the state’s education system. She is a proponent of school choice and understands that it is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Of her six key initiative areas for education reform in Wyoming, “parental empowerment” are the first two words.
“As an economist, I know that greater choices lead to greater outcomes. I am an ardent supporter of universal school choice because even parents in the most rural corners of Wyoming should have the opportunity to determine the best education for their child,” Degenfelder told me.
Hats off to Wyoming leaders for embracing the innovative educational approach of a free market K-12 education landscape by enacting universal school choice. The market forces of competition will drive quality, spur innovation, and decrease costs, which are foundational for achieving the governor’s goal of a world-class education system in Wyoming.
Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Senior Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
When Indiana University implemented DEI standards in its law school curriculum, Professor John Lawrence Hill warned the state legislature about attempts by “extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students” that “fly in the face” of America’s legal foundations.
“This class is guaranteed to further polarize and politicize the law school environment and represents yet another attempt by the academic Left to provide a platform for extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students who are essentially academic hostages,”Hill wrote in his letter. “DEI is now ‘in’ at the McKinney school….”
In an interview with The Federalist, Hill, a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law (IU McKinney) says that issues with the ABA’s DEI requirements are long-standing.
A New ABA Requirement
In February 2022, the ABA introduced a new standard for legal education. Standard 303(c) reads, “A law school shall provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism: (1) at the start of the program of legal education, and (2) at least once again before graduation.”
This marks the first time the ABA has mandated non-legal coursework in law school curriculum.
Hill learned of the new ABA requirement when he was serving on the law school’s academic affairs committee, which was tasked with implementing curricular reform. At the time, Hill chalked it up to an “unnecessary” addition to students’ legal education.
Once Hill departed from the committee, however, the university faculty capitalized on the new ABA instructions. Although standard 303(c) can be satisfied through orientation sessions, lectures, or “other educational experiences,” the faculty at IU McKinney opted to create a mandatory DEI course.
“[As] things developed, and I saw the way it was going … it wasn’t just unnecessary. It’s been baleful,” Hill says. “I mean, it’s really been … used as a predicate to make other changes.”
DEI at the Expense of Constitutional Law
In order to introduce new DEI coursework, the committee gave three proposals to the faculty. Two of them involved moving constitutional law to the second year, a major departure from traditional law school curriculum. Hill says this provoked a “huge faculty fight.”
“Every single one of us took constitutional law in the first year. Every single law student has taken Con Law in the first year for a century,” Hill recalls telling the faculty. “Why is it that all of a sudden our students can’t do this?”
In a memo, Hill urged the faculty to reject the abandonment of constitutional education for first-year students. Hill says he suggested a number of alternatives, including reducing the hours of one of his own classes, civil procedure.
“People freaked out at the memo,” Hill remembers. “There was a lot of anger.”
As a professor of constitutional law himself, Hill viewed the proposals to move constitutional law as particularly egregious.
“I believe that the real reason for throwing Constitutional Law out of the first year is plainly ideological,” Hill wrote in his letter to state senators. “Our Constitution enshrines and projects the values of liberty, individuality, and equality under the law. These values, which have served our nation for over 235 years, fly in the face of the DEI paradigm.”
In April, the faculty agreed to keep constitutional law in the first-year curriculum while still incorporating the “responsible lawyering” course. The new curriculum will take effect this fall.
“The law school has not considered or approved a 1-hour Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) course,” a spokeswoman for IU McKinney said in a statement to The Federalist. “A new 1L course, Responsible Lawyering, will include professional identity formation, consistent with ABA Standard 303, among other professionalism topics.”
However, “responsible lawyering” was added in direct response to the ABA’s DEI agenda. According to the ABA, this type of coursework will “reinforce the skill of cultural competency and their obligation as future lawyers to work to eliminate racism in the legal profession.” Hill describes this curriculum as a sign of more leftist change down the road.
“In law, sometimes a case is called a signal. It may be more modest in terms of what it actually rules, but it signals a change … a new way of doing things. The ABA requirement was cover, and it was a signal that … law schools can make changes, including pretty dramatic changes,” Hill says. “Many people in our faculty said this is a cover. The ABA has given us cover. That term was used specifically by other faculty members.”
According to Hill, these changes run deeper than some may think.
“What ties all this together is that there is an ideological agenda. Some people understand that consciously. They embrace it. They pursue it. A lot of other people just sort of go along, understanding the current. You know, people can sense when political currents are changing or where they’re moving, and so they sort of move with it, without really sharing the goal as such. But I think that this was something that came down from on high [that is] ideological, deeply ideological.”
In an interview with The Federalist, Raatz confirmed he is investigating the matter personally.
“We can all be sensitive to one another, but to mandate diversity, equity, inclusion … what does that really mean?” Raatz, a recipient of Hill’s letter, told The Federalist. “To just be frank about it, I’m not a proponent of DEI, honestly, and I’m going to determine just what their parameters are, and we’ll go from there.”
Fighting a DEI Agenda
Hill sent his letter to Raatz and Crane on Saturday afternoon. The senators are members of the Indiana Senate Education and Career Development Committee, and Hill hopes making them aware of the situation could lead to action.
“I have taught at McKinney for 21 years. I love this school and I love our students,” Hill wrote. “I hope that there might be something that you and your colleagues in the Indiana House and Senate might be able to do to respond to these developments.”
In the meantime, his concern is primarily for the quality of education at IU McKinney.
“When I started teaching, I was middle of the road. I wasn’t, you know, a wild-eyed progressive, but I wasn’t a libertarian or a conservative, either. I tried to kind of find the middle way, but I started to see the extent to which our textbooks, the way people teach classes, who gets tenure, who’s elevated — I mean, there’s so much of politics in it.”
Today, Hill says he still has hope for the law school — and for Americans.
“The most important thing is that you get everything accurate,” Hill told The Federalist. “I think once people know, it makes it harder for the powers that be to continue to advance these causes. I mean, everyone is aware of what’s going on. People are smart. Americans are smart. Once they’re aware of what’s going on, how it’s going on, it removes the cover for people who are trying to essentially push these values, these courses.”
Monroe Harless is a summer intern at The Federalist. She is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and political science.
In remarks regarding the growing unrest on college campuses nationwide last Thursday, President Biden denounced the violent acts associated with many of the demonstrations and the growing wave of antisemitism on college campuses.
But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap. There’s one simple way to give his position teeth: Congress should enact legislation prohibiting the Department of Education from making taxpayers assume or otherwise modifying student loans for any student found responsible by his university or a court of law for acts of antisemitism, trespassing, property damage, intimidation, or violence.
Loan Giveaways Encourage Campus Chaos
Biden might be loath to admit it, but in many ways the campaign for mass student loan forgiveness has helped cause the current campus debacle. This year’s seniors entered college during the 2020 election campaign, meaning that most students currently on campus spent their college career hearing promises that much if not all of their debt would be forgiven.
This leftist movement to make American taxpayers pay off other people’s college debt has further weakened the already-tenuous link between a degree and its earning potential. If they believe the government will ultimately forgive the cost of their education, students have no reason not to major in Grievance Studies, or some similar Marxist-adjacent course of study. Assuming their loan debts will get nationalized also makes students less concerned about potential employers refusing to hire them due to their participation in on-campus riots.
With less incentive for students to choose practical degrees, and officials prioritizing woke nostrums over intellectual rigor, colleges have given up all pretense of ideological balance. As a result, some institutions have become less like universities and more like madrassas, places that inculcate and radicalize youths rather than educate them.
The way Biden has continued to pursue loan forgiveness, despite a rebuke of his unconstitutional plan by the Supreme Court, set an example that demonstrators have replicated. The president may now deprecate the mob’s actions, and call for respect for the rule of law, but when he publicly brags that the nation’s highest court “didn’t stop me” from pursuing his objectives, can anyone blame the would-be jihadis on campus for thinking themselves entitled to take the law into their own hands?
Restore Sanity to Campuses
Congress can and should take a stand, by cutting off the financial spigot for participants in the bedlam. If Biden opposes the chaos on campus so strongly, he should be willing to take a break from buying votes via taxpayer loan payoffs to cut off access for those creating mayhem. And if Democrats on the left like Rep. Ilhan Omar wish to exclude from loan payoffs any participants in Islamophobic or other offensive acts, few Republicans — who oppose Biden’s forgiveness proposals outright — will object.
Some might fear this proposal would encourage already-timid university administrators to take a weaker line against the demonstrators because individuals held responsible could face significant financial repercussions. But in some cases, civil authorities may be able to act irrespective of whether the higher education institutions in question do. More importantly, this measure should deter students as much as university officials, if not more so.
Another potential concern, that Congress prohibiting loan bailouts for a narrow sliver of the population might be viewed as lawmakers permitting Biden’s power grab for other students, doesn’t appear to pass muster, either. The House passed a bill last spring disapproving Biden’s original student loan payoff plan, but the fact that the measure didn’t get enacted into law didn’t stop the Supreme Court from striking the plan down as an unconstitutional power grab.
Finally, this proposal focuses solely on actions, not speech. Like all other Americans, students can and should have the right to protest, and to express their views, however offensive others may find them. But when speech crosses into intimidation, or encampments that create safety and health concerns, let alone breaking into buildings, those actions should bring consequences — in this case, financial ones.
A Practical Solution
Prohibiting student loan payoffs is less expensive and more practical than the other alternative: giving demonstrators a one-way ticket to the Gaza Strip. It would also send a message in clear and uncertain terms about what the American people, through their elected representatives, think of the mayhem that has unfolded in recent weeks.
In the longer term, the recent campus chaos should prompt Congress to consider repealing the student loan program entirely, a reform that would incentivize students and universities to prioritize college affordability, while saving taxpayers at least $300 billion over the coming decade. But at minimum, lawmakers should act now to ensure that hard-working taxpayers are not subsidizing participants in violent demonstrations on campuses nationwide.
PBS has a new documentary on the late William F. Buckley Jr., “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” airing on stations across the country. From 1966 to 1999, his show, “Firing Line,” which debated the great issues of the time, was a staple on PBS stations nationwide.
As the documentary highlights, one of the most important things that made “Bill,” as he was known to his friends, so incomparable, was his strong and unwavering faith. It was that faith that enabled him to speak boldly, unapologetically, and ultimately prophetically, about the issues of his time.
In 1997, he would tell Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “I like to think that Christianity is universally informative. Whatever you do, there is always something there that consoles, guides, or inhibits.” For Bill, his faith was his guiding star, which influenced his worldview and his relationships — treating those with whom he disagreed with dignity and respect. As a result, he was able to build bridges with others rather than burn them.
It was also that faith that led him to write his seminal workGod and Man at Yale in 1951. In it, he first warned about the abandonment of the Judeo-Christian heritage in academia and how it would lead to the present national morass in which we find ourselves.
Bill was a devoted Catholic who believed faith was the foundation of higher education at Yale and in our nation. He saw it coming under increasing attack and felt strongly that he had to sound the alarm about what was not only happening at Yale but beginning to seep out into the hallowed halls of higher education across America — the rejection and replacement of those ideals with secularism, socialism, and government dependence.
In God and Man at Yale, Bill peeled back the layers of the onion at Yale University and exposed its leftist core. As Richard Brookhiser wrote, “Yale in 1951 still pretended to be a bastion of capitalism and Christianity; Bill told the world this was a con, to keep alums sending their sons and their money to New Haven.”
Frayed National Fabric
He also saw that with the left there was no room for debate. As he put it, “Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.” Those words turned out to be prophetic as we face the “cancel culture” of the 21st century.
Bill knew in his heart that it is religious faith that brings people together — regardless of political persuasion — and provides hope and healing. As that faith came under assault, was scorned, and was eventually attacked, our national fabric frayed with it. Our current poisonous political and cultural climate is the result.
Unfortunately, when God and Man at Yale was written, much of America remained blissfully ignorant of what was happening to their children as they entered the ivory towers of American academia. Once the 1960s arrived, they could be ignorant no more.
For instance, Yale alumni and administrators did not take kindly to Bill shedding light on what was going on. McGeorge Bundy, a Yale alumni, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, said: “God and Man at Yale has the somewhat larger significance that it is clearly an attempt to start an assault on the freedom of one of America’s greatest and most conservative universities. … Certainly it will put the Yale authorities to an absurd amount of trouble in making answers to questions based on a set of charges that ought to be beneath contempt.”
But Bill was right, and Bundy and others were wrong. The campus protests and the emergence of the radical left in academia, and then into all other aspects of society, all of which Bill warned about in the early 1950s, transformed American society from one that saw faith as a virtue into one that saw it as a vice.
Brookhiser concluded, “God and Man at Yale is a standing invitation to get under the skin, and an example of how a bright kid once did it.” Evidently, Buckley’s words got under the skin of Mr. Bundy and others who thought Yale was still conservative and great. But that is what happens when one speaks truth in power — something Bill did repeatedly.
Bill’s Legacy
Bill Buckley’s faith, and the words that came directly from it, is his true legacy. Because of Bill’s strong Catholic faith, God was able to use him as an instrument to prophetically raise the alarm about what happens to a society when it abandons faith.
“Man is a sinner. Man can repent. God will forgive. That is so very different from the fashionable secular complement, which is: What is sin?” Buckley wrote in 1987.
It was Bill’s faith that led him to live a remarkably successful, “incomparable” life. Any documentary on his life will miss the mark if it does not focus on this most essential part of his life and legacy, because ultimately it is learning about Bill’s faith and how it shaped him that will fully inform the viewer about the man who was William F. Buckley Jr.
Tim Goeglein is the vice president of government and external relations at Focus on the Family in Washington, D.C.
The Resurrection of Jesus is the most important event in world history, because if the disciples didn’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity wouldn’t have changed the world. (Photo: Getty Images)
Christians around the world will commemorate the most important event in our faith’s history this Sunday, but the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just important to those who believe a Nazarene who walked the earth 2,000 years ago is the Son of God. The secular world’s history also turns on this pivotal event, which inspired so much progress that we take for granted today.
Christianity turned the values of the Pagan Roman world upside-down. The Romans considered the early Christians subversives—many called them “atheists” because they didn’t worship any pagan gods—and put them to death for refusing to worship the emperor. After some emperors adopted the faith, Emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism, but lamented that the Christian ethic had transformed the empire.
“It is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism,” Julian wrote to a pagan priest of Galatia in 362 A.D. Those who believed in the Resurrection established the first hospitals, and Christianity spread rapidly during Roman plagues, as pagans fled the cities, but Christians stayed and tended to the sick, risking death but saving souls.
Rodney Stark, a now-deceased social sciences professor at Baylor University and author of the book “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success,” told PJ Media in 2017 that without the Resurrection, “we would still be in a world of mystery and probably in a world of repressive empires.”
“Remember, at the dawn of history, people didn’t live in really tiny countries. They lived under huge, huge empires, nasty ones,” the professor added. He argued that Christianity historically has been the driving force behind limited government, science, capitalism, the abolition of slavery, medicine, organized charities, and more—and that Christianity would have been impossible without the belief in the Resurrection.
According to the four Gospel narratives, Jesus’ followers were quick to abandon their rabbi after his excruciating and humiliating death at Golgatha. Something convinced the same Peter who denied Jesus three times to later go to his own painful death saying that Jesus is the Messiah. In I Corinthians 15:17, the Apostle Paul wrote, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.”
1. Universities and Science
While many consider faith and science to be inherently incompatible, Stark noted that Christianity provides the worldview that makes science comprehensible.
“In the rest of the world, it’s thought that the universe is far too mystical to be worth thinking about,” much less experimenting on, Stark explained. But “in the West, the universe was created by a rational God, and consequently it runs by rules and, therefore, it makes sense to try to understand and discover the rules.”
Christians believe that a rational God created an ordered cosmos and created human beings in his image, enabling them to think his thoughts after him.
Modern universities grew out of the cathedral schools of the Middle Ages, and a bishop near the university at Paris made a surprising move in 1277. The bishop condemned certain ideas as anathema, among them the idea that the universe is eternal and could not have been different. These ideas, promulgated by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (whom both the Muslim world and the university students held in extremely high regard), discouraged experimentation. If mere deductive reasoning could reveal the full truth of the cosmos, then there was no need to examine the world to test different hypotheses.
By condemning this idea, the bishop paradoxically helped free science from the shackles of Aristotelian thought.
2. Free Markets
It is hard to overstate just how wealthy modern Americans are in comparison to most human beings throughout history. Inflation is rising and it is increasingly difficult to afford a home, but Americans still enjoy the conveniences of indoor plumbing, heating and cooling, rapid transportation, refrigerators and microwave ovens, and endless options for learning and entertainment via the internet and electronic devices.
The term capitalism may be controversial, but the free market complexity that unleashed this jaw-dropping prosperity and innovation deserves respect and protection. While the German sociologist Max Weber famously traced capitalism back to the “Protestant work ethic,” Stark found an earlier source—the Catholic monasteries in the Middle Ages.
Catholic monasteries set up a complex network of lending at interest, and they also changed the narrative on commerce. “In almost all known societies at that time, commerce was degraded. It was thought to be nothing a gentleman would have any connection to,” Stark explained. Yet “Christian theologians, who had taken vows of poverty, nonetheless worked out that commerce was legitimate.”
The growth of complex markets took centuries, and some of it did tie in to darker chapters of world history.
3. The Abolition of Slavery
In one form or another, slavery appears in almost every human society, and if slaves ever succeed in overthrowing their masters, they often turn their former masters into slaves.
“It was only in the West that a society has ever overcome slavery, except when it’s forced by outside forces,” Stark said. Christianity inspired the “only civilization that has ever discovered within itself that slavery is immoral and gotten rid of it.”
Medieval Europe first eliminated slavery, often in fits and starts, and occasionally returning to the practice through trade. Slavery and the slave trade returned in force during the Age of Exploration, but in the 1800s, abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe (and John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace”) led Britain and America in abolishing chattel slavery outright.
Abolitionists like them drew deep inspiration from the Christian belief that all humans are made in the image of God, and they deeply believed in the Resurrection of Jesus.
The New Testament does not require Christians to outlaw slavery, but outlawing slavery is the logical conclusion of key Christian doctrines. The Apostle Paul urged Philemon to free his former slave Onesimus. Paul also wrote to the Galatians that, when it comes to the grace of God in salvation, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
4. Limited Government
Most Americans today have no concept of how united religion and government have been in world history. In ancient Egypt, Pharaohs claimed to be gods on Earth, and in ancient Mesopotamia, kings built large temples to their gods in part to maintain their legitimacy. The three-generation Kim family in control of North Korea perpetuates the idea that the supreme ruler is god.
Christianity wrested ultimate power away from political rulers, teaching that God held the ultimate authority. St. Augustine divided the world into the “City of Man” and the “City of God,” emphasizing the independence of the life of faith and service from the concerns of power and everyday life.
Civil society grew and flourished because Christians believed both in helping the poor and in working together outside of government institutions. According to David Brooks’ 2007 book “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism,” conservatives in strong families who attend church and earn their own paychecks are most likely to give to charity.
While Jesus famously told his disciples to pay taxes to the government, he also drew an enormously important distinction. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17) didn’t just mean “pay your taxes.” It also meant that Christians—who are made in God’s image as coins were made in Caesar’s image—owe their ultimate loyalty to God, not to the state.
The early settlers to America and the Founders employed these principles in government. The Declaration of Independence grounds Americans’ right to revolt from Britain in “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” The First Amendment forbids Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion or abridging the free exercise thereof,” not because religion is unimportant, but because religion is far more important than the government.
This separation marks Christian civilization apart from the despotisms of the ancient world and from the communist and fascist totalitarianisms of the 20th century. Civil societies exist in other parts of the world as well, but Christianity provides a unique justification for subordinating state power to other concerns.
Does All This Suggest the Resurrection Is True?
These and other benefits of Christian civilization extend far beyond those who believe in Jesus’ Resurrection, and these benefits do not erase the many sins and deceptions perpetrated in the name of Christianity over the centuries. However, they do illustrate the side-effects of faith in Jesus, which calls Christians to become the “salt of the Earth” and the “light of the world.”
If the Holy Spirit is working in Christian churches, the blessings of this faith will spill over to those who do not accept the Gospel.
These blessings are exactly what we should look for, supposing the Resurrection is true.
A teacher on the outskirts of Cincinnati is recovering from brain surgery after a student violently attacked her earlier this month. The 60-year-old teacher was harmed so severely by a teenager that doctors had to remove part of her skull to help manage swelling in her brain.
Last spring, a Tennessee teenager pepper-sprayed a teacher for confiscating her phone. Also last year, a Texas administrator was beaten to the ground by a group of students.
As school choice expands across the country, millions more parents have the chance to send their children to schools that best meet their needs. They are eager to flee schools that foster poor behavior. Parents know their children best, and they know a child’s best educational fit is based on more than only test scores and graduation rates. Academic performance is critically important, but so too are intangible factors that shape a child’s educational experience. It is no surprise that school culture is one of the top factors parents consider in choosing where to send their kids to school.
The most recent Parent Involvement in Education survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics in 2019, found that 71 percent of parents who considered sending their children to a school other than their government-assigned one rated “safety, including school discipline” as “very important.” Only 53 percent ranked “academic performance of students (e.g. test scores, dropout rates)” the same way.
This concern for discipline and safety is not surprising. No parents want to send their children somewhere unsafe. Sadly, many schools tolerate bad behavior and thus foster more of it, creating an environment where teachers can hardly teach, and students can hardly learn.
School violence is on the rise for several reasons, two of which can be tied directly to policies pushed by teachers’ unions and fringe civil rights groups and accepted as gospel by many in the public education establishment. The first is prolonged school closures resulting in a steep decline in good behavior by students.
The Student Pulse Panel, a study conducted by the Institute of Education Sciences, found that 38 percent of public schools saw an increase in physical altercations between students following the pandemic. (Less than 10 percent saw a decrease.) More than half of public schools saw an increase in threats of physical altercations between students. The damage is not just physical. More than half of public schools reported an increase in “student acts of disrespect [towards staff] other than verbal abuse.”
The study says, “More than 8 in 10 public schools have seen stunted behavioral and socioemotional development in their students because of the COVID-19 pandemic.” But Covid did not cause student behavior to circle the drain. Prolonged school closures, driven by teachers’ unions and their political allies, meant that students forgot how to behave at school.
The second culprit is “restorative justice,” a so-called “disciplinary” model embraced by teachers unions and administered by school systems across the country. This harmful practice is by no means restricted to blue states, nor is it a post-Covid phenomenon. Leading into the pandemic, 21 states and D.C. had laws on the books supporting the use of restorative justice in schools. Among those states are Texas, Florida, and Utah, far from the usual suspects when it comes to educational malpractice.
Under restorative justice, suspending and expelling a student is to be avoided at all costs. Real consequences are replaced by “healing circles.” School resource officers are sidelined, and teachers lose control of their classrooms.
Every single one of the violent incidents noted above happened in a school or school district that has embraced restorative justice policies. The teacher near Cincinnati taught at a school that advised a “verbal warning using restorative practices and affective language” when students are disruptive. The school district in Tennessee is the home of a “restorative practice program,” and the Texas school had moved to adopt more restorative practices in its Campus Improvement Plan.
Education freedom can help solve this problem. Several studies have demonstrated that school choice leads to safer schools.
But a school culture need not be violent to be rotten. There is a reason “Mean Girls” resonates across generations. Bullying is real, it can be severe, and parents deserve the right to decide if and when their child needs a fresh start at a new school. No children should have to risk their mental health and emotional development because they can’t choose another school and get a fresh start.
A good school, the kind of school parents seek out for their kids when they have school choice, is one that not only excels academically but maintains high standards of behavior. Such schools excel academically in no small part because they maintain high standards of behavior. Test scores are only one piece of the education freedom puzzle. Parents see the full picture, and education leaders would do well to follow suit.
Angela Morabito is the spokesperson at the Defense of Freedom Institute, a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary, and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
In just three years, all 50 states saw significant declines in K-12 student academic achievement. The declines in math scores in Minnesota were among the 10 worst.
“THE SPRING 2022 NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS RESULTS RELEASED MONDAY, OCT. 24, SHOW MINNESOTA EIGHTH-GRADERS’ MATH TEST SCORES DROPPED BY 11 POINTS FROM 2019, PLACING THE STATE AMONG THE 10 BIGGEST DROPS IN THAT AGE GROUP NATIONALLY. NO STATE REPORTED GAINS IN MATH PERFORMANCE FOR FOURTH- AND EIGHTH-GRADERS SINCE THE LAST ASSESSMENT, AND NEARLY ALL STATES, INCLUDING MINNESOTA, SAW READING SCORES DROP.”
In just three years, all 50 states saw significant declines in K-12 student academic achievement. The declines in math scores in Minnesota were among the 10 worst. The results indicate a catastrophic reduction in the academic achievement of Minnesota school children. While everyone is right to sound the alarm about these results, the numbers show academic achievement was declining well …READ MORE…
Big Government has been pushing corporate America to do its bidding covertly behind the scenes. Big Tech, Wall Street, and Big Pharma are all guilty of falling in line with DEI, Vaccine, and quarantine mandates pushed by a tyrannical unconstitutional government, mainly the Democrat party which has entrenched itself into the bureaucracy at every level.
Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy
Former Department of Defense Chief of Staff and Deputy Director of National Intelligence under President Trump, Kash Patel, spoke to The Gateway Pundit about his new book, “Government Gangsters,” which is set to finally be released after the federal government delayed it for nine months and Patel had to file a lawsuit for security clearance.
Kash Patel told The Gateway Pundit they are trying to “bury” the story “because the book exposes, by name and agency, every corrupt actor I encountered, puts them on blast, and tells the world how we remove them from power and restore our agencies to work for the … READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
“Academic freedom” in American universities is nonexistent. There is zero freedom to be anything other than a leftist, which is why nonleftists are an endangered species in academia. Universities only use “academic freedom” to defend their left-wing fellow travelers from criticism and accountability.
There is zero desire for critical independent thought in modern American academia, because modern American academia is little more than a Marxist madrassa used to train and indoctrinate the next generation of left-wing shock troops. Academia uses “academic freedom” in the same way it uses “diversity” — as a way to exclude anyone who rejects left-wing identity ideology. Universities want ideological diversity in the same way bacteria crave bleach. They want actual academic freedom in the same way cockroaches want sunlight.
Never forget that to leftists, words have no fixed meaning. Words are weapons. Nothing more, and nothing less. “Diversity” means they get to hire left-wing, dead-eyed, purple-haired, barely literate white freaks who hate Jews, and black conservatives will just have to suck it. “Academic freedom” means they get to hire low-IQ, left-wing plagiarists whose entire livelihoods depend on the success of the left-wing machine, not brilliant analysts whose research rejects global warming or Covid alarmism nonsense.
Every single left-wing institution has the same rules and the same hiring practices.
At the Pentagon, delusional and drug-addled male perverts who think putting on a skirt and ladyface is the pinnacle of valor get promoted, while decorated combat veterans who reject heart attack juice in the guise of a fake vaccine get fired. On Wall Street, throwing other people’s money at failed global warming plays that will never be economically sustainable will get you promoted much faster than successfully investing in technologies viewed to be a threat by the regime. In Hollywood, a script trashing America as racist and evil will get greenlit faster than Alec Baldwin drawing down on a camera crew. But if you want to make a film praising the American founding? Good luck with that.
And in government, there’s no surer guarantee of lifelong employment for midwit morons than pledging allegiance to whatever delusion the regime is peddling on any given day, because the left-wing machine will defend anyone from anything, no matter how horrific, as long as that person marches to the beat of the regime’s drum.
This is the modern state of America, and it is true across every industry and major institution of power. One election will not fix it. One resignation will not fix it. Removing the rot that’s compromising the entire foundation of this country will require ruthlessly tearing down, fumigating, and rebuilding every single institution that has been infiltrated by the left.
This won’t be accomplished by politicians, or journalists, or celebrities, or hedge fund managers. It can only be accomplished by you demanding it and refusing to give in until the rot has been eliminated. Are you up for it? I hope so. Because if you’re not, this country doesn’t stand a chance.
Sean Davis is CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn. He was named by The Hill as one of the top congressional staffers under the age of 35 for his role in spearheading the enactment of the law that created USASpending.gov. Sean received a BBA in finance from Texas Tech University and an MBA in finance and entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School. He can be reached via e-mail at sean@thefederalist.com.
Attempts to sideline religion from American public life are not new, but whereas conservatives typically think that this type of discrimination is endemic to blue states, the reality is much more complex. In fact, in a new Manhattan Institute report, Notre Dame Law Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett and I discover that states throughout the country are breaking the law by persecuting religious schools and charities.
The Supreme Court, in last year’s Carson v. Makin, clarified that states cannot exclude religious organizations because they are religious or force such organizations to secularize their offerings. Despite the clarity of the court’s First Amendment jurisprudence, many states, including some that one would expect to embrace religious freedom, continue to discriminate against religious organizations unfairly.
Here are nine of the most unexpected offenders.
1. Virginia
Disabled students suffer because of Virginia’s violation of the First Amendment. Virginia’s school districts and local governments can contract with any “public or private nonsectarian school, agency, institution,” or “nonsectarian child-day programs” to provide special education services. If the nearest option or best fit for your student happens to have a religious affiliation, your child will have to attend a further or worse option to receive funding.
Historically black colleges and universities and other nonprofit institutions of higher education are unconstitutionally prevented from using state funds for facilities or programs related to “sectarian instruction.” Virginia singles out religious institutions for worse treatment under industrial development powers and in eligibility for historic preservation consideration and grants, and excludes them from receiving funds to provide social services. Egregiously, this latter provision specifically singles out some religious organizations — the YMCA, YWCA, Habitat for Humanity, and the Salvation Army — for special treatment.
Virginia provides a tax rebate for fuel used in school buses but excludes buses used to take students to religious schools.
2. Montana
Montana similarly provides funding for day education of students in private institutions so long as they are at “private, non-sectarian schools.” Like Virginia, Montana excludes religious schools from its school bus fuel tax rebate.
Montana’s work-study program allows students to work in construction and building maintenance but excludes from eligibility any building “used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place of worship.”
Religious health care providers face restrictions on how they can use funds under a Montana low-cost capital scheme for new buildings. And while Montana offers a permissive array of nonprofit-themed specialty license plates, including plates celebrating a soccer club, a shooting club, and a group that feeds animals, religious nonprofits are explicitly excluded from the plate program.
3. Georgia
Georgia does not allow pre-kindergarten providers to give any religious instruction. It specifies that this rule extends even to programs that have both approved secular and religious versions and notes that no funds may be spent on religious instruction.
Religious organizations are excluded from the state’s rural loan guarantee program. Suppose a church in Georgia wants to use taxpayer funds to feed the hungry, house the homeless, or provide health care. In that case, it must fastidiously maintain a separate budget for its welfare ministries. This paperwork nightmare means many churches offer fewer services than they otherwise might.
Georgia even imposes restrictions on the generosity of its employees, empowering them to contribute to nonprofits but excluding any “religious organization.”
4. Alabama
Though in better shape than Georgia, Alabama still falls well short of Carson’s requirements. The state allows a moment of silence during the pre-K school day but forbids religious instruction. Any religious activities must take place “outside of … the school day.”
In much the same way, Alabama theoretically allows students to use its higher education grants at religious colleges but requires that schools accepting the grants use them only for “essentially secular education functions” and “carefully segregate funds to ensure that this rule is enforced.” The law would presumably exclude from funding those students who are pursuing careers as clergy, religious school teachers, and faith-based counselors.
Alabama places restrictions on funding structures used for religious purposes, restricts the content of services at family resource centers and municipal special health care facilities, and excludes faith-based organizations from the state’s employees’ combined charitable campaign.
Perhaps most amusingly, Alabama does not allow religious nonprofits to enjoy proceeds from greyhound racing days.
5. Arkansas
Arkansas similarly restricts pre-K content to be “secular and neutral with respect to religion.” It also requires that distance-learning providers be nonsectarian.
Arkansas subjects its citizens to a lifetime of unconstitutional forced secularism. A family of a child under 2 will find that Arkansas’ Life Choices Lifeline Program permits only nonsectarian content. Arkansawyers in programs receiving youth development grants cannot participate in religious instruction, services, or programming. Elders in the Arkansas Older Workers Community Service Employment Program cannot build or maintain any facilities used for religious instruction or worship.
Despite the state’s proud history as the buckle of America’s Bible Belt, its Small Museum Grant Program excludes any religious projects. Local waterworks commissions can make donations to community chests but not to any sectarian nonprofits.
6. Oregon
While other states place unconstitutional restrictions on the activities of faith-based pre-K providers, Oregon goes an egregious step further, outright banning religious organizations from its universal pre-K program.
Oregon violates Carson in later education too. High school students can enroll in college classes through the state’s Expanded Options Program but may only select courses that are “nonsectarian.” Similarly, while the state can contract with private institutions, courses must be “nonsectarian educational services” or “nonsectarian subjects completed by undergraduate students.”
7. Florida
Florida has provided grants to faith-based, in-person education providers through its Family Empowerment Scholarship program. But its laws, while conforming to abandoned Supreme Court precedent, must comply with the demands of the First Amendment as clarified in Carson.
At present, Florida does not allow sectarian organizations to participate in its remote learning program. It operates two separate scholarship programs that exclude religious schools and refuse funding to students pursuing degrees in “theology or divinity.”
Perhaps most concerningly, Florida places restrictions on the content of programming provided to victims of domestic violence. Its Batterer Intervention program excludes any study of “faith-based ideology,” even when such content would be helpful to victims.
8. Missouri
Missouri has been at the center of recent caselaw clarifying the First Amendment since the Supreme Court found that Missouri violated the free exercise clause by excluding a faith-based preschool from a state program that provided recycled tires for playground surfacing. While Missouri has improved its laws, work remains to be done.
Juniors and seniors in private Missouri colleges can get state loans for tuition. But those loans cannot be used for any “sectarian” instruction. Missouri’s Health and Educational Facilities Authority Act provides loans for educational facilities except for “property used or to be used for sectarian instruction or study.”
More concerningly, Missouri does not allow support services for high-risk students to be offered at private, religious schools. This means a struggling student at a St. Louis Catholic high school or Lutheran middle school would have to leave campus to receive the services they need to be successful. This burden can make much-needed services inaccessible for the students most in need of the rigor and structure afforded by parochial schools.
9. Indiana
Under Indiana’s work-study program, students cannot be paid for “sectarian” work. The state’s Division of Family Resources must exclude any sectarian work from its contracts with nonprofits. If a county wants to support its local nonprofit hospital, it can only do so if the hospital’s board is “nonsectarian.” This provision excludes struggling faith-based community hospitals from support despite their essential services and, in many cases, decades as community anchors.
An Indiana historic preservation grant applicant must have “no affiliation with religion.” Most disturbingly, Indiana regulates the religious expression of the dead, with a law stating that a memorial corporation cannot “promote the interests or teachings of a specific church, sect, school, or creed.”
The Path Forward
American conservatives often think of themselves as the defenders of the First Amendment and religious liberty in particular. Many are probably shocked to see their states among the worst violators of the Carson principle.
Fortunately, red states should be able to act quickly to remedy these violations by amending laws or having their state attorneys general issue opinion letters committing to the state’s conformity to the First Amendment.
For states that refuse to meet their constitutional obligations, lawyers from the Becket Fund, law school religious liberty clinics, and think tanks stand ready to vindicate infringed religious liberties.
Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
A recently elected Pennsylvania school board president made his priorities clear this month when she was sworn in using controversial books, including sexually explicit material.
On Dec. 4, Karen Smith, a Democrat who was elected to lead the state’s third-largest school district in November, was sworn in with a stack of books, including sexually explicit material.
“Thank you for your trust in me, I do not take this hand lightly,” Smith said when she became president of the Central Bucks County School Board. “To my supporters, I am so very thankful. To those of you who have challenged me, I will do all I can to hear your voices and concerns.”
However, based on the books upon which she swore an oath, Smith’s pledge to keep an open mind to parental concerns was hardly austere. According to Fox News, one of the books used in the swearing ceremony included Flamer, by Mike Curato, published in 2020.
“[Flamer] tells the story of a character who is bullied at a Boy Scouts summer camp for ‘acting in a manner considered stereotypical of gay men,’” Fox News reported. “The graphic novel includes characters discussing pornography, erections, masturbation, penis size, and an illustration that depicts naked teenage boys.”
Other books included in the stack upon which she was sworn in were Night, by Elie Wiesel; The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison; and All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson. At least three of the books Smith was sworn in on were listed in the top 5 of the American Library Association’s (ALA) “most challenged books” of 2022. The national library group’s activism promoting these books in local curriculums has led conservative policymakers in at least nine states to begin severing ties with the ALA. Last week, Texas, which ended its tax-subsidized affiliation with the ALA in August, passed new rules to keep “sexually explicit” books out of school libraries.
Smith’s decision to use material endorsed by far-left activists to infiltrate classrooms illustrates how identity politics has become embraced as a cynical, secular religion. Had Smith been genuine with a pledge to hear district parents’ concerns, she might have chosen different material to be sworn in on.
Silvi Haldipur, a mom of two boys in Bucks County schools, said she was previously “horrified” by LGBT and antisemitic remarks in the boardroom of the east Pennsylvania district. However, parents in this district could have more difficulty being involved in their children’s education moving forward. The school board’s new Democrat majority immediately voted to “freeze two policies related to library books that passed last year along with other policies.” This includes halting a previous update to the Library Materials policy that allowed parents to challenge certain books in the classroom.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Democrats’ Marxist takeover of America’s education system is rearing its ugly head on an almost daily basis, and the latest stories out of Illinois are further proof of it.
On Thursday, Parents Defending Education reported that students attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) orchestrated a protest and walkout on Dec. 8 demanding harsh punishments for individuals who have “bias incident reports” filed against them. According to the academy’s website, anyone from IMSA students to alumni and visitors can file on-the-record or anonymous reports alleging incidents of “bias” committed by other IMSA community members. The reports are then investigated by school staff such as the chief human resources/equity officer and/or the director of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
IMSA students who participated in the Dec. 8 demonstration, however, are demanding the university take its leftist policies even further. Included in their list of demands are requests for the school to publicize a list of “possible consequences for students following a bias incident report,” including “detentions, removal from leadership positions, suspensions, expulsions, and notification to parents.”
But the students who chanted “Silence is complacence!” and “Why are our pronouns not used?” during the Dec. 8 demonstration didn’t stop there. They also want the university to notify any “potential future colleges” that offending students may consider transferring to or attending in the future, after they are presumably expelled for their supposed transgressions. In essence, the demonstrators want to destroy possible offenders’ future educational and career prospects based on potentially-anonymous reporting of “incidents” like not using a person’s preferred pronouns.
The list also includes a demand that possible consequences for offending faculty members be publicized, recommending punishments that “include, but go beyond only educational conversations and required training.”
Students at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) — the top STEM school in the state — staged a sit-in and walkout last week over grievances related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a far-left Democrat, announced plans this week to cripple the city’s “high-achieving selective-enrollment schools” in the name of so-called “equity.” During his mayoral campaign earlier this year, Johnson explicitly promised city residents his administration “would not end selective enrollment” at Chicago public schools.
According to The Daily Mail, the proposal put forward by Johnson’s education board would effectively “stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools.” Some of these schools are among the nation’s highest ranking high schools and offer children who grow up in difficult circumstances opportunities to further their academic careers.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Minnesota Teachers Alliance candidates are getting big wins over Teachers Union candidates because MTA is focused on children’s education over teachers’ benefits. Minnesota Parents Alliance touts wins in key school board races.
Despite going up against one of the most powerful political organizations in the state, Minnesota Parents Alliance-backed school board candidates still claimed key victories in Tuesday night’s elections.
Minnesota Parents Alliance (MPA) caught Education Minnesota off guard last election cycle, according to Cristine Trooien, executive director of MPA. MPA-backed candidates won 49 school board seats statewide in 2022.
“They were ready for us this time, and we still won seats in key districts,” she said.
Systemic Racism is something you hear thrown around a lot lately, used mainly to bully society into subverting the Constitution and attacking meritocracy without little evidence that it actually exists.
A Black president elected twice, countless Black police officers and state and local Black officials hired across America beg to differ with that hypothesis.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A Cartoon that hits Minnesota Teachers who are supporting Hamas terrorism in schools and other evil social topics when they should be teaching things like math, English, and real history in class. This is what happens when students of higher learning graduate and enter our society. They create more woke monsters turning our world upside down.
So many left-wing groups are supporting Hamas terrorists, like Gay and Lesbian groups, LGBTQ+, Transgenders, Liberal Democrat Jews, etc., but don’t seem to understand that if any of them ventured to Gaza, they would be thrown off the top of a building to their death for the lifestyle or politics they have. DEI groupthink and American universities have warped and brainwashed our kids minds to the point they can’t see who is actually on their side—the side of freedom and democracy.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Public schools across the country are using politically one-sided questions to ideologically screen potential teachers, according to a survey of nearly 70 public schools by the National Opportunity Project (NOP). Instead of merely selecting the most qualified candidates, these discriminatory hiring practices evaluate would-be teachers by their alignment with so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) goals.
Documents obtained by NOP show public schools advertised ideological requirements in their job postings with coded language seeking “equity-literate educator[s]” who will work at “dismantling systemic racism” with a “commitment to social justice.” Denver Public Schools dictated that applicants should “have an anti-racist mindset and will work to dismantle systems of oppression and inequity in our community.”
These standards invite educators of a particular ideological affiliation to pursue jobs in public schools while deterring other candidates. “They position teachers as soldiers who share responsibility for upending societal barriers,” the report noted. “Their message to applicants is clear: Be prepared to join our crusade, or don’t apply.”
Kristen Williamson, communications director at the National Opportunity Project, told The Federalist schools are “possibly breaking the law” by ideologically filtering potential teachers.
The vetting continues in the interview process, in which candidates may be asked “loaded and presumptive” questions. Some of the questions NOP uncovered asked applicants how they would lead conversations about race in the classroom and incorporate unscientific fads like “gender diversity.”
“Perspectives that diverge from or fail to mesh with the district’s views on equity” are “judged poorly,” NOP concluded.
According to a Fairfax County Public Schools screening rubric, an “outstanding candidate” is someone who “provides concrete examples of strategies of their commitment to serve to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and understands “their role in breaking down barriers.”
One prompt from City Schools of Decatur in Georgia asks how applicants would shut down parents who object to their racially divisive curricula:
An upset parent emails you regarding a classroom discussion with your students about Critical Race Theory. They accuse you (the teacher) of anti-Americanism, changing ‘real history,’ and of making White children feel marginalized and attacked. Please discuss your course of action and draft a response to this parent.
The hiring team then must ensure “that there is at least one person of color and one woman or gender-fluid person” involved in scoring the response. NOP uncovered several other identity quotes for hiring panels and committees like this one.
“The effect of these policies is that teachers in many of the country’s K-12 schools are selected partly based on subjective, quasi-political, and sometimes illegal criteria that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and math,” Williamson said, noting that these teachers are “handpicked based at least in part on their acceptance and evangelism of one side’s political and social orthodoxy.”
Sometimes applicants aren’t just filtered by their beliefs, but by their physical characteristics. Hinsdale Township High School District 86 in Illinois insists that employees reflect the student body in terms of “race, cultural background, linguistic skill, physical abilities, and disabilities, sex, and sexual identity.”
“Parents and taxpayers must hold school districts accountable regarding teacher hiring standards,” Williamson said. “Ultimately, these same teachers are recruited to be partisan political activists for teachers unions, forcing policies they teach in the classroom on the rest of the country through strikes, lobbying, and electioneering.”
Meet DeDe Duffy. A preschool teacher in Cape Coral, FL. She says she teaches her students that if they don’t like their parents, they can find another family.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The most uneducated but wildly popular critique of Christianity in America — especially on social media — is that Christianity has been a bastion of oppression and intolerance. So much so that the advancements made in liberty and equality over the centuries have come only when America and American leaders have rejected Christianity. In his new book Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, historian Mark David Hall offers a concise corrective to this inaccurate and often ignorant hot-take and popular narrative.
Hatred of Christianity is one of the pillars of the current anti-American ideology that permeates universities and the governing spirit of our ruling elite. Mockery of Christians, especially evangelicals, is also one of the core tenets of progressive culture. This hostility and mockery are unwarranted. Far from being agents of oppression and anti-intellectualism, Hall highlights how Christians have been the bedrock of social activism advancing liberty and equality, as well as promoting education reform, increasing literacy, and publishing newspapers and magazines.
We are all familiar with the asinine proclamations of America as a secular country, that progress, liberty, and equality are atheist ideals, and that committed Christians are the greatest threat to America’s future. Yet, as Hall forcefully rebuts, “it is simply false to claim that liberty and equality have been advanced primarily when America’s leaders embrace progressive manifestations of religion or reject faith altogether.”
Looking at the Puritans, the American Revolution, evangelical social reform prior to the Civil War, and contemporary debates over religious liberty, Hall reveals what used to be well-known: Christianity has been the heart of true social progress and explosive advancements in human liberty, equality, and democratic government.
Puritans and Foundations of Liberty
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster, one of the most important senators the United States ever had, lauded the Pilgrims and Puritans as champions of the liberty that our “civil and religious liberty” grew from. Today, however, it is common to imagine Puritans as petty tyrants, intolerant theocrats, and bah humbug killjoys.
When I was a student at Yale taking classes on American Puritanism, our professor went to great lengths to de-indoctrinate us of the popular stereotypes of the Puritans. The Puritans were among the most educated people at the time, established our most venerable institutions of higher education, promoted the advancement and discoveries of Enlightenment science, vigorously advocated for public literacy, and enjoyed a good laugh, beer, and sex.
The real history of the Puritans that I learned at Yale is covered again by Hall in his opening chapter deconstructing the lies of secularists and anti-Christian writers and hacktivists portraying the Puritans in a dark and inaccurate light. The Puritans, our author reminds us, “valued natural rights, government by the consent of the governed, and limited government; they were convinced that citizens have a right, and perhaps even a duty, to resist tyrannical government.” When traveling through the lands the Puritans helped to build in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked, “Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories.”
As historians and scholars of Puritanism have long asserted, the democratic ethos of congregationalist church politics helped develop the local customs of self-government in New England that would form the basis for “Democracy in America,” as Tocqueville famously put it. But what about the banishment of certain Baptist dissenters and the Salem witch trials, the critic asks? These events did happen, but they are drastically overblown by contemporary critics.
The banishment of a handful of religious dissenters in Massachusetts was only after these rabble-rousing individuals repeatedly, and deliberately, returned to cause trouble and disturb the peace. Also, Hall reminds us, when compared to Europe, where more than 100,000 men and women were prosecuted as witches and half sentenced to death, only 272 individuals in America were ever charged with witchcraft. The Salem witch trials, which happened in 1692, marked the last execution of a witch in North America. In Europe, witches were still executed as late as 1782.
Completing his overview of the Puritans, Hall writes that the Puritans “created political institutions that were more democratic than any the world had ever seen, and they strictly limited civil leaders by law.”
Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God
Another one of the popular putdowns of Christianity by its critics (and even some Christians) is that Christianity doesn’t permit rebellion to tyrannical government but supports tyrannical government. In a gross and deeply literalist reading of the Apostle Paul in Romans (somewhat ironic all things considered), these critics assert that because a single passage in the New Testament supposedly teaches obedience to government, which is ordained by God, the American revolutionary patriots rejected Christian teachings and had to utilize secular and Enlightenment arguments to advance the cause of liberty during the American Revolution.
Again, this is patently false, as any decently educated person knows. Kody Cooper and Justin Dyer recently published a superb book, The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics, addressing this myth in detail. Hall, too, quickly covers the problems of this critique. Highlighting Calvinist theological history (something that these critics have no knowledge of, despite their claims of educated intelligence), covering important names known to students of theology, such as John Ponet, John Knox, George Buchanan, Samuel Rutherford, and even John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather), Hall shows that Christian theological history had come to see rebellion to tyrants as obedience to God and Scripture.
Moreover, most of the popular and patriotic arguments for revolution were not conversant with theorists such as John Locke but with Scripture. The Old Testament, especially, was appealed to by the patriotic clergy in favor of revolution. Christians, far from submitting to tyranny, offered complex theological arguments against tyranny and, therefore, helped formulate a political theology of liberty and equality in the process.
Evangelicals Against Oppression
Perhaps the most common trope that our contemporary anti-Christian elite culture pushes is the tyrannical and ignorant evangelical Christian. This, too, is a stereotype with little basis in history. In fact, many of our best institutions of higher learning were founded by evangelical Christians even if they have since departed from that faith that gave birth to them (Harvard, Yale, and Oberlin, to name a few). The first opponents of slavery and proponents of abolition were the heirs of the Puritans, such as the Rev. Samuel Sewall, who published the first anti-slavery writing in 1700.
Motivated by a vigorous religious faith, the Second Great Awakening was the fire that fueled anti-slavery and abolitionist politics in antebellum America. Men and women of Methodist, Baptist, and congregationalist (Puritan) backgrounds were oftentimes the leading champions of liberty and equality for African-Americans and indigenous Americans. As Hall writes, it was American evangelicals, and especially evangelical women, who most actively “oppos[ed] the evils of slavery and Indian removal.”
During the antebellum years, American evangelicals sought to “work together to help end social evils” and established “thousands of organizations aimed at alleviating suffering and reforming society.” Evangelicals were on the front lines of creating new educational institutions, promoting education reforms to advance public literacy, and establishing newspapers as a means of confronting social evils. Furthermore, Evangelicalism, originally a religious minority grouping, was deeply indebted to religious liberty as the means for its social growth and prominence.
This spirit of religious social reform for liberty led to the contemporary defense of religious liberty as the bedrock on which all liberty and equality before the law stands: “Christian legal organizations have been among the best advocates for religious liberty for all, including citizens who embrace non-Christian faiths,” Hall writes.
Why Christianity Matters to America
In Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, Hall gives us yet another triumphant and important book to correct the polemical, inaccurate, and deeply misleading public presentation of the relationship between Christianity and American politics. Far from the evil bogeyman and religion of oppression that ungrateful critics claim, Christianity has been a positive force for good and the growth of liberty and equality. In fact, America has been best when it has reached into the heart of Christianity for its social reforms and advancement of liberty and equality rather than rejecting Christianity.
Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is the author of “Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics” (Academica Press, 2023), “The Odyssey of Love: A Christian Guide to the Great Books” (Wipf and Stock, 2021), and contributed to “The College Lecture Today” (Lexington, 2019) and “Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters” (Routledge, 2022).
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump
From high interaction with homeschooled families and graduates in multiple environments, professional and personal, I’ve definitely noticed differences.
Homeschooling rose to 1 in 10 American kids in 2021 due to lockdowns, and the number has remained high even as lockdowns abated. Most families who began homeschooling due to lockdowns say they don’t plan to go back.
Despite the steady increase in homeschooling since its revival in the 1980s, families who choose this way of raising their children often face fearful responses from family and friends. Chief among the concerns is what people often call “socialization.” Sometimes, they mean, “Will your kids have any friends?” Other times, they mean, “Will your kids understand social cues and how to get along with normies?”
Yes, you can find homeschooling kids who dress oddly and don’t know how to carry on a basic conversation. But you can find people like that anywhere. As anyone who attended a public school can confirm, people who can’t make eye contact and are otherwise antisocial persist in that environment, too.
From high interaction with homeschooled families and graduates in multiple environments, professional and personal, I’ve definitely noticed differences. On balance, these differences tend to favor homeschoolers. Here are just seven I’ve observed that are also often obtainable in small schools.
1. Independent Thinking
It’s common for the “good” kids in public school to work hard to learn what the teacher wants and give it to her. They have a tendency to become compliers. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
Now, homeschooled kids often also want to please Mom and Dad, but the ability to negotiate with a parent in ways one can’t with a teacher often encourages mental independence. They have freedom to read widely and extra free time in which to develop and personalize their sense of self. They also tend to get more long conversations with their parents because of homeschooling’s extremely small class sizes.
All these cultivate independent habits of thought. They teach people to develop their interests and personalities, and to follow arguments all the way to their conclusions. These things also teach students to spend time comparing and contrasting ideas for real, in a way that shapes one’s soul for life, not as a human version of ChatGPT.
Homeschoolers are also used to being unusual. They’re used to being asked questions like, “Do you have any friends?” and given the cold shoulder by public-school kids at events like sports and family gatherings.
Sometimes this turns a homeschooled kid desperate and makes him more peer-dependent, especially if he’s a sociable child and doesn’t spend enough time with friends. So he’s desperate for friends and therefore works overly hard to conform to negative peer pressure. I’ve seen this also with conservative kids. They accept peers’ or culture’s shaming and rejection of their social differences and therefore can more easily turn into antagonists against their own group.
Thus we have entities like Homeschoolers Anonymous, which argues that because some homeschooling families are abusive, homeschooling rather than the family is the problem. (You don’t hear that same argument about public schooling, which has a far higher rate of child abuse than homeschooling does. But I digress.)
If parents observe and address these social dynamics, mostly by helping their children find friends who build them up instead of savage their family’s choices, homeschoolers do tend to emerge into adulthood as independent thinkers. They tend to be quite comfortable with nonconformity, bringing new perspectives into their communities. This strengthens our society, especially now, as political correctness is metastasizing into a totalitarian social credit system.
2. More Practice with Multi-Age Relationships
Since they are so strongly family-oriented, homeschoolers break out of our society’s artificial, factory-school model of corralling people with those who happen to be born in the same calendar year. Homeschooled kids are far more comfortable making friends with anyone, not just those their exact same age.
They drop by for tea at the old lady’s down the block (true story). Bigger kids play comfortably with babies and toddlers. They know how because they have little siblings and cousins they are around more often because they’re not in school all day. This makes many homeschoolers even more socially capable than peers who falsely believe that one can only be friends with a person who looks and acts just like them. It expands their horizons and their relationship skills.
Freedom from same-age exclusivity has academic benefits as well as social benefits. Everyone understands that no person is exactly mentally on track with every other person his age. An 8-year-old may be strong in math but weak in spelling, compared to those of his age. Homeschooling allows the flexibility to meet children academically outside of the “average” peer.
Being too far ahead of one’s class makes bright kids bored, and being too far behind his class makes struggling students despair. Teaching right at a person’s actual level instead of his artificially imposed level is the most effective instruction possible.
3. More Prosocial Habits and Expectations
For decades, parents have moved to the suburbs to raise their kids because they didn’t want their children in environments shaped by poverty. As Thomas Sowell and others have chronicled, America’s urban and rural poor share many antisocial behaviors that keep them down and drag others with them. These include higher rates of violence and nonmarital sex and other coarse and life-damaging behavior such as openly disrespecting authority.
Homeschooling takes the protection of moving to the suburbs a step further. That’s an increasingly prudent step as our entire culture seems hell-bent on downward mobility.
Simply the widespread adoption of smartphones for children immediately degrades entire social ecosystems such as schools, because children are too immature to handle attention-destroying notifications and open internet access. Ten-year-old girls don’t need to see pornographic drawings and get propositioned to join a threesome because their badly parented peers watch YouTube videos of lesbian sex (true stories — from the suburbs).
In an environment like this, sometimes the only possible way to ensure your child actually has a childhood is to homeschool. It would be better if our society decided to protect children from living in social cesspools like this, but most of our parents and institutions have so far refused. That leaves it up to sane parents and churches. Homeschooling is one way to allow children an innocent childhood so they encounter this world’s violence and sex when they are ready.
4. Better Ability to Choose Friends
It’s always been prudent to select one’s companions carefully. Friends strongly affect who you are. Families who pay $50,000 a year for so-called “elite” private schools and then send their children to morally bankrupt Ivies know this. Their values are degraded, but the underlying impetus is correct: One’s companions can determine the course of one’s entire life. This is true for adults and even more so for children.
The thing about public school is that anyone can and does go there. We don’t live in the 1950s, when one could more reliably count on both the average parent and most institutions to be sane and responsible.
Today’s average parent is checked out and lets his kids be mentored by creepy strangers on the internet and other kids who are mentored by creepy strangers on the internet. Today’s average institution is run by apathetic box-checkers whose lack of moral fiber tends to let antisocial people and woke inmates turn everything into an asylum.
This means parents today can’t count on most other people to encourage their families toward the good. Sending children to public school (and allowing them unsupervised internet access) not only prevents parents from carefully selecting their children’s major influences but also ensures their impressionable children will repeatedly encounter sick perversions they are too immature to handle.
Homeschooling (and private schooling) families have far greater control over their companions than do those who allow our degraded public square to mess with their kids’ minds, and therefore can more intentionally manage this key determinant of a family’s character.
5. Better Family Relationships
A complaint I often hear about homeschooling that unintentionally reveals its speaker’s lack of character is: “I just couldn’t be with my kids all day long!” Parents shouldn’t avoid helping their kids mature by farming out their parenting to others. Others don’t do as good a job of it as parents will. It’s also an abdication of their responsibility that has bad consequences for them, their children, their community, and all of society.
Yes, children are annoying. Every person is annoying sometimes. Mature adults realize we’re also annoying sometimes and that a currently annoying person will usually get over it. This isn’t a children problem, it’s a people problem.
Yes, children can be more directly annoying than adults because they are more actively driven by their passions. That’s one top characteristic of immaturity. Yet kids’ natural immaturity isn’t worse because it’s more obvious than most adults’.
When an adult seeks arousal, he might use internet porn, blast loud music in public spaces, or zone out on a video game. A child seeking arousal might wander around whistling or run in circles around the kitchen. He might bang the same song on the piano 20 times a day or tease his sister 30 times just to get a reaction (guess how I came up with these examples).
But Jordan Peterson is right that kids are mostly as annoying as their parents allow them to be. Some parents allow their children to maintain habits of complaining, whining, arguing with parents when they say no, teasing siblings, or fighting. Other parents build and enforce appropriate behavior boundaries in their family life.
By putting family members in more constant direct contact with each other, homeschooling gives parents increased opportunities for character building and habit formation. If parents do this work, it definitely pays off. It also tends to pay off both short- and long-term.
Children who are required by active parents to daily practice self-discipline tend to become better adults — better fellow citizens, better parents, better neighbors, mothers, and fathers. Unlike unparented children, they are also mostly a pleasure to be around — just like adults.
6. More Creative Hobbies and Entrepreneurial Instincts
Because they don’t have to waste so much time being controlled as part of a herd in large classes and schools, homeschoolers tend to have a lot more free time that they don’t spend watching TV. This makes homeschoolers extremely creative and active people, on average, which lends itself to entrepreneurial instincts.
With all the free time they gain from not having to move at a pace constrained by 22 other people, homeschoolers tend to develop strong hobbies and skills. The average homeschooler is involved in more than five community activities such as piano lessons, scouts, and karate, and is more likely to volunteer than public-schooled kids, according to studies.
Cultivating personal interests is not only good in itself, but it also leads to other goods, such as a penchant for social and economic entrepreneurship. Homeschooled students are used to being self-directed and managing their own time and interests. That makes them more likely to develop their own creative pursuits and I think explains why there are so many homeschooling families running high-traffic channels on YouTube.
7. A More Individual Personality
Some combination of the high personalization and high control of one’s time in homeschooling, as well as the lack of personality flattening that comes from harsh peer pressure, seems to make homeschoolers often very much more developed individuals. This reality is a bit ineffable, partly because it’s so varied in its expression.
While most people seem to come out of public schools slotted into some mass marketing consumer profile — punk, valedictorian, LGBT, SJW, jock, geek, nerd, or some other role defined and assigned by corporate conglomerates — homeschoolers tend not to fit into these kinds of boxes very easily.
Partly I think it’s because they have less awareness that these boxes even exist, because of their lower exposure to mass media through both screens and peers. Partly I think it arises out of their years of freedom to deeply explore nooks and crannies of human existence that aren’t part of mass culture, like Victorian clothing, historical re-enactment replicas, or Scottish literature.
Sometimes this reality manifests in slight oddities, like wearing nonstandard clothing, taking longer pauses in a conversation (or being more likely to monologue at people), knowing swing and folk dance steps, and not getting pop culture references. But I prefer these kinds of oddities to encountering a bearded man in a dress or to hearing some crappy song blare out of someone’s speakers that sounds essentially like every other crappy song that has blared out of speakers since the 1960s.
This also makes homeschoolers really interesting people to talk to. They have actual interests in their lives and unusual ways of seeing the world because more of their ideas haven’t come to them via the dreary mass marketing that in our society badly substitutes for legitimate culture. So no, often homeschoolers don’t act like zombies who download their brains from the corporate cloud, but that’s a good thing.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R.) / Getty Images
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Less than one month into her first term as Arkansas governor, Sarah Sanders was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, a speaking slot typically granted to rising stars in the party with the intent to elevate them onto the national stage. But stepping onto the national stage doesn’t appear to be Sanders’s goal—at least for now.
In her address, she used Arkansas as the example of what Republicans are doing across the country. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” Sanders said. ”We will educate, not indoctrinate our kids, and put students on a path to success.”
In an hour-long interview, the former White House press secretary dodged questions about the 2024 election, diverting the conversation back to what she’s doing in Arkansas.
She already has substantive accomplishments to point to. This past Tuesday, exactly one month after her State of the Union response, the state legislature passed Sanders’s signature legislation, an ambitious overhaul of Arkansas schools, and she has already signed it into law. Corey DeAngelis, a leading advocate for school choice, said Arkansas is now the “gold standard for educational freedom.”
The bill is a kitchen-sink approach to education reform—in addition to establishing universal school choice, it yanks obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, sets stringent new learning standards, and raises the base teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.
“This is what bold conservative education legislation looks like,” Sanders said from the governor’s office, where she monitored the debate on the bill taking place on the other side of the Capitol.
And Sanders says Arkansas as a whole can be the “blueprint” for what conservative states could do.
Sanders joins a crowd of superstar Republican governors making headway by focusing on schools, and armed with a legislature of staunch conservatives, she’s charging ahead of other states. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is still fighting to get the sorts of reforms passed by Arkansas in Sanders’s first few weeks over hurdles in his legislature—his universal school choice bill, for example, faces even some Republican opposition. Sanders came out of her long campaign in Arkansas eager to establish herself as the “Education Governor” and thus far is doing just that.
Sanders’s growing profile has also made her a target of Democratic activists and politicians. Washington Post columnists are writing hit pieces questioning why anyone would move to Arkansas: “Good luck recruiting Californians for Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,” wrote Philip Bump. Shortly after Sanders’s national address, California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom took aim at Arkansas’s crime rate and last week was taking shots on Twitter about local Arkansas pieces of legislation.
Sanders acknowledges that she’s drawing more scrutiny to her state, but she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “We outkick our coverage, frankly, in a lot of places,” she said.
“When it comes to politicians on the national stage for a small state, we have some pretty big names out there,” the governor said. “I’m sure you’ll find people that will disagree, but my opinion is that it’s a good thing for our state, and I plan on using that platform to better us.”
Sanders says the critics are unavoidable. “I try to tune it out and stay focused on the objectives in front of us. There are people who wouldn’t care what’s in the bill, they’re gonna hate it simply because I’m associated with it. They don’t want to see me be successful. Certainly, that’s disappointing, but not surprising, and it’s not gonna slow us down from doing things that we feel like are the right thing to do.”
Sanders sharpened her ability to drown out the critics as White House press secretary. Not only was Sanders the longest-serving Trump administration press secretary—she was the only person to hold the job for more than a year—she was also the most successful, taking over as the daily briefing became a media feeding frenzy and adding a semblance of order to the chaos. She remains beloved by staff, some of whom followed her to Arkansas, and her former boss, to whom she still talks regularly.
Though Sanders is taking advantage of lessons learned at the White House, former colleagues say she’s also developed the ability to talk fluently about policy.
“We used to tell her, you need to get more detail,” said a former White House colleague. “Now the opposite is the case. She’s gone from somebody who was laser-focused on communications with a thin understanding of the policy to somebody who is a policy expert. It’s impressive to me.”
It’s not the first transformation of her career, Sanders says. When she first joined the Donald Trump campaign, she never foresaw that she’d become the lead spokeswoman for Trump’s administration.
“I was much more on the strategy and political operation side, and really didn’t see myself as a front person or the public-facing individual,” she explained.
Sanders joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to do coalition-building in the South, but after a few TV appearances, Trump called her to say he wanted to see her on television every day. And at the White House, after Sanders filled in for then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer while serving as his deputy, Trump tapped her to fill the job.
Her rise to the Arkansas governorship is a different story. Sanders announced her run in January 2021 and, as the prohibitive favorite from the outset, had two years to prepare for the job. It’s during that time that she decided she wanted to be the “Education Governor”—she not only became an expert on the issue but also gained confidence that she had to make it her trademark legislation.
“I went to all 75 counties,” Sanders said. “Everywhere I went as I traveled on the campaign for two years, every community wants their kids to do better. If we don’t have a good education system in place, then we are not setting our kids up for success.”
On the ground in Arkansas, Republicans say Sanders has brought a “new energy” to the legislature. “The whole atmosphere and mood of everything is different,” said Bart Hester, who leads the state’s upper chamber. “It’s such a fun energy, an exciting and new energy. It’s fun to come in everyday.”
Hester says the onslaught of opposition from teachers’ unions against the education bill was no match for Sanders.
“We have a governor now where members are more scared of her than they are their superintendents or the teacher union—we’ve never experienced that,” Hester said. “They don’t want to disappoint her—they know that she’s super popular, they don’t want to be the guy that was against their number-one priority.”
Sanders scoffs at suggestions that her education plan was a “copycat” of legislation championed by DeSantis, another high-profile Republican governor. “Hard to copy when ours is much bigger and goes much further,” Sanders said. But she has nothing negative to say about her Republican counterpart in Florida, and says there’s a “great sense of camaraderie and willingness to share best practices” between her and DeSantis, who has emerged as Trump’s chief competition in the Republican Party.
Sanders is yet to weigh in on who the Republican presidential nominee should be in 2024—her “focus is solely on Arkansas,” she says, in the same way every ambitious and upwardly mobile politician does. And Trump, her former boss, reportedly called Sanders in recent weeks to ask for her endorsement, which still hasn’t come.
But she also said she “maintains a great relationship” with Trump, and left the door open for an endorsement in the future.
“When the time comes, maybe, but right now, I don’t want to do anything that takes away from the huge agenda list that we have to get done here in Arkansas,” Sanders said. “I don’t intend on slowing down on that front at any point soon. And so I don’t want to do anything that takes away, not just my attention, but also the attention of what we’re accomplishing.”
A former White House colleague who remains close to Sanders doesn’t expect her 2024 neutrality to change any time soon. “Trump’s not her boss anymore,” the former colleague said. “Her boss is the people of Arkansas, and that’s where I assume her priorities will lie.”
Republicans in the state appreciate her focus on Arkansas and recognize she’s putting the work they’re doing in the Capitol first. “Everyone wants a minute with her—she can be Sarah the national celebrity, or Sarah the governor, and she only has so many minutes in a day,” Hester said. “She is spending those minutes as Sarah the governor.”
Republican state senator Matt McKee says Sanders has the whole legislature bullish on Arkansas.
“I know Florida’s been at the forefront, Texas has done things, but Arkansas can be the place,” McKee said.
Sanders says her appreciation for Arkansas has grown since moving her family back to her home state. After traveling to each county for her campaign, she has enhanced her ability to sell the state to visitors. The governor boasts that she can point to the best place to eat in any Arkansas town—this reporter was sent to CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Russellville.
When it comes to dining, things are going more smoothly for Sanders in Arkansas. Thus far, she says she hasn’t been denied service, as she was in 2019 at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia.
“You know, knock on wood, I have not been asked to leave any restaurant so far,” Sanders said. “It’s amazing to be home.”
On Sunday night, as I was doing laundry, I got a text message from a fellow Virginia mother with an interesting invitation: Ben Litchfield, a Democratic Party Virginia Senate candidate from Fredericksburg, was convening a statewide Zoom call of “parents, educations and pro-public school activists” to discuss education issues.
A “mama bear” activist from northern Virginia since June 2020, I thought it was a unique opportunity to brainstorm. A Democrat all my life, I moved to Virginia in December 2008 with my young son, then in kindergarten, only because the state elected Barack Obama to be U.S. president.
Born in India, I am an American Muslim immigrant and single mother, and I thought the state was finally progressive enough for me. With English as my second language when I arrived in the U.S. at the age of 4, I believe in the power of America’s public school system to empower a girl like me to become a reporter for the Wall Street Journal at the age of 23.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin gestures after signing a House bill at the Capitol, March 2, 2022, in Richmond, Virginia. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
That’s why I fight every day to support a public system where teachers are able to spend their time educating my younger self, not indoctrinating kids with divisive, distracting activist agendas.
This time, these activists were hosting a strategy session to develop “a coordinated opposition” to the Youngkin administration’s alleged “attack on public schools, educators, and students.”
The designated “Topic” for the call: “VA Dept of Education and Youngkin Town Hall.” Thursday night, CNN host Jake Tapper is hosting a town hall meeting with Gov. Glenn Youngkin. I know because I’ve encouraged many parents and students to join the town hall.
Suparna Dutta was smeared when nominated to the Virginia Board of Education in July 2022. (Fox News Digital)
When I joined the call, I recognized some names. Cheryl Binkley, a former northern Virginia teachers’ union leader, was guiding introductions. Mariane Burke, the local leader of the national activist group, Indivisible, was online.
I knew them well. They had led a successful hit, organized by the Virginia chapter of a national teachers’ union campaign – #RedForEd – to assassinate the character of a friend, Suparna Dutta, an American Hindu immigrant, with the “White supremacist” smear when Youngkin nominated her to be on the Virginia Board of Education. They won a 22-18 vote, with Democrats casting their ballots unanimously against Dutta.
On the call, another woman introduced herself, and then Binkley, a former Virginia Education Association union official, turned to me. I introduced myself fully: I’m Asra Nomani, and I’m a mother in northern Virginia, and I looked forward to learning from others.
While we may have a difference of opinion on a few – OK, many – issues, I thought we could benefit from a much-needed conversation, hearing each other out, at least virtually face-to-face. Binkley had another point of view.
She kicked me out of the meeting, and my only participation was left to my introduction and this note that popped up on my phone: “The host has removed you from this meeting.”
“…I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” declared Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat’s gubernatorial candidate in Virginia in 2021. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Virginia Democrats’ removal of me – a Muslim immigrant single mother from India and “woman of color,” as U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez once described Rep. Ilhan Omar – symbolizes much more than the ejection of one person. It captures the utter failure of the Democratic National Committee to actually be inclusive to the millions of parents – many of them immigrant minority parents – who refuse its lockstep agenda with the country’s two teachers’ unions – the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Even though President Joe Biden won the White House in 2020, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race in 2021, over Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, who famously sealed his loss with the assertion in a debate that “…I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
The arrogance, political corruption and myopia of Democratic Party officials to parents portends bad news for the Democratic Party in 2024 and good news for Republican candidates. On cue, every Republican presidential candidate, former Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former President Donald Trump – and those still unannounced, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Youngkin – have made education a key issue on their platform.
Take a bow. That’s the mama bear movement driving issues, not the other way around.
On Twitter the next day, the Democrat loyalists didn’t apologize and acknowledge the error of their ways. One user responded: “Good. You have no business in Virginia education.”
But I actually do have business in Virginia education. So does every parent.
Democrats will turn off more parents with their closed-door mentality, and that will drive a wedge issue between traditionally Democratic parents, like Black, Hispanic and Asian parents, and the Democratic Party.
Republicans have embraced a winning agenda item, and they will win the White House if they continue to translate their platforms with policy and legislative answers restoring parents’ rights in America.
A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Asra Q. Nomani is the author of a new book, Woke Army. She is a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Network. She is reachable on Twitter as @AsraNomani.
My daughter ‘was terribly bullied, but no one told me. … Please don’t let ideology harm another child,’ pleaded the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was isolated from her parents by school and court authorities and sex-trafficked twice.
A subcommittee in the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill on Monday that mandates public educators notify parents if their child “self-identifies” as something other than his or her natural sex. Introduced by Republican Dels. Dave LaRock, Tara Durant, and John McGuire, the measure (HB 2432) would provide parents with greater oversight into their children’s lives at school and increase transparency in public education. According to a summary of the legislation, if a school official “has reason to believe” that a student “is self-identifying as a gender different from the student’s biological sex,” said official is required “to contact as soon as practicable at least one of such student’s parents to ask whether such parent is aware of the student’s mental state and whether the parent wishes to obtain or has already obtained counseling for such student.”
Under the bill, school officials, such as counselors and clinical social workers, are barred from “encouraging or coercing a minor to withhold from the minor’s parent the fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex” or “withholding from a minor’s parent information relating to the minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”
Monday’s subcommittee vote came along party lines, with five Republicans voting in favor and three Democrats opposing.
Known as Sage’s Law, HB 2432 was introduced after it was revealed that a then-14-year-old Virginia girl ended up in the hands of sexual predators after her school failed to disclose her gender dysphoria to her mother. As The Federalist previously reported, the chain of events began in August 2021 when Sage began identifying as a boy and suffered intense bullying and harassment at school. Eventually, Sage ran away and was “found nine days later in Maryland, a victim of sexual assault.”
Appomattox County High School, which affirmed Sage’s new “identity” without notifying her mother, was following model guidelines issued by then-Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration on so-called gender affirmation. Such guidance has since been terminated by current GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Throughout Monday’s hearing on Sage’s Law, witnesses supporting the bill discussed its importance in keeping parents involved in their children’s livelihoods, especially in the school classroom. During her testimony, Sage’s mother Michele called on the subcommittee to put commonsense before ideology.
“If I had known [what was going on], this would be a much different story. [Sage] was terribly bullied, but no one told me,” Michele said. “Please don’t let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.”
Also called to testify at the hearing was Dr. Erin Brewer, a former “trans kid” who spoke about the importance of schools helping children through their gender dysphoria without affirming such confusion or concealing it from parents.
“I was insistent that I was a boy when I started first grade after a brutal sexual assault. If I had been affirmed by my teachers, it would have allowed me to completely dissociate from myself as a girl and create a new persona who could pretend that the horrible trauma that triggered my gender dysphoria hadn’t happened to me,” she said. “Instead of encouraging my confusion and hiding it from my mother, the school contacted my mother, got permission for me to be assessed by the school psychologist, and they came up with a comprehensive program to help me resolve my gender dysphoria. … I [one] hundred percent support this legislation.”
Erin Friday, a lifelong Democrat and co-founder of Our Duty, a national and international parent and child advocacy group, also spoke in support of Sage’s Law. Throughout her remarks, Friday noted her personal experiences with a gender-dysphoric daughter and stated that “schools should never keep secrets from parents.”
Opponents to Sage’s Law also spoke at the hearing, with one man claiming to be a “trans woman” arguing that such legislation is “ridiculous” and that schools should be able to conceal a child’s gender dysphoria from that child’s parents.
“It should be that child’s own choice,” he said. “If we wanna tell who we wanna tell, like, that’s on us.”
Despite leftists’ support for deceptively-termed “gender affirmation” and the “transitioning” of children, research has shown that “upwards of 80 percent of gender dysphoric childrenembrace their sex as they emerge from puberty” and that “children who are ‘affirmed’ as the opposite sex … particularly if puberty blockers are used, consistently go on to further medicalization.” Children who undergo such protocols are subjected to lifelong damage to their bodies. The practices are so horrific that nations around the world, such as England, have ended the disfiguring practices that are falsely labeled as “gender-affirming care” for minors.
“Parents should never be the last to know [about what’s going on in their children’s lives],” said Durant during the subcommittee meeting. “It’s a very strange, strange place to me that we’re in now where parents are being told to step aside, to sit down, that ‘we as educators, as counselors know better [for] your own child’ — and that’s just simply not true.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Minnesota’s teaching licensure board will soon require all teachers to be card-carrying Marxists. The card will literally say “licensed teacher,” but recently approved revisions redefine state licensure in expressly Marxist terms: Academic knowledge is out, and power struggle among the classes is in. To be licensed in Minnesota starting in 2025, every teacher must not merely teach about, but personally advocate, the core tenets of critical race theory and transgender ideology.
The state’s insistence that every teacher positively affirm homosexual behaviors and transgendered identities understandably aggravates consciences among moral traditionalists, but the issues run deeper than the “culture war.” What is at stake is the nature of knowledge, the future of liberty, and the prospects for a sustainable social order. In a word: civilization.
A perfunctory hearing on Aug. 24, 2022, and the resulting order for implementation with slight revisions by a solitary administrative judge in December cemented the new regime. The revised Standards of Effective Practice require radical changes to teachers’ curriculum selection, classroom management style, and self-understanding of the teaching vocation. The education departments at colleges and universities also must document their fulfillment of the new standards or else have their program certifications rescinded by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB).
The new requirements require teachers to positively affirm extremist leftist positions about human nature and sexual practices in order to be allowed to teach in government schools.
Teachers will be required to choose “anti-racist” — i.e. critical race theory — instructional strategies for students. An administrative judge told the state to amend No. 4 here requiring teachers to expose children to sexual identities. It will likely still go into effect, with slightly different language.The new license requires teachers to affirm transgenderism.
The revisions represent only the latest attack against American heritage in Minnesota’s public schools. In 2013, the state education department successfully removed the four presidents featured on Mount Rushmore from social studies standards.
Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan also got the ax that year, as did the Magna Carta. References to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were relativized, as students were to be instructed that those documents do not contain universal principles of ordered liberty, but merely the opinion of one powerful group of 18th-century men.
A decade later, the vanguard has advanced again. The revised teacher licensing rules strike the following from the mathematics standards: “addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages.” They insert this for teachers of all subjects: “The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.”
It no longer suffices simply to discuss the controversies of radical reform; teachers and students must also become advocates for change: “The teacher creates opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.” Minnesota’s Scandinavian ancestors must be turning over in their graves at this new smorgasbord of Marxist truffles.
The PELSB’s “Statement of Necessity and Reasonableness” for the licensure changes draws support from two states just as blue as Minnesota. From New York, PELSB gleans: “Inclusive curriculum and assessment … works toward dismantling systems of biases and inequities, and decentering dominant ideologies in education.” In Illinois, each teacher must internalize a Marxist mentalité: “The culturally responsive teacher and leader will explore their own intersecting identities, how they were developed, and how they impact daily experience of the world.”
Illinois has expressly abandoned what Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” In place of objective truth, “what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences.” As in New York, so also in Illinois — and soon in Minnesota — all teachers must practice what cultural Marxists preach: “Assess how their biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc.).”
But to whom? Neither the people nor their elected officials decided the matter. A solitary administrative judge, appointed by the governor, ordered the implementation of the radical licensure changes after merely recommending a few tweaks.
The labyrinth of administrative procedure affords limited opportunity for appeal, but one can hope that a teacher, a parent, or a teacher-preparation college will petition for declaratory relief. If nothing else, PELSB’s radical rewriting of human nature smacks of a state-imposed religion, in violation of the First Amendment’s no establishment clause, not to mention the dereliction of duty when schools jettison mainstream academic content in favor of extremist ideology.
If recourse to the courts should fail, another remedy remains, modeled for the free world in Norway in 1942. When the National Socialists ordered parents to enroll their children in indoctrination camps with just three weeks’ notice and required all school teachers to implement a Nazi curriculum, the people simply would not have it. Five out of every six teachers resigned.
A similar proportion of parents flooded the Norwegian education bureau with letters — literally, laundry baskets full of letters — registering their protests. Adolf Hitler’s henchmen were grossly outnumbered, and the Nazis’ outward control of state agencies never penetrated to the hearts and minds of the people. The fusion of Viking blood with Lutheran “here I stand” courage made otherwise docile Norwegians invincible. Whether the Minnesotans can muster similar resolve soon will become evident to all.
A Loudoun County father, whose arrest at a June 2021 school board meeting was used by the Biden administration to justify a politicized attack on concerned parents, was found not guilty of trespassing on Wednesday.
Law enforcement arrested Jon Tigges at a Loudoun school board meeting on June 22, 2021, after he tried expressing concerns about the school district’s “moral decay.” A Virginia district judge found Tigges guilty in October of 2021. Loudoun Circuit Judge Douglas Fleming Jr., however, cleared Tigges of any wrongdoing. Fleming determined that Tigges not only had a First Amendment right to attend the heated meeting but also that the superintendent who shut down the official gathering last summer had no right to declare it an “unlawful assembly.”
“My thanks to God for justice,” Tigges wrote on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Tigges was one of the more than 250 people who had signed up to speak during the public comment section of the Loudoun County School Board meeting that summer night. He intended to voice opposition to the board’s new transgender policy proposal, which mandated that employees use students’ so-called “preferred pronouns” and preferred restrooms regardless of their sex. Before Tigges could speak, School Board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan called off the meeting, and the now-recently fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the gathering an “unlawful assembly.” Ziegler ordered the hundreds of people waiting to express their outrage at the government school district to vacate the premises or risk arrest.
Tigges refused to leave.
“I just felt led to realize that we could still speak,” Tigges told The Federalist last year. “It’s a public forum, a public room. It had been scheduled until seven o’clock for people to speak. I stood up to encourage folks to stay and if they had something to say whether they were on the left or the right, didn’t matter. They’d be heard and we’d respect one another and do so and so people started doing that without any amplification at all and you could hear them fine because it was a peaceful assembly.”
Despite Tigges’ claim on the First Amendment, police officers handcuffed, arrested, and charged him with trespassing.
Two arrests made at the Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting after it was declared an unlawful assembly and some parents here to protest against critical race theory and a transgender policy refused to leave right away #CriticalRaceTheorypic.twitter.com/dsZDrqJ0Gp
Tigges’ arrest in June of 2021 was used by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), in collusion with the Biden White House, to justify the smearing of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” who required punishment from federal law enforcement. In September of 2021, the NSBA sent its infamous complaint letter, secretly solicited by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, to the Department of Justice, which sparked a politicized attack on parents who wanted to speak out against corrupt school boards.
“Despite this victory, I have serious concerns about where we are as a country. We’ve been subverted by a darkness that is spilling out in rot at all levels and in both political parties,” Tigges tweeted after the decision. “Nothing will change until We the People value conviction over comfort.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Anew survey shows that after schools arbitrarily shut down for several consecutive months, parents of all political backgrounds continue to take on the rigors and responsibilities of homeschooling long after schools have reopened.
Educators in both public and private schools should be asking why this is. Why would parents decline the services of certified professionals running various curricular and extracurricular programs at an operational, fully equipped campus just down the road? Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars go into these schools, which not only educate children but serve as the cultural center of most localities. By homeschooling, parents are saying no to all that — along with the lifestyle they could have without kids at home — and instead shouldering the burdens of pedagogy, instructional materials, scheduling, behavioral management, and socializing their kids throughout their academic careers.
Not only this, but why would parents on the left who agreed with lockdowns and are largely sympathetic to public schools opt to homeschool? According to the survey, “47% of new homeschoolers skewed leftof center self-reporting as either progressive or liberal (vs. 32% pre-Covid homeschoolers).”
Educators need to investigate this, but rather than confront the glaring problems of schooling — low standards, chaotic classes, corrupt bureaucracies, rampant tech addiction, and leftist propaganda — or do the slightest bit of soul-searching, nearly all administrators and educators have dismissed these concerns and now pretend that the last two years never happened, except when they need to make excuses to the communities they serve. The monopoly on public education has afforded them the luxury to forget everything and learn absolutely nothing.
Nowhere is this complacency better illustrated than in the recent book “Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now” by Anya Kamenetz. Despite devoting more than 300 pages to the mistakes made by public school leaders and education unions during Covid, Kamenetz never thought to question the general mediocrity of these institutions. Instead, she wholeheartedly supports them and advocates for more funding. How exactly will more money make up for the learning loss and the psychological damage done by derelict school systems? Kamenetz never says, but she does find time to attack President Trump.
This leaves parents of all political persuasions to determine what they can do to save their kids. Sure, some may fight the good fight and send their kids to public schools, be more vocal at school board meetings, and keep a close ear to what’s happening in their children’s classes. Others may be blessed with a classical school that recreates the old-fashioned learning experience that prevailed in the West before things got so bad. And some may simply hold their noses and think happy thoughts as they drink the Kool-Aid, convincing themselves that everything will be fine and that their clinically depressed and gender-confused child who spends xir days binging on violent anime and #neurodivergent TikTok videos is simply going through a phase and will learn to read and do math eventually.
Or they can try homeschooling. It may be a huge commitment of time and energy, but it’s also the only real way to protect kids from bad kids, bad teachers, and bad ideas.
Although Covid has exacerbated the situation, the rationale for homeschooling isn’t all that new. What’s notable is how homeschooling today appeals to conservatives and leftists alike. While conservatives have always liked the option of homeschooling as a means of safeguarding their values and avoiding the harms of government incompetence and modern decadence, leftists generally paid lip service to public schools (while sending their kids to private schools) and looked down on the homeschooling crowd as fundamentalist crackpots doomed to being unsuccessful losers.
This has changed in recent years. Now it’s leftists who want to safeguard their values and circumvent the problems of formal schooling. Ironically, their reasons for doing this are the exact opposite of why conservative parents homeschool. These parents actually believe that schools are way too traditional in their values and instruction, don’t offer enough accommodations to suit their children’s learning style, and still do too little about Covid. They fear their child will be bullied, receive bad grades, and be red-pilled by that one Christian conservative teacher they have for English.
Despite certain school boards and superintendents doing their utmost to adhere to liberal orthodoxy, this does little to change the conservative nature of their actual schools. As Robert Pondiscio argues in Newsweek, the very concept of formal schooling is inherently conservative: “Kids sit at desks, teachers stand in front of the room and the academic diet leans heavily on the best that has been discovered, thought and created: our language, literature, history, scientific discoveries and artistic achievements. This default mode is by definition culturally ‘conservative.’” This is often a big turnoff for leftist parents, many of whom insist on a “progressive learning” experience. Many want something student-centered, self-paced, relevant to current times, less judgmental (i.e., no grades or assessments), and altogether open and undefined — something only achievable through homeschooling.
The mutual disdain for formal schools from both the left and the right perfectly illustrates the “horseshoe theory,” in which opposing sides of an ideological spectrum come closer together as they become more extreme. So while the reason for homeschooling may be different to the point of incompatibility, the outcome is the same: Parents aren’t happy with their public schools, so they seek out alternatives.
Whether this leads to a renaissance or decline in education is anyone’s guess, though I’m pessimistic about rebirth if homeschooling becomes a leftist trend. Without a neighborhood school to provide some kind of personal stability and connection to the greater world for these families, it’s difficult to see how this benefits anyone. Conservatives usually have a church and extended family and abide by a clear set of principles; most leftists lack these foundations, so it’s difficult to see how they could make homeschooling work. More likely, they will become the “unschooled” crackpots on the margins, unable to function in society whom they have derided for so long.
The atomization of America and the epidemic of loneliness will likely get worse if too many families opt out of formal schooling. Covid demonstrated that most families need their schools, and even if schools refuse to see it, it’s also true that they need families.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
A sex-ed curriculum developed by an offshoot of Planned Parenthood to teach children about abortion and radical gender ideology is being imposed on school districts across red-state Idaho. The curriculum, called “Reducing the Risk,” is a project of the nonprofit Education, Training and Research (ETR) developed in partnership with Planned Parenthood and already deployed across 16 states, including Idaho.
Students under the “queer-centered” curriculum, which is behind a paywall, are presented with a new definition of abstinence, which has been amended from its real meaning — refraining entirely from sex — to “choosing not to do any sexual activity that carries a risk for pregnancy or STD/HIV,” according to the conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation. The curriculum then offers explicit material about “porn literacy,” condoms, anal and vaginal sex with contraception, transgender ideology, and even guidance on abortion, the state think tank reported.
Anna Miller, the education policy director for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, blew the whistle on the curriculum in a video published on Twitter in September. The video features an apparent clip from the ETR package, which shows animated students watching porn.
Idaho’s government offers “porn literacy” to students, planned parenthood curriculum and advocates for abortion.
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, a state agency, is facilitating the program in the state’s schools with federal grant money, bypassing the state education department.
This is How The Federal Government is Corrupting our Schools on the State Level — Injecting Leftism, Sexualized Curriculum, and Abortion into Rural America. @scottyenor @CenterForAWL pic.twitter.com/uAkKjttCia
While the curriculum is designed for high school students, the state reported to the federal Department of Health and Human Services that kids as young as 12 are being presented with the material.
All seven of Idaho’s health districts have either recommended or implemented the controversial curriculum in local schools, according to the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Districts have also begun to promote links to additional resources including Power to Decide, where kids can find where to get an abortion. Other resources include links to where students learn to hide their browsing history from parents and explore polyamory.
In a September statement responding to outrage over porn literacy being taught in Idaho schools, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare described the Planned Parenthood-sponsored curriculum as compliant with the “National Health Education Standards” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the department’s website on teen pregnancy does not link to standards from the CDC. Instead, it links to the “National Sexuality Education Standards,” which were created by a series of radical left-wing interest groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood, which has become the nation’s second-largest provider of transgender hormones. In other words, Planned Parenthood’s trans-focused sex ed materials are encouraging kids to become its lifelong mutilation customers. The standards dictate that students should understand and “describe” the “role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender” by the end of fifth grade.
In a bizarre student workbook for the “Reducing the Risk” curriculum on the Planned Parenthood website, students are trained to call clinics to inquire about sterilization, shop for condoms, and answer questions about different hypothetical situations. One situation describes a scene where “a lot of kids are getting high, and some couples are leaving — maybe to have sex.” Another worksheet guides students to document how to get to a so-called “family planning clinic,” such as abortion giant Planned Parenthood, by bus or train.
The trans-centered curriculum in Idaho is being implemented without notifying parents, many of whom are being left in the dark by administrators claiming to teach “abstinence education.”
Children have become a prime target for left-wing ideologues promoting radical transgender ideology. Health care networks have taken notice, capitalizing on gender-confused kids who then become life-long patients when they start to pursue irreversible gender-bending treatments.
According to a report from Grand View Research, a California-based business consulting firm, transgender surgeries will become a $5 billion industry over the next 10 years. In September, Vanderbilt University earned national attention for openly placing dollar signs on children as a “big money maker.”
Vanderbilt was apparently concerned that not all of its staff would be on board. Dr. Ellen Clayton warned that "conscientious objections" are "problematic." Anyone who decides not to be involved in transition surgeries due to "religious beliefs" will face "consequences" pic.twitter.com/CgNicrG4Mg
Boston Children’s Hospital has also promoted “gender-affirming” hysterectomies and sterilizations for minors, who are almost always introduced to transgender ideology either on social media or in the classroom.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Students at a New York City public school, March 2022. (Getty Images)
A New York City public school encouraged students as young as 10 years old to keep a list of all the “microaggressions” they witnessed, both at school and in their own families, according to materials from the school’s curriculum reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The same students were also asked to list their gender identity—”cisgender,” “nonbinary,” or “trans”—as well as their sexual orientation on a graded worksheet.
The sixth-grade humanities curriculum from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, where just 31 percent of students are white, required students to read Tiffany Jewell’s This Book Is Anti-Racist, one of only five books assigned for the 2021-2022 year. The book contains 20 lessons on “how to wake up, take action, and do the work”—including the work of confronting the police, which Jewell suggests white students can do without ending up “in jail or harmed.”
“If you are a Black, Brown, or Indigenous Person of the Global Majority, you will need to decide how each outcome could end for you,” Jewell writes in a chapter called “Choosing My Path.” “White people, this is not something you need to do because you are at the center of the system.”
From Tiffany Jewell’s ‘This Book Is Anti-Racist’
The book also asks students to surveil their friends and family for racist behavior. “Grab your notebook,” one “activity” instructs readers. “Look and listen for the microaggressions around you. Write them down and note your observations.” Another activity asks students how “folx” in their families “resisted” or “contributed to racism,” defined as the “systemic misuse and abuse of power by institutions.”
The curriculum, which went into effect August 2021, came as parents across New York City were mobilizing against critical race theory in public schools—and as education officials across the country were denying that there was any such thing.
“Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, asserted in July 2021. Parents “are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.”
One month earlier, New York Regents chancellor Lester Young stated that critical race theory “is not our theory of action” and assured parents that “we are not preparing young people to be activists.”
Jewell’s book belies that assurance. “We will work together, in solidarity, to disrupt racism and become anti-racist accomplices,” the preface reads. “There are many moments to pause in this book so you can check in with yourself and grow into your activism.”
The curriculum could spell legal trouble for the school, which is already under investigation for separating seventh and eight-graders into racial affinity groups. That practice prompted a civil rights complaint in December from the watchdog group Parents Defending Education; on July 13, the Department of Education announced it would investigate the middle school over the complaint.
“It’s astonishing that administrators at Lower Manhattan Community seem determined to create a racially hostile educational environment on top of the civil rights investigation that was just opened,” said Nicole Neily, the president of Parents Defending Education. “Parents who were once proud of the school’s academic performance compared to other New York City public schools are now concerned—justifiably so—about the school’s increasing fixation on race.”
Those concerns come amid steep enrollment declines—and budget cuts—in New York City’s public schools. With enrollment down 8 percent since 2020, schools have lost $215 million in funding this year alone, forcing widespread layoffs and larger class sizes.
Divisive curricula like the one at Lower Manhattan Community School have exacerbated that exodus. One parent told the Free Beacon that their child would not be returning to the middle school this fall on account of an assignment that required sixth-graders to disclose their “social identities”—including their sexual orientation—on a worksheet. Though students did not have to “write something for every category,” instructors collected the worksheet for a grade.
Such lessons aren’t the product of a few school administrators run amok but reflect the race-conscious worldview of the New York City Department of Education. In June 2020, then-executive superintendent of Manhattan public schools Marisol Rosales hosted a panel on dismantling “systemic racism in our schools,” which held up Lower Manhattan Community School’s “mission statement on race” as a model for the entire school system.
“To undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community,” the mission statement reads, Lower Manhattan Community Schools works to instill “anti-racist beliefs and practices.”
The school’s sixth-grade humanities curriculum is a microcosm of what that education looks like in practice. Three of its five units concern “identity,” with Jewell’s book listed as a “key text” for unit one. The “social identities” worksheet was part of a broader lesson on “the dominant culture,” which consists of “people who are white, middle class, Christian and cisgender.”
Whoever does not fit into this “box,” Jewell writes, is “part of what’s called the ‘subordinate culture.’” Her description of that culture is exhaustive, albeit studded with solecisms: “Folx included in the ‘subordinate culture,’ include Black, Brown, indigenous People of Color of the Global Majority, queer, transgender, and nonbinary folx, and cisgender women, youth, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and non-Christian folx, neurodiverse folx, folx living with disabilities, those living in poverty, and more.”
“The people who want to talk about racism all the time are the racists,” said Maud Maron, who served as an elected representative for parents in the district where Lower Manhattan Community School is located. “The people who suffer are the kids who get cheated out of a wholesome school experience and hours of learning that should be focused on academics instead of race indoctrination.”
Lower Manhattan Community School did not respond to a request for comment.
The focus on race extended to the seventh-grade social studies curriculum—ostensibly devoted to early American history—which used “anti-racist” guru Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning as its main textbook, according to a syllabus for the 2021-2022 school year reviewed by the Free Beacon.
These curricula do not seem to have soothed racial tensions at Lower Manhattan Community School, which is 41 percent Asian, 15 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent black.
A group of parents and administrators in April began planning a “restorative justice circle” to address alleged incidents of racism that had taken place over the school year, according to emails reviewed by the Free Beacon. The incidents included a black student calling a South Asian student “Indian Boy,” an Asian student touching a black student’s hair, and a “rumor” that a white student “used the N-word.”
The school eventually canceled the circle after a parent objected that it would “violate students’ privacy” and “possibly put current students at risk”—and after parents started to litigate the incidents over email, replicating the racial catfighting that had consumed the classroom.
One parent questioned the wisdom of discussing the transgressions of Asian students at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise. It didn’t go over well.
“African Americans have been facing race-based violence for 500 years in this country, and still face it every day,” another parent responded. “So, I’d ask you to please be sensitive to that fact during discussions and emails with our group.”
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation Friday that would use COVID-19 education-related funding to improve the security at schools across the U.S. The legislation, first obtained by the Daily Caller, is titled the Protect Our Children’s Schools Act and is a Senate companion to legislation introduced by Republican Texas Rep. Randy Weber. The bill would allow schools to use unspent previously appropriated Federal COVID-19 education-related funding to improve school security. The bill requires the Department of Education to make all un-obligated federal COVID relief funds that are available to the secretary of education for school safety purposes. As of May 2022, states have not spent the majority of their relief funding. Cruz’s legislation would try to improve school security in K-12 elementary and secondary schools.
“Far too many atrocities have been committed at schools in Texas and across our nation. Increasing school safety is of paramount importance. The excess and unused monies given to schools to address the coronavirus should be used to keep our kids safe from monsters in their communities, and our bill would make sure local schools can use these funds to address their specific security needs,” Cruz told the Daily Caller before introducing the legislation.
In the latest example of doubling down on bad policies, the Biden administration is currently seeking to restore Obama-era federal guidance that had severe consequences for student safety. According to recent reports, the policies under consideration would investigate schools based on their rates of discipline of students with disabilities and those from racial minority backgrounds. In the past, these investigations have led to the threats of federal lawsuits against school districts and mandated a focus on reducing the rates of suspension for disabled and minority students.
All of these policies are based on the woke narrative surrounding “disparate impacts.” Under this theory, even a policy that, on its face, is entirely race-neutral, is adjudged to be racist if it affects individuals from different races or backgrounds at different rates. This narrative has come to the forefront not only in education, but also in policing with countless headlines noting that minorities are arrested and incarcerated at higher rates for a wide variety of crimes.
What is not allowed to be discussed is whether this is a result of true racism, or of differences in behavior that are correlated along race lines. Even though it is politically incorrect, most of the evidence points to the latter. The reality is that on objective measures where there is little or no possibility of racial bias, racial disparities still exist in the rates of anti-social behavior.
For instance, research has found that African Americans are far more likely than their white peers to report having been in a fight at school, and more likely to face mandatory discipline where there is little room for discretion on the part of teachers and principals. There are many explanations for why this could be the case. The most likely is differences in poverty among white and minority students, which correlates very well with student discipline disparities. Indeed, extensive research has found that poverty rates are predictive of misbehavior regardless of student race. But whatever the reason, ignoring misbehavior is likely to lead to greater harm to the students it is designed to protect.
My research on the implementation of similar policies in Wisconsin has found that students report feeling less safe in schools as rates of suspension for minority students decline.
Across the country, teachers complain that students who have engaged in behaviors that warrant a suspension are being given more lenient punishment in the name of keeping numbers down. Some have even attributed the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School to a school system that turned a blind eye to the eventual killer’s behavior one too many times.
This lack of support for teachers is causing some of them to leave the classroom entirely. Given that majority-minority districts are some of the most in need of effective educators, this is especially problematic. Indeed, because America has many majority-minority schools, the students who bear the brunt of this policy failure are other minority students who are focusing on their schooling and want to succeed.
In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and school shutdowns, the achievement gap between white and minority students has only expanded. Parents who lacked the resources to supplement their children’s educations during the era of at-home “learning” are desperate for schools to help their kids make up for lost time. This makes fighting back against this discipline guidance from the Biden administration all the more critical. Students who want to learn deserve the chance to be in safe, non-disruptive classrooms where they can gain knowledge. The alternative where chaos reigns in the name of political correctness is unconscionable.
Dr. Will Flanders is research director for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
A school board director in Washington state who also owns a sex shop in Bellingham is planning a series of workshops for children as young as 9 to discuss “sexual anatomy for pleasure” and “safer sex practices for all kinds of sexual activities.” The classes, branded under the name “Uncringe Academy” at the WinkWink Boutique, will host 9- to 12-year-olds in the first string of courses Aug. 10-11 and 13- to 17-year-olds a few days later in the second.
“The class for 9- to 12-year-olds is an introduction to topics related to relationships, puberty, bodies and sexuality,” store owner and Bellingham School Board Director Jenn Mason told Seattle radio host Jason Rantz. “We focus on how puberty works, consent and personal boundaires, defining ‘sex,’ and discussing why people may or may not choose to engage in sexual activities.”
“There’s a lot to learn when it comes to bodies, puberty, sex, gender, and relationships!” the course description reads. “That’s why WinkWink created ‘Uncringe Academy’: honest, supportive, and inclusive sex education classes to help young people of all genders and sexual identities understand this important part of their life.”
Topics discussed under an “affirming framework” will include
“the ethics and realities of sexualized media and pornography” and
“What IS sex? Kinds of solo and partnered sexual activities.”
Students who enroll under the sliding-scale fee schedule from $5 to $50 will also be taught about “the science of puberty,” “healthy relationships and relationship models,” and “gender and sexual identities.”
Mason did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiries into how the age range was selected and whether it was appropriate to present explicit material to minors.
WinkWink is advertised as a “woman-owned, all-inclusive sex shop” where “we celebrate sexual expression and exploration, banish shame, and help our customers to better love themselves and others.”
“Pleasure is our revolution,” the website reads. “We believe that normalizing, accepting, and affirming all bodies, identities, and gender experiences is an inherently political act.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
Religious devotion, the keystone of ordered liberty in the West, has been under systematic assault by anti-religious forces Barr called an ‘atheocracy.’
The West is facing its deepest civilizational crisis since Jesus Christ resurrected, and addressing the crisis requires removing militant secularists’ monopoly on education, former U.S. attorney general William Barr told a packed Christian conference in Chicago, Ill. on Saturday.
“We are going through a fateful crisis in western civilization. This is the deepest crisis we’ve faced in my mind since Christ,” Barr said. “That’s because our whole civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and that tradition is under sustained attack by increasingly militant secular forces.”
In a reprise of a 2019 speech at Notre Dame University that met massive corporate media backlash, Barr told the audience U.S. public schools have become hostile to traditional religion while wresting control of American children’s upbringing from their parents. This is a threat to the entire Western order, Barr said, because the unique American system of self-government cannot exist without a citizenry that is committed to traditional religion.
That’s because there are only two ways to restrain people from following disordered passions, Barr said: internal restraints, which are largely provided by one’s beliefs; and external restraints, which are typically provided by government. So, in order to have a limited government, Barr noted in an explicit echo of the American Founders, citizens must practice self-restraint. Such self-restraint is primarily developed through religious devotion, he said. But religious observance, the keystone of ordered liberty in the West, has been under systematic assault by anti-religious forces Barr called an “atheocracy,” his amalgam of the words “atheist theocracy.” These anti-religious forces now control the minds of American kids due to their monopoly on U.S. education institutions.
“The threat today is not that religious people are about to establish a theocracy in the United States, it is that militant secularists are trying to establish an atheocracy,” Barr said. Barr also spoke to The Federalist about the asymmetric justice being carried out under Joe Biden by the agency he has led twice, the U.S. Department of Justice.
In a 2021 interview with the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, Barr said anti-religion leftists have effectively turned public schools into “secular-progressive madrassas.” In his Chicago speech on Saturday, the nation’s former top lawyer told the audience this state of affairs is likely a violation of the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of one religion over others, as well as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause that forbids the government from interfering with Americans’ religious obligations.
“What we’re living through is not a situation where religion is intruding into the government’s rightful arena, it’s exactly the opposite: It’s that government and politics is usurping the role of religion,” Barr said.
Barr told the sold-out Chicago audience at the 2022 conference of the Christian radio show “Issues, Etc.” that American politics now aligns with religious beliefs. The dichotomy in American life is no longer about prudential issues but religious ones: whether one acknowledges an objective, external, unchanging reality ordered by a transcendent deity or whether one insists the material world is all there is, which makes one’s god the self.
This anti-God materialism now maps onto and fuels political leftism, Barr said:
When a purely materialist worldview takes hold in society, it’s drawn to a messianic utopianism. Its adherents become enthralled with the idea that the meaning of life, what gives them purpose and meaning, is to be found in the quest for a perfect earthly society. The manipulation of the material world to achieve some form of nirvana here on earth. And the means used is achieving political power.
The main obstacle to this earthly paradise is the existing structure, conventions and superstitions like religion. Any obstacle to our earthly paradise has to be torn down.
These ideas are represented by the progressive movement in the United States. It basically is an ersatz religion that gives them a sort of truncated version of the place filled by religion in people’s lives. It also explains the bitterness in our politics today. Because once you adopt this view, then your political opponents aren’t just disagreeing with you, they’re evil. They are standing in the way of the salvation of mankind.
…Another part of this revolutionary era and the consequences we have been witnessing over the last couple of hundred years is a worldview that boils questions of morality solely down to an individual’s internal feelings. And their interior sense of pleasure and satisfaction. That’s how we gauge acts, whether people feel internally satisfied. And anything that advances that feeling is good, and anything that constrains or restricts that feeling is bad. This is a fundamental change in the worldview of the West.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court and other American political institutions have turned public schools from essentially Christian schools into essentially anti-Christian schools, Barr said, the U.S. school system has been erasing the faith required to sustain limited government. Multiple studies provide evidence this is true.
Banning Christianity from education created a moral vacuum that has ultimately been filled badly with political leftism. This has not only increasingly turned younger American generations against their own faith, families, and country, it has turned public schools into indoctrination camps.
“Personal and civic moral systems don’t just sort of hover in the air,” Barr explained. “They have to rest on an explanatory foundation, a metaphysical foundation. When people tell you to do something, you ask ‘Why?’ Why is it necessary to be good and what is it that consists of being good? So, the extent to which an education seeks to contribute to a student’s moral formation, it necessarily invades the space of religion when explaining what the moral values are and how they should be inherited.”
Thanks to the current Supreme Court’s adherence to the original Constitution as written, Barr said he thinks this is an opportune moment for both court and legislative work to address this existential national crisis.
“Public education was established as a melting pot that would establish a common American identity. How are the public schools doing on that front?” Barr asked, at which the audience burst into laughter. He continued: “The curriculum is now attacking the fundamental legitimacy of our form of government and our founding documents. That’s no way to bring us together as a nation.”
The most direct way to resolve this constitutional and existential crisis in American education is to end the government monopoly over the provision of education, Barr said, with full school choice. (The form of school choice that offers the fewest opportunities for hostile bureaucrats to interfere with parent choices, by the way, is education savings accounts.)
“The variety of American beliefs now makes a monopoly on education untenable,” Barr said. “You can’t finesse it anymore. You can’t pretend what’s being taught in schools is compatible with traditional religion, nor can you pretend schools are neutral anymore.”
Because anti-religious public schools hold a monopoly on public education funds, Barr noted, parents are forced to fight mostly ineffectively over what public schools teach, such as transgender ideology to kindergarteners and anti-white racism. Allowing parents to take their children’s public education dollars to institutions that match their beliefs will end such culture wars, he said, as well as help families more effectively pass their republic-sustaining faith on to their children.
This alone can’t solve the entire existential crisis of the West, Barr conceded: “It’s not a panacea, but I cannot see a way out for us and the way for Christian citizens to live in peace in this republic until we address the educational system.”
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
The 2021-2022 school year is coming to a close. As usual, students, parents, teachers, and administrators are looking over the past year to see what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve.
This year, the educational establishment’s report card is even worse than usual. It has failed to address the learning losses due to unnecessary Covid lockdowns and inspired parental uproar over critical race theory and LGBT advocacy in the classroom. It has suffered a surprising electoral defeat in Virginia and a not-so-surprising legislative setback in Florida, as well as an unprecedented number of school board recall elections. Most damaging of all, close to 2 million students have abandoned government schooling for greener (not to mention safer) pastures.
Faced with such massive public losses, one might think a little self-reflection would be in order. Instead, the educrats, with the help of their friends in the legacy media, have decided to address these serious problems by gaslighting the American public.
Avoiding Accountability at All Costs
The most recent example of this deception comes from the continuing saga of the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) effort last fall to smear parents who complain at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.” The now infamous letter and even more infamous Department of Justice memo that followed it represent the depths to which the educational establishment was willing to sink to protect itself from accountability to the families it theoretically serves.
A recently completed independent review exonerated the NSBA’s board from culpability in this fiasco, fixing the blame for “both the ‘origin and substance of the letter’” on former Interim Director and CEO Chip Slaven. The review also found that while unnamed members of the Biden administration “collaborated” with Slaven, it “did not find direct or indirect evidence suggesting the administration requested the letter.”
In an effort to “clear the record,” Slaven recorded an interview last week with Fox News Digital, where he whined about being “betrayed” and “completely backstabbed” by the organization that he led. He also admitted that he disagreed with the NSBA board’s futile efforts to walk back the language of the letter, claiming that “it drenched an already inflamed and out-of-control narrative with another helping of gasoline.”
Neither Slaven nor the NSBA’s announcement bothered to address the elephant in the room: that the
organization sees engaged parents and community members who attend school board meetings as potential threats that need to be watched and possibly prosecuted by federal authorities. When pressed about this during the interview, Slaven lamely defended the substance of the letter he penned by saying, “The word ‘parents’ is not in the letter anywhere,” despite the examples cited in the letter’s footnotes.
The NSBA has offered vague platitudes about “advocat[ing] for local control” and being “committed to parent engagement” as it pursues its “nonpartisan” goals. These attempts to rewrite history come as 25 state school boards have chosen“to withdraw membership, participation, or dues from NSBA.”
Meanwhile, an FBI whistleblower has claimed that “counterterrorism tools” were indeed used against parents in accordance with the DOJ’s memo. It remains unclear whether these efforts continue presently despite the NSBA’s repudiation of the letter and its alleged author.
Legacy Media Provide Covering Fire
Of course, the left-wing corporate media have gone all in to support educrats’ efforts to deceive the public into believing they remain the valiant heroes in this ongoing drama. Lately, they’ve decided to focus their attacks on a favorite target of the left: homeschooling families.
This is hardly surprising, as the number of these families at least doubled during the lockdowns of 2020-2021. What’s more, that number has been largely maintained despite schools re-opening in the fall of 2021.
On Mother’s Day, Keith Olbermann fired an opening salvo in this new campaign against educational choice when he tweeted that a homeschooling mom was “ruin[ing] the lives of five innocent children.” Not to be outdone, MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler initiated a preemptive strike against Kirk Cameron’s upcoming documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” by disingenuously linking homeschooling not just with conservative Christianity, but also with the “segregation academies” of the post-Brown v. Board of Education South.
After grudgingly admitting the recent increase in homeschooling “may [in part] be attributed to Black parents and other diverse groups” who might not otherwise dare to disagree with her leftist party line, Butler ended her hatchet job with a dire warning:
Homeschooling may have greater appeal now because of these debates and the desire for parents to play a big part in their children’s educational life. It may also arise out of pandemic concerns, but parents unfamiliar with the existing networks of homeschooling run the danger of being drawn into Christian conservative networks and theocratic teaching. [Cameron] says that people choosing homeschooling are having an awakening, but the public needs to awaken to the reality that public schools may disappear if people with his extreme beliefs have their way.
The left’s message to parents is loud and clear: Exercise your right to homeschool your kids and you are complicit in the cold-blooded murder of public schooling.
Institutional Suicide
In these efforts, Slaven, Olbermann, Butler, and their comrades studiously deflect from the simple truth: If American government-run schools are dying, it is not a case of murder, but of suicide.
The self-inflicted wounds keep coming despite all the warning signs of the past academic year. Last month, the school district in Kiel, Wis., accused three middle schoolers of sexual harassment for failing to refer to another student by her chosen pronouns. What parent wants to go through that as a consequence of sending his kids to public schools?
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools is planning to adopt a policy to suspend or even expel students who “maliciously misgender” classmates. The vote, originally scheduled for May 26, has been suspiciously delayed until June 16, perhaps so the happy chaos of the last day of school will allow the board to avoid further public scrutiny and outrage.
As kids across the nation start their summer vacations, the battle for their minds and souls rages on. True to form, the educational establishment fights dirty, using cheap manipulation tactics to distract the public from its pursuit of ideological “business as usual.”
Robert Busek is a Catholic homeschooling father of six who has taught history and Western Civilization in both traditional and online classrooms for over twenty years. His essays have also been published in The American Conservative and The American Spectator. The views he expresses here are his own.
The Cultural Research Center (CRC) is out with a new study comparing the number of American parents of children under age 13 who hold a biblical Christian worldview with those who adhere to competing secular alternatives. The results are a damning indictment of Americans’ rejection of or simple indifference to a biblical worldview.
Across all parents of pre-teens, only 2 percent hold a biblical worldview, which is defined as “consistently interpreting and responding to life situations based on biblical principles and teachings.” Those with a biblical worldview believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God containing all moral truths.
Among all respondents, other measured worldviews (such as secular humanism, nihilism, postmodernism, etc.) garnered even fewer adherents. Fully 94 percent subscribed to “a blending of multiple worldviews in which no single life philosophy is dominant.”
The needle scarcely moves for all self-identified Christians (not just pre-teen parents). Only 6 percent of them look at and interpret the world through a biblical lens; that number rises to 21 percent among those attending evangelical Protestant churches.
The fact that the biblical Christian worldview has become so insignificant in the culture should be of concern to all Americans because our country, including its governing principles and legal system, was based on our founders’ biblical worldview.
All around, we see the results of our abandonment of the biblical worldview. According to CRC research, more than half of the population accepts that truth is subjective.
Without objective truth, there is no way to determine what’s real and no moral absolutes to distinguish right from wrong. So we hear the popular “my truth” refrain as the justification for any idea or behavior depending upon what feels right at the time.
Why Worldview Matters
Professor Mikael Stenmark defines worldview as “beliefs, values, and attitudes that … constitute [people’s] basic understanding of (a) who they are, what the world is like, and what their place in it is, (b) what they should do to live a good and meaningful life, and (c) what they can say, know and rationally believe about these things.”
A dividing line between a secular and a biblical worldview is the belief in how the world came to exist. Secularists hold that reality consists entirely of physical matter and forces, which can only be explained through science. For the secularist, the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution explain how all things came to be.
Those with a biblical worldview believe in an all-encompassing divine mind — i.e., God — who rules over and maintains physical matter and forces. The theistic worldview is founded on the core belief that God exists and is the creator of all things.
It is easy to see why the biblical worldview is all but extinct in the culture. Every living generation — baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and many of the silent generation (pre-1945) — has been educated predominantly in a secular or naturalistic worldview based on the prevailing science of the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution.
Science Declares God Is Dead
The only “official” science approved to be taught in the primary grades through post-graduate education is the anti-faith naturalistic one. It’s virtually illegal to teach anything that hints at creation science or intelligent design. The National Center for Science Education proudly displays ten major court cases, including a Supreme Court ruling, that essentially ban the teaching of intelligent design.
It’s not just the education system. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski calls the scientific establishment’s approach to intelligent design a “zero-concession policy.”
For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a statement claiming “There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution. The current controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution is not a scientific one.”
Scientists and post-graduate students who dare to challenge naturalistic-science orthodoxy are subject to professional ridicule, or loss of jobs or research funds. Peer-review journals reject their submissions, as do scientific conferences and meetings.
It’s not in support of science that the establishment defends its official position so vehemently, but to protect its secular worldview. And the American Civil Liberties Union backs them up with legal firepower a detailed statement about why students must be protected against intelligent design at all costs.
Truth Will Come Out
Not all scientists are so didactic. But the “vital few” in control have effectively kept any serious discussion of intelligent design from the rest of the scientific community. However, when they are presented with evidence supporting intelligent design, many discover truth there.
That includes scientists like astronomer Allan Sandage, who studied under Edwin Hubble and continued his work after Hubble died. Sandage’s study of astronomy and astrophysics led him to conclude there is “evidence for what can only be described as a supernatural event,” or what he called a “creation event.”
Plenty of members in the scientific community see much to challenge in Darwinian doctrine. More than 1,000 academics and scientists have signed the Dissent from Darwinism petition stating, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
The number of acclaimed scientists who challenge the establishment’s orthodoxy is growing thanks to the work of places like the Discovery Institute, the research arm of the Center for Science and Culture.
Rekindling the Discussion
The education and scientific establishments have become co-conspirators in propagating their secular worldview and banishing the biblical one. But there is hope. Belief in God “as described in the Bible” is still held by a 54 percent majority of Americans, according to a 2022 poll reported by The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd.
Noting that 72 percent of Americans agree the nation’s moral compass is “pointed in the wrong direction,” she writes, “As generations age and the push for secularism and the erasure of faith continues in American establishments such as public schools, younger people are losing spiritual influence and instruction, and with it their faith.”
That is the ultimate goal of our society’s ruling institutions, including government, education, science, medicine, and business. They are determined to wipe out faith by indoctrinating all into their secular worldview using the Big Bang and evolution as the cudgel.
So far, the scientific establishment has been successful in shutting down discussion that the Bible might be true from beginning to end. But continuing research in intelligent design and more scientists who question science’s naturalistic orthodoxy will arm the public with information to support the biblical worldview and loosen the stranglehold of the secular one on our youth and culture.
“Let there be light,” God said in Genesis 1:3. “And there was light.” Jesus said in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That day isn’t here yet, but we pray it comes quickly.
Pamela Danziger is a market researcher specializing in the study of consumer behavior and motivation. Author of ten books, she shares insights as a senior contributor on Forbes.com. And as a Christian, she is co-founder of Faith Underground. She holds an M.L.S. from University of Maryland and B.A. in English Literature from Penn State.
Teachers have declared war on capitalism. what is on full display during this strike is the anti-capitalist position taken by the nation’s teachers’ unions.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Madison, Wis. — Parents are “not entitled” to know their kids’ gender identity, according to a recent training session in Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Area School District.
Empower Wisconsin obtained a copy of a training slide from a late February staff development session. The 2021-22 Equity session on Safe Spaces reminds teachers that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.”
“Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In ECASD, our priority is supporting the student,” the professional development facilitator guide states. Teachers were encouraged to “Talk amongst yourselves!”
The lesson — that teachers know better than parents about what is best for their kids — is not sitting well with some community members.
“We are appalled that ECASD would display such blatant disregard for the parents and guardians of our community’s children. We are equally dismayed that current school district leadership would pressure teachers into breaking a social contract that we all know and understand—that parents and guardians hold primary responsibility and decision making for the welfare and care of their children,” said parents and school board candidates Nicole Everson, Corey Cronrath, and Melissa Winter in a joint statement.
The district’s training session is also legally suspect. A district court in 2020 issued a partial injunction against Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy allowing children of any age to transition to a different gender identity at school — without parental consent. The full case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of parents challenging the gender identity policy “that violates the rights of parents to make important healthcare decisions on their children’s behalf.” The policy includes the following provisions:
Children of any age can transition to a different gender identity at school, by changing their name and pronouns, without parental notice or consent.
District employees are prohibited from notifying parents, without the child’s consent, that their child has or wants to change gender identity at school, or that their child may be dealing with gender dysphoria.
District employees are even instructed to deceive parents by using the child’s legal name and pronouns with family, while using the different name and pronouns adopted by the child in the school setting.
It’s not clear whether the Eau Claire Area School District has a similar policy.
The school board candidates are demanding district administrators issue an apology to teachers for “placing them at odds with families and also to parents and guardians for breaking the trust and partnership that is critical for thriving students and a stellar school district.”
An apology doesn’t appear to be forthcoming. ECASD Superintendent Michael Johnson issued a statement to Empower Wisconsin asserting the district is upholding its responsibility to maintain an educational environment that is “equitable, safe and inclusive for all students.”
“Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students,” Johnson said in the statement. “The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.”
The superintendent said the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students. But critics say a school’s commitment to “equity and inclusiveness” does not give license to educators to hide important information from parents and guardians.
Cronrath, Everson, and Winter are among seven candidates, including two incumbents, running for three open seats on the school board next month. The three jumped into the race because they were concerned about the eroding of parental rights in the district. They say Eau Claire schools’ “blatant disregard for parental rights and responsibilities” has been creeping into the district’s classrooms. The latest training session sends three very dangerous messages to parents and the wider community, the candidates assert.
1. Schools are in control of children, not parents and families—When you entrust your child into the walls of ECASD, you no longer have the right as a parent to be informed of major developments in your child’s school life. In fact, you must ‘earn it.’
2. Current Leadership is willing to pit teachers against parents—Open communication between the classroom and home has always been critical to healthy school communities and student development. ECASD is putting teachers in a difficult and dishonest position by instructing them to actively withhold information from parents.
3. What goes on in the walls of ECASD is privileged information—By indicating that information about your child is ‘knowledge that must be earned,’ ECASD is setting a dangerous precedent. If identity questions for your child can be hidden from you, is diet, curriculum, healthcare, inappropriate relationships, mental health concerns, etc. also no longer the business of parents? Just what are parents and guardians allowed to know and when?
The Republican-led state legislature passed a Parental Bill of Rights that would prohibit school policies that infringe on a parent’s or guardian’s role as the primary caregiver of their child. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat and the former state superintendent, is likely to veto the bill.
Eau Claire Area School District has a history of overreach. Last fall, school officials worked with the local health czar in removing a 14-year-old girl from school after someone in her class tested positive for Covid-19. The girl and her mom resisted, accusing authorities of abusing their powers. The county health director then sought a court order to have the girl forcibly removed from school.
As parents across the nation wake up to the threat that the American educational system poses to children, many have taken note of the sexually explicit, politically motivated literature that has made its way into public and school libraries.
In Wyoming, community members notified the police department about explicit books in the local library’s youth section. “Sex is a Funny Word,” written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth, is one such book. It was placed on the American Library Association Reading List for 2016. Intended for those as young as 7-year-old second graders, the book has been featured in middle school libraries and discusses the “subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” It also erroneously claims that “having a penis isn’t what makes you a boy. Having a vulva isn’t what makes you a girl. The truth is much more interesting than that!”
This type of propagandizing has become standard for the left-wing extremists embedded in our education system. But what makes it all the more astonishing is both the thoroughly unnerving — and previously unreported — history of this book’s author and the institutional support that’s propelled him to notoriety.
From Sex Shops To School Libraries
Cory Silverberg’s website links to the four books he’s written. Each one focuses on the same thing: sex. With the exception of “The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability,” which he coauthored with Miriam Kaufman and Fran Odette, the author’s work is aimed at children. His latest book, “You Know, Sex,” another collaboration with Smyth, is available for pre-order and discusses “pornography,” “stigma,” and “gender.” He calls the book “essential for kids.” His website bio states, “Cory’s life is full of kids. All of them know where babies come from. Some know more.”
Who is this man so intent on informing your children not only about sex, but about pornography, transsexuality, and masturbation? On his website, which advertises children’s books, the author cites himself as a “founding member of Come As You Are Co-operative,” an anti-capitalist sex shop in Toronto, which he also links to.
As the Toronto Star noted years ago, this isn’t just any sex shop. This is a “beginner’s sex store.” The outlet noted that the store hoped “to hold an off-site sex-education workshop for parents of children aged 7 to 12, one that will focus on more than reproduction.” The Star went on to quote Silverberg as saying, “Our overall focus is pleasure-based rather than fear-based.”
The shop’s website includes a section that catalogs the owners’ media appearances. One edition of Fab magazine, published on February 7, 2007, includes an article titled “Come As You Are Celebrates 10 Years.” It spares no details, highlighting a “Japanese rope bondage” workshop, while also graphically describing a real life, in-person “workshop” that featured sexual demonstrations from two naked men.
The disturbing focus on children that is so clear on Silverberg’s personal website is just as apparent on the sex shop’s website. Right next to ads for the exact type of products you’d expect a sex shop to sell, is a “Kids, Parents, and Teens Books” section. The section boasts “sex positive guides for younger folk.”
The kid’s section carries books like “Gender Creative Child,” a guide to masturbation, and “Woke Parenting,” which seeks to help readers “raise your kids to be feminist, anti-racist,” and “gender-inclusive.” Silverberg’s own books are also featured on the site.
Involvement In Curriculum Development
The author’s involvement in Ante Up reveals a conscious desire to embed his distorted worldview into schools. The organization advertises “socio-emotional learning” curriculum that “focuses on supporting educators of color and working-class educators in unlearning the white supremacist ableist heteropatriarchal ways of writing and educating others.”
The sex shop co-founder is joined by such esteemeed co-collaborators as Clarissa Francis, who cut squarely into the Babyon Bee’s marketshare when her bio explained that she “developed the Let Freedom C.U.M. Sexuality Workshop Series to equip Black sexuality professionals, and the aspiring sexually liberated, to recognize and utilize multi-disciplinary approaches to discussing Pleasure Activism as a tool for Black Sexual Liberation.”
The organization seems to have courted favor with various political bodies in New York. Ante Up’s founder Bianca Laureano “wrote the sexual and reproductive justice discussion guide for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,” according to her bio. Silverberg spoke on “Sex Is a Funny Word” for the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Learning.
Institutional Support of Extremism
It isn’t a fluke that a leftwing sex shop founder has been propped up as an authority on sexuality, with direct access to children. Media and education institutions, alongside several leftwing activists, have helped mainstream such fringe beliefs. The author is praised because of, not in spite of, the extremism of his sexual worldview.
That “Sex is a Funny Word” was lauded by Kristin Russo on behalf of BuzzFeed as “revolutionary” tells you everything you need to know, but the outlet was one of many institutions to lend its support.
The book won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award and was celebrated by the School Library Journal, which called the book “exceptional” specifically because of “its introduction of the subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” The organization publishes roughly 6,000 book reviews every year and bills itself as “the premiere publication for librarians and information specialists who work with children and teens.”
Lambda Literary, which “nurtures and advocates for LGBTQ writers,”heaped praise on the book, noting that it took “his radical approach to sex education” featured in his first book even further. It goes on to discuss the role that the book can have in cementing cultural shifts. During an interview with the organization, the author pointed out that some of his critics believe that he is “warping people’s ideas of gender.” He flatly responded, “Maybe I am.”
Various activists, each of whom is committed to overthrowing healthy conceptions of sex, lauded the book alongside these institutions in reviews posted on Amazon.
Andee Hochman is an accomplished leftwing activist who wrote a book all about upending traditional notions of family. It was named “one of the 100 most important feminist books of the 20th century by Sojourner magazine.” Hochman celebrated“Sex Is a Funny Word’s”“radical and urgent message – sexuality with a side of social justice,” also expressing glee that one of the children in the book was portrayed as non-binary. Her lone critique? The text was too small.
Transgender activist and author of “My New Gender Workbook” Kate Bornstein was similarly impressed, writing a review that proposed the book as a viable alternative to college, graduate school, and even “years of therapy.” This is high praise, especially from an activist who wrote the “Step by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity.”
Aidan Key, who leads trainings in schools, remarked that the book enables readers to “step out of today’s binary gender paradigm,” while Slate’s Rachelle Hampton lauded the book because it “humorously tackles topics from gender to masturbation” and was “leaps and bounds ahead” of other books “in terms of how progressive it is.”
But Huffington Post outdid both Slate and BuzzFeed years ago when they offered the author a platform and even hosted a symposium on reshaping America’s sexual norms with him and more established leftwing activists. The author’s extreme views were given the patina of normalcy through the presence of more mainstream activists like notable author Esther Perel and the widely published Ian Kerner, who talk less of childhood masturbation and more of feminism and relationships. They were also joined by academic Leonore Tiefer, who was involved in the leadership of an organization intent on keeping perversity like “Sex is a Funny Word” in school libraries. Tiefer won an award named after Alfred Kinsey, a hero of the pro-pedophile group NAMBLA.
What’s so telling isn’t the book itself, but that the beliefs behind it, undoubtedly considered reprehensible by massive swaths of the world, have been intentionally mainstreamed by both an activist base and an institutionally backed political movement that’s hostile to traditional notions of decency. No wonder parents are getting active.
Cory Silverberg did not respond to a request for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
The response to Covid-19 has accelerated a growing divide between parents and schools, which is mostly to say between parents and teachers’ unions. From denying students the ability to learn in-person to forced masking to teaching divisive, historically inaccurate curriculum based on critical race theory (CRT), the trend has been to sideline parents from their children’s educations.
In response to this, states are taking action to ensure parents remain the primary decision-makers for their kids. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a parents’ bill of rights in June 2021. Missouri is considering a similar proposal and in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued 11 executive orders on his first day in office, two of which were related to education. Indiana is considering a parents’ bill of rights as part of a push to banish despicable materials that kids shouldn’t be taught.
At the national level, Sen. Josh Hawley has also proposed a Parents’ Bill of Rights, although so far it has not gained any traction. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, now president of Young America’s Foundation, declared “2022 is the Year of the Parent.” In other words, there’s a growing appetite among parents to take a more active role in education, whether through supporting legislation to empower them or taking the initiative to join their local school boards.
On Thursday, January 20, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott added Texas to the list of states attempting to tackle the divide when he announced his own Parental Bill of Rights, which will be voted on and perhaps enshrined into Texas’ constitution in January 2023. The initiative consists of seven points clarifying the fact that parents, not school boards or unions, are in charge of their kids’ educations.
In announcing the proposal, Abbott said, “The role of parents is being diminished by government itself across the U.S. Parents are losing a voice when it comes to their children’s education and health matters. Many parents feel powerless to do anything about it. That must end … Under the Parental Bill of Rights, we will amend the Texas Constitution to reinforce that parents are the main decision-makers in all matters involving their children.”
A key point in Texas’ proposed amendment, which could serve as a model starting point for other states reads, “Expand parents’ rights to access course curriculum and all material that is available in any education setting for their student through online posting and other methods so parents know what topics will be taught.” While Texas parents can currently get those materials, it requires an information request rather than the click of a mouse.
Submitting an information request is an unnecessary burden, particularly in an age in which schools are teaching children to be racists, encouraging them to be climate change alarmists, and pushing ludicrous and dangerous ideas about changing your sex or being “two-spirit.” Granted, two of those occurrences are from California, a state parents should just move away from rather than attempt to reform.
Even in Texas, though, there are leftist salvos in the culture war. Just last October, a mom in Keller, who with her husband had moved their family from California to avoid such things, discovered their new town’s library was offering a book featuring graphic depictions of oral sex. Parents in Leander, a town north of Austin and part of its greater metropolitan area, also discovered books with depictions and illustrations they don’t want their children to have access to without their permission.
While all these initiatives are worthy ideas, and Abbott’s proposal is the strongest yet, the jury is still out on whether they will resolve the issues parents are seeing with schools.
For starters, parental bills of rights require parents to actually be involved, which doesn’t always happen, even in the age of Zoom schooling. As a result, these various bills, amendments, and executive orders could result in nothing more than “won’t somebody please think of the children” activity. As the great men’s basketball coach, known for also educating his players, John Wooden said, “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
Elected officials such as Abbott, DeSantis, and Youngkin may be leading the nation on this front, but they’re doing so in response to their constituents. Youngkin’s victory was likely sealed, in fact, when his opponent Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Given that Youngkin’s implicit message is “Stop messing with our kids, you freaks!,” the tide on parents shipping their kids off to school and hoping for the best seems to be turning.
Parents’ bills of rights could still turn out to be gimmicks, an activity that doesn’t lead to achievement, but our kids’ educations are not the government’s job. But at least for those of us who do send our kids to government-run or -funded schools, such measures offer us a way to take more charge and ensure that we approve of what’s being taught in the classroom and offer recourse for times when we have legitimate criticisms.
The work is still up to us parents, but governors and legislatures can give us the tools we need to do that work more effectively.
Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.
It’s been less than two months since an associate professor teamed up with a pro-pedophile organization in an attempt to normalize the most repugnant crimes imaginable. Now, yet another unhinged professor has been caught advocating for pedophilia, this time even more brazenly. Stephen Kershnar is a professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, and a pedophilia apologist. Here’s Kershnar on video saying that an adult male having sex with a 12-year-old girl is not obviously wrong, and that calling it wrong is a “mistake.” In the same clip, he refers to pedophilic rape as “adult-child sex,” another euphemism that, just like “minor-attracted person,” is being used in an attempt to run cover for evil.
It gets worse. Twelve isn’t young enough for Kershnar. He continues to defend pedophilia, remarking “The notion that it’s wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious to me.” He goes on. “I don’t think it’s blanket wrong at any age.”
Kershnar even argues that children can consent to sex with adults, comparing it to a child willfully engaging in kickball or participating in bar mitzvah lessons.
What are the legal ramifications of such an unspeakably vile perspective? Kershnar lays it out. Since he’s not sure if raping infants is good or bad, “the thumb on the scale should go to liberty.” Liberty for who? Moral monsters who want to rape infants.
Kershnar is open to the idea that pedophilia is deeply harmful to victims, but he just can’t put his finger on why. He thinks it could be because of bigots like you and me, who go “berserk” when pedophiles rape kids. He even argues that we often make children do things they don’t want to do, like “go to church” or “go to temple” or “go to their sister’s ballet recital.” His perspective is backed up by podcast host Thaddeus Russel, who makes an equally monstrous argument when he says, “all a child’s life is, is coercion by adults … often to make the child do something for the adult’s pleasure only.”
It’s also telling that these dangerous viewpoints have found their way into the mainstream through left-wing outlets. At one point, Russel boasts that he authored an article in The Daily Beast that argued for lowering consent laws.
If SUNY Fredonia would like to right this wrong, it can begin by correcting Kershnar’s bio, which adopts the language of child groomers by calling pedophilia “adult-child sex.” Thus far, SUNY Fredonia’s response has been swift, although incomplete. In a statement, the university remarked that Kershnar’s views are “reprehensible and do not represent the values of SUNY Fredonia in any way, shape or form” also noting that “The matter is being reviewed.”
Only one moral decision can be made following such a review. Half measures, or any other move to placate those who are correctly outraged at the situation rather than remedy the crisis, are entirely unacceptable and unbecoming of any institution that hopes to maintain a shred of legitimacy. Although SUNY Fredonia may in fact come to the correct decision, it must be recognized that these sentiments did not come out of nowhere. The institution is responding to a high-profile case that’s just now been exposed.
Some of the school’s alumni weren’t the least bit surprised. After all, we’re talking about a professor who published a book titled “Pedophilia and Adult-Child Sex: A Philosophical Analysis” all the way back in 2015. That SUNY at Fredonia is only now responding to this moral crisis in response to public outcry is disgraceful and deceptive.
Kershnar Is Not Alone
When hearing about such an outrageous situation, it can be easy to believe that it is an isolated experience, that such insane notions couldn’t possibly have taken root elsewhere. Unfortunately, this would be a misconception. As mentioned previously, it hasn’t been long since a former professor at Old Dominion University rebranded pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons.” Even this instance was not unique.
A professor at Yale University by the name of Joe Fischel publicly argued that children should be shown nudity, thereby victimized by acts of indecent exposure, at LGBT pride parades. His article was replete with the same strategies that child groomers use, as I outlined previously. These handful of pedophilia apologist professors are just the tip of the iceberg, one facet of a wider campaign to normalize pedophilia. The logical results of these sentiments have trickled down into K-12 institutions, with gay pornography being featured in school libraries, while other government-run schools host LGBT clubs for four-year-olds, all while refusing to reveal if parents were required to be present on these clubs’ Zoom calls.
The crisis isn’t relegated to education, either, with similar themes popping up in a number of totally different sectors. A commercial from Twix featured child cross-dressing, just one more example of the elite attempt to groom children.
A YMCA’s LGBT center hosts youth-only events, and hosted a man who creates drawings that feature characters from children’s shows having sex. Meanwhile, a broader push to foist transgenderism on children has a dark and storied history of pedophilia, child abuse, and psychological torment. Make no mistake, there is a broad and deliberate push in nearly all areas of public life to normalize pedophilia. This push must be fought wherever it is found, without reservation.
Here’s How To Fight Pedophilia’s Normalization
Let’s be abundantly clear: this is not a complicated issue. In fact, there can be no simpler issue. Pedophilia is evil. That’s it. We shouldn’t accept the notion that pro-pedophilia sentiments are valid ideas to be contended with in the marketplace of ideas by the use of rhetorical flourish or superior philosophizing. Illiberalism is no crime when your opponent uses bad-faith arguments to justify moral atrocities that target the most vulnerable among us, victimizing them in ways they can’t even comprehend. These ideas, just like those who use their institutional positions to normalize this horrid evil, must be ostracized, shamed, shunned, stigmatized, and mocked out of any and all forms of socio-political or academic influence. This is not extreme. It’s the natural immune system response that any healthy society enacts when confronted with a rising tide of danger and evil.
Here are some simple ways you can reject it:
Refuse to use euphemistic and manipulated language.
By using euphemisms, you fight the battle against child groomers on their terms. You must completely reject phrases like “minor-attracted person,” or “adult-child sex,” both of which seek to grant sympathy and dignity to these atrocities and those who commit them. Maintain the moral high ground with terms that accurately identify evil.
Become comfortable with being intolerant.
Tolerance is a vice, not a virtue, when you are asked to tolerate unspeakable moral crimes. Our society has begun to see tolerance as the mark of an enlightened person. Reject this faulty framing, and all the degeneracy and spiritual rot that has followed closely behind it.
Fight, fight, fight.
If there was ever a time to be uncompromising, to cling to your beliefs with unrelenting zeal, this is it. The only proper response to situations such as this is action backed by righteous anger. Root out attempts to normalize pedophilia anywhere and everywhere you find it. Publicize it. Send examples like this to The Federalist. Demand that institutions that are home to these sentiments condemn it wholeheartedly in speech and in action. Fight, fight, fight.
Kershnar did not respond to a request for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
A long-term study from Vanderbilt University found that children who attended Tennessee’s state pre-k program underperformed in the sixth grade compared to children who did not attend the program.
“Data through sixth grade from state education records showed that the children randomly assigned to attend pre-K had lower state achievement test scores in third through sixth grades than control children,” the study found. The “strongest negative effects” were found in sixth graders.
The study also found a negative effect for “disciplinary infractions, attendance, and receipt of special education services, with null effects on retention.”
The Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten program (TN-VPK) operates under the control of the state department of education and is used by low-income families statewide, according to Vanderbilt University. Tennessee has dumped $86 million worth of funding into the program since 2005, giving 15,000 preschoolers statewide access to the program and opening 786 new classrooms.
The study tracked 2,990 preschoolers from low-income backgrounds who applied for the oversubscribed TN-VPK, and researchers observed students who were accepted as well as rejected. This allowed the study to create a “statistically appropriate control group,” as all students came from families who wanted the children in pre-k, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The researchers also stated that there are “no distinctive characteristics of the Tennessee program have yet been identified that are a likely explanation for the disappointing findings,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
President Joe Biden, along with progressives in Congress, has also been pushing universal pre-k for all 3-and-4-year-olds as part of his administration’s Build Back Better framework. The Build Back Better Act, which was set to cost $2 trillion, was blocked in the Senate after Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin stated“this is a no on this piece of legislation,” and that he would not vote for it.
Manchin stated Tuesday that Build Back Better was “dead” and that “there is no Build Back Better bill,” the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. However, Manchin has shown support for certain elements of the bill, including universal preschool.
A now-deleted portion of the Riverside, Califonia school district’s website obtained by The Federalist displays that the district promoted an essay that attacks people based on their inborn skin color. The essay, titled “Decentering Whiteness” by Jeff Hitchcock and Charley Flint, claimed that “attacking whiteness is not enough.” It sought to divide people on the basis of their race and argued that “whiteness” should be pushed to “the margin,”
Riverside Unified School District promoted the essay at least three separate times, under the “Professional Learning,” “Community Engagement,” and “Culture and Climate” sections of their Equity, Access, and Community Engagement resources page, according to screenshots.
The Federalist previously revealed that both Riverside Superintendent Renee Hill and Board of Education member Tom Hunt lied about the district teaching critical race theory. One parent from the district, who wished to remain unnamed, told The Federalist that the resources list that contained “Decentering Whiteness” was removed from the website following the exposé of the district’s dishonesty.
When asked why the resources had been removed, Communication Director Diana Meza stated that the district is “updating the Equity, Access & Community Engagement google site and landing page, the page should be back up soon.”
The school district has charge of nearly 40,000 students, according to federal data, and 35 percent of those students are white. School families’ median income is significantly above the national average, at approximately $73,000 per year.
Decentering Whiteness
The removed 19-page “resources” document, which can be viewed here, not only condemned “whiteness” but served as a guidebook for how institutions can fight it, so that “whiteness itself can be made more marginal.” The paper explained, “Decentering whiteness, as we envision it, is a collective process that can take place in organizations, sectors of society, personal lives, etc., over periods of days, months, years and generations.”
While launching into both anti-white attacks and blatant attempts to divide people on the basis of their immutable characteristics, the paper engaged in race essentialism. It cast race as a defining rather than incidental characteristic when it tells readers to “Assume whiteness, and race, always structures our experience, and thus needs to be consciously considered as part of any social process.”
White people are also openly villainized in the materials. One line reads, “white culture has, on balance, been based on principles of conquest and exploitation” while another says that in the attempt to marginalize whiteness, “simply attacking whiteness is not enough.”
The document did not oppose attacking “whiteness” out of an opposition to racism, nor did it express any concern over the potential fallout of seizing on racial fault lines for socio-political ends. Rather, it simply argued that openly attacking whiteness wouldn’t be strategically effective. It remarked “Simply attacking whiteness is not enough to accomplish this goal. Assaults on whiteness, depending on their nature, may have the effect of confirming and solidifying the central position of whiteness in American society.”
Lighter skin color has been and continues to be one of the prime targets of critical race theory. Noel Ignatiev, a Marxist Harvard professor who is cited in “Decentering Whiteness,” infamously claimed that “treasonous to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
He also remarked, “Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed—not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”
Perhaps most sinister, “Decentering Whiteness” clearly sought to encourage racial division and even racial conflict, calling on a multiracial coalition to “displace” whiteness. It read “It will take a multiracial effort to displace whiteness, one that includes people from all racial/cultural groups.”
How exactly any of this rhetoric benefits the students or staff at Riverside Unified School District is entirely unclear. The presence of this material in a school climate is in fact both un-American and undeniably harmful, not only to the white people who are maligned by it but also those of all other racial backgrounds whom the article attempts to conscript into a race-based power struggle.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com. SPENCER LINDQUISTVISIT ON TWITTER@SPENCERLNDQST
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Amid ongoing supervision from parents across America, the Episcopal School of Dallas has sought to reassure parents it is not teaching critical race theory or targeting students on the basis of their race. Despite this attempt, documents obtained by The Federalist prove that the institution is teaching critical race theory while telling parents it’s not.
The elite private school, which bears a whopping tuition price of $26,945 for kindergarteners and $34,075 for high school seniors, sought to insulate itself from backlash on its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page, which preemptively responds to common critiques. The page warns against “misinformation” before assuring parents the school is “not teaching critical race theory,” nor is it teaching “that being part of an ethnic or racial group makes a person responsible for systemic problems, or to cast blame on or shame any member of the community for actions that took place in history.” According to other school documents, however, these claims are false.
Student assignments show the school is teaching the left-wing extremism that targets children in so many government-run K-12 schools.
CRT In The Classroom
One Episcopal School of Dallas reading assignment for a middle school history class titled “This Thing Called White” exhibited the defining characteristics of CRT. The assignment claimed that “Whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white.” It goes on to contend that race was created “with the purpose of giving power to white people.”
In an 8th grade history class taught by Ron Frankland, students were required to listen to a podcast from the 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Frankland also signaled his support for CRT while bemoaning the wave of pushback from parents who’ve voiced their opposition to the ideology.
Nevertheless, attempts to turn students into leftwing activists through indoctrination appear to be working. An open letter titled “Our Turn To Rise Up,” penned by students as part of a history assignment at the school, condemned America as “diseased” and endeavored to “spark a fire of revolution.”
Faculty Members Endorse CRT
Furthermore, several faculty members, including many who are in key positions, have demonstrated an allegiance to the doctrines of CRT, as well as expressed their intent to incorporate the divisive theory in the classroom.
Jennifer Jarnagin is the chair of the school’s Classical and Modern Languages Department, as well as a sponsor of the Middle School Diversity Club and a middle and upper school Latin teacher. Several of Jarnagin’s tweets display an anti-cop and anti-white bias informed by the teachings of critical race theory. During the height of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots of 2020, Jarnagin implied all police officers were violent.
She also stated that she was happy to “disrupt white nonsense,” and that she dreams of “throwing 90% of straight white men into the ocean.”
In Jarnagin’s Twitter bio, she states that she’s “dismantling white supremacy, misogyny and heteronormativity” and that she’s a “Latin teacher interested in proficiency, inclusion, and empathy.”
Tolly Salz, an English teacher and the chair of the English Department, has also signaled her support for ideas endemic to CRT. On Twitter, Salz promoted an article titled “White People’s Fear of Critical Race Theory is Based in Ignorance,” as well as one from Learning for Justice, a project of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, titled “Confronting the Weaponization of Whiteness in Our Classrooms,” which claims that white supremacy is “baked into America’s foundation.”
The article also condemned white womens’ emotions as instruments of oppression, making the claim that “Men going to war with armor is the same as white women waging war through tears.”
Salz also promoted a guide labeled “Teaching with the New York Time’s 1619 Project.”
Critical race theory also appears to have affected the Christian school’s religious leadership.
Antoni Luc-Tayengo, who recently became a chaplain at ESD, has publicly advocated for CRT. In an article titled “Predominantly White Churches & Racial Justice: Discern The Next Right Thing,” the female chaplain argues people should “look for color” and frames involvement in the openly Marxist Black Lives Matter movement as a moral imperative for Christians.
Her article also links to a “well-cultivated list of resources for anti-racism education of all ages.” The page includes the 1619 Project and work from critical race theorists Robin DiAngelo and Kimberle Crenshaw, among various others.
Rev. Nate Bostian is a senior chaplain at ESD. While his public remarks have not carried the same vitriolic tone of many others at the school, from his public remarks it’s clear that leftwing ideology influences his religious understanding. In this prayer he gave for LGBT pride month, Bostian begins by referring to God as the “God/god of Diversity and Inclusion.”
In another post, he cites infamous critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi before going on to provide a theological argument for diversity, inclusion, and equity.
ESD’s Institutional Ties To CRT
None of these examples are isolated incidents. Despite telling parents that they do not teach CRT or engage in shaming tactics against children on account of their race, ESD, as an institution, has done both. ESD sent parents a list of CRT information compiled by Elizabeth Goatley, the school’s director of diversity and inclusion. Parents were directed to a page called “Anti-Racism 102: Why Not All Discrimination Is ‘Racism.” Intended for children in grades K-4 and adorned with colorful cartoons, the page erroneously claims that white people cannot be the victims of racism, saying “reverse racism isn’t a thing. Stop trying to make reverse racism a thing.” It also claims everyone is complicit in systemic white supremacy and that “whiteness” must be “de-centered.”
The recommended reading list included Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” material from critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw, Kendi’s “How To Be An Anti-Racist,” the 1619 Project, “Anti-racism for Kids 101,” and Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” among others. The list also linked to a “K-8 Racial Literacy” curriculum from an organization called Pollyanna. Pollyanna’s Conferences for School page sheds light on the type of material the organization presents to children.
Topics include “Race, Privilege, and Community Building,” “Shaping & Sustaining Safe Schools for LGBTQ+ Community,” “Intersectionality,” “Cultivating Racial Awareness and White Engagement,” and “Implicit Bias.” The organization also claims systemic racism “permeates every aspect of our society and transcends person-to person interactions,” a core belief of CRT.
The school’s DEI page explains that both staff and students frequently attend several conferences, including the People of Color Conference hosted by the leftwing National Association of Independent Schools. The POCC overtly teaches CRT. One presentation from the conference describes kindergarteners as “natural social justice warriors,” while others explicitly outline how to create a curriculum based on CRT.
Another presentation condemns the American system, telling the audience to “burn sh-t down.” It also discusses the “White People Way,” with the presenter condemning “perfectionism” and “power hoarding” as defining characteristics of white people.
The Federalist reached out to multiple school staff for comment, inquiring about the 1619 Project, racially charged statements made by a faculty member, and CRT in the classroom. The Federalist also asked why the school was present at the POCC event, where teachers were taught how to develop a curriculum grounded in CRT, if there was no intention of teaching the racially charged ideology.
In response, ESD’s Director of Communications Julie Clardy provided the following statement: “We present challenging material that asks students to consider multiple points of view. For instance, we present the 1619 and 1776 projects together and ask students to analyze and argue their merits. Students are edified, not damaged, when they are asked to examine ideas they may disagree with.”
ESD Is Not The Only School Deceiving Parents
The Episcopal School of Dallas is by no means the first academic institution to lie to parents about teaching critical race theory. Over the summer, President of the American Federation of Teachers union Randi Weingarten falsely claimed CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools despite her organization previously bragging on national television about teaching the ideology.
The Federalist reporting has revealed that officials at both Riverside School District and Los Angeles Unified School District lied to their school communities, falsely claiming they did not teach CRT. Despite the obvious parallels with previous instances, the state of the Episcopal School of Dallas demonstrates that elite private schools are not immune from the left’s push for CRT in America’s K-12 institutions.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
For almost as long as Covid-19’s been around, parent anger at local school boards over this or that issue has been a reoccurring major news story. We’ve all seen the viral social media videos and Facebook posts of parents skewering their local elected school boards over critical race theory, unscientific and abusive mask mandates, maddening repeat quarantines of healthy children, and other educational corruption that wrecks children’s ability to learn.
We’ve also seen those viral videos have little effect on what the school board or state board of education subsequently decides. So parents have filed lawsuits and are mounting primary and general election challenges, all of which are great and a healthy part of self-government.
What these strategies don’t do is provide immediate relief to children, whom parents claim are being abused, taught racism, and denied their right to an education. They require children to continue to be abused at least until the next election cycle or until three or five or more years when lawsuits finally reach the highest court that will hear them. That’s a third of a child’s education years.
These strategies also are predicated on the assumption that the people who have created these outrageously irrational and abusive school climates should continue to be trusted to run schools. The entire leadership teams of most schools, school districts, and state education bureaucracies have disqualified themselves from leading any children at all by the kinds of abuses parents charge, but just filing a lawsuit or kicking a few school board members out of office will still leave almost all corrupt educators controlling millions of kids in perpetuity.
If you can’t trust a principal or superintendent to keep teachers from teaching racism and to accurately assess children’s needs and vulnerabilities through Covid even though the data on that is plentiful and clear, how can you trust any other of such persons’ judgment calls?
More than being restrained by a lucky court order merely from putting toddlers in masks, a person whose judgment is so corrupt shouldn’t be making any decisions about children. A person who puts a toddler in a mask, or allows teachers to shame children based on their skin color, cannot be trusted to do just about anything else important and needs to find a new and more productive line of work. Errors this bad are completely disqualifying, and they will not be rectified by merely changing a few surface policies such as the quarantining of healthy kids.
The fact that parents keep their children in schools they charge are teaching racism or delaying crucial development with Covid irrationality gives the schools all they need to keep ignoring the parents. Parents are saying one thing while doing another. They are voting with their feet, and their feet are voting for what they themselves acknowledge is oppression.
So it’s no surprise that school boards, principals, and other entities disregard what the parents say. What the parents say has no, or no immediate, enforcement. And therefore it really isn’t credible. No wonder the school districts don’t take them seriously.
If the parents wanted to be truly effective — as well as truly honest — they would pull their children from schools en masse until problems of such serious magnitude were resolved favorably. Sickouts and mass protests are highly effective forms of warfare on children waged by teachers unions all the time. But parents so far haven’t responded in kind.
Why is that? Why are parents all bark and no bite with their school complaints? Possibly they don’t know how to be effective. And possibly, many aren’t willing to make the big sacrifices required to enforce their beliefs. They can see that something very serious is wrong, but they aren’t willing or able to fix it. They’re still waiting on others to fix things for them.
They, and their children, will wait a very long time for that. They will certainly wait long past Covidtide. And that’s why public schools are as bad as they are — the people who are supposed to hold them accountable refuse to do exactly that even while claiming to.
In the end, schools and parents are basically fighting over something underneath all these disputes that almost nobody mentions: money. Schools get public education money, not parents. It gives them the power to abuse children while parents complain yet keep putting that mask on their kindergartener every single day, even after he throws up in it at school or it prevents him from being able to read or speak properly.
School boards don’t care about complaints. They care about money. As long as they have it, and parents don’t take it, schools will continue to do whatever they want to children. And American children will continue to be unhappy, uneducated, and unprepared for life while everyone pretends it’s someone else’s fault.
It’s clear that American parents have a codependent relationship with the schools they claim to despise. They are in fact enabling the very abuse they complain about. So while it is entirely legitimate to go yell at school boards and vote bad people out of office, it’s also time for parents to engage in some critical thinking about their own choices that enable this situation. As long as public schools continue to get money no matter what they do, this situation will continue, no matter how many uncomfortable meetings and lawsuits parents instigate.
If state legislatures do not yank money from America’s abusive public school systems, parents must yank their kids. Trust, me, it will work. It might already be happening.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Sign up here to get early access to her next book, “How To Control The Internet So It Doesn’t Control You.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
WAUKESHA, Wis. — The banquet hall buzzed with impassioned chatter as parents, friends, first-time school board candidates, and other locals congregated for a Saturday morning town hall that felt more like a strategy session. After two major public school districts, Milwaukee and Madison, shut down yet again and blamed COVID, parents were fired up. Talk of critical race theory, leftist administrators, mask mandates, and school shutdowns hummed through conversations with the kind of first-hand animation that could propel once-complacent Wisconsin parents into a movement of activists capable of unleashing an unquenchable red wave in the Dairy State. They saw what happened in Virginia, and now they want to bring it home.
Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who’s now running to unseat Democrat Gov. Tony Evers in November, organized the event. Although Kleefisch is in campaign mode, the overarching energy of the gathering wasn’t as much, “Help get me elected,” as it was, “How can we get more of you elected?”
Calling All Parents
“We need more parent activists. This is that important,” Kleefisch said while moderating a panel of concerned moms-turned-activists.
One of those moms was Scarlett Johnson, a mother of five who, after discovering the apathy in the Mequon-Thiensville School Board, decided she needed to run for a seat.
“We just started paying closer attention,” Johnson said to the room of eager fellow parents. “I hadn’t attended school board meetings. I vote, but I never voted for a school board candidate.”
But that all changed this last year. Johnson said she and a group of other moms started getting together and doing their research. When they did, they found toxic racial propaganda in their kids’ classrooms, such as teachers assigning books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” The moms started making phone calls and sending emails to school officials. “It started a movement,” Johnson said.
In the course of her run for school board, Johnson said she’s been called a white supremacist and received death threats, but noted, “I’m still here, I’m still fighting.”
Kylee Zempel/The Federalist
No Room for Apathy
Parents aren’t just fired up about nefarious actors in the school systems, however. They’re also on the lookout for complacent school board members and district officials. Another mom on the panel, Alyssa Pallow, is getting involved simply because her school board doesn’t seem to really know anything about dangerous ideologies such as critical race theory. Kleefisch agreed, stressing to parents that they don’t have to wait to get involved until one of their kids cracks a textbook or assignment that makes their jaw drop open. “It can be that you’re horrified by the apathy,” Kleefisch said.
“It snowballs,” said another mom, Amber Schroeder, regarding parent activism. “You will inspire people to get involved.” Schroeder and Johnson worked together in the Mequon-Thiensville district to organize a recall election of four school board members.
“People are afraid to do it alone,” Schroeder continued. “Once you realize you’re not alone, a lot more people get involved. … If you build it, they will come.”
A Time for Choosing
Other parents have been shocked to watch their children become casualties in the left’s Covid crackdowns. Mattie Allen stressed the importance of school choice after her kids had a horrible academic year due to lockdowns. Allen’s son spent his first year in school doing it virtually, “which was horrendous,” she said. Her daughter spent one year at Milwaukee Public Schools, where her GPA plummeted, and it was “one of the worst years.” Thanks to school choice, they’re now in a charter school with just one grade per class. “Their school is so open, and I love it,” Allen said, noting that her daughter’s GPA is back up, she’s on the honor roll, and she’s playing volleyball.
But some families aren’t so fortunate. One of Allen’s friends who is stuck with her kids in Milwaukee Public Schools is watching the district once again shut down. This single mom has a first-grader and a third-grader, meaning she had to switch to third shift just so she could fulfill the roles of both teacher and provider. She’s “up all day, up all night,” Allen said, getting choked up. “How do we give all moms that [school choice] option?”
Maggie Vinopal, a mom in the Eau Claire school district, has also had enough with the COVID madness, saying school officials are weaponizing Statute 252, a state quarantine law, to punish and quarantine unvaccinated kids. Her healthy seventh-grade daughter has been quarantined four different times for a total of 14 schools days, despite coronavirus posing almost zero risk of severity to healthy children. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 is required to “isolate,” Vinopal told The Federalist. But when students come into contact with a positive case, only the unvaccinated have to “quarantine,” despite the ability of the vaccinated to contract and spread COVID.
On the very first day of school, Vinopal’s daughter was seated at the same lunch table as a vaccinated student who later tested positive and had to isolate. While the vaccinated students at the table were allowed to proceed as normal, Vinopal’s daughter was required to quarantine and provide proof of a negative test.
Jumping in the Ring
Covid nonsense like this is what inspired people like first-time Waukesha School Board member Kelly Piacsek to run. When a number of people decided to “abuse our children in the name of science, I got really mad,” said Piacsek, who is now known for holding firm on a decision to end a harmful federally-funded school lunch program in the face of vicious and dishonest attacks. “That’s what motivated me.” Running for school board is “absolutely worth it,” she told parents. “We’ve got to take this on because we have a front-row seat to the consequences.”
Piacsek inspired people like Slinger parent Bill Brewer to run for his school board. Brewer, a veteran, has lived in Slinger for approximately 18 years. He coaches youth football there and is now involved in the league’s leadership. But the school board’s apathy and lack of urgency against dangerous ideologies have prompted him to get involved.
“Marxism doesn’t come and punch you in the face in round one. It creeps in,” Brewer said. “I just can’t have that, not for my community, not for these kids. They deserve better.”
Rebecca Kleefisch Campaign
Brewer said his strategy isn’t so much a campaign “as a giant, three-month listening tour.”
“Once I get elected, that’s not going to stop,” Brewer said.
That seems to be the Kleefisch campaign strategy too. Rather than spending two hours rattling off campaign promises, the gubernatorial candidate opened the floor on Saturday for parents to voice their concerns and asked attendees to fill out cards with the top three issues that matter to them to help guide her policy. That’s more than these weary parents have gotten from Evers, who has worked to keep parents in the dark. In December, the governor — who was the state superintendent of public instruction for a decade — vetoed education transparency legislation that would have required districts to publish classroom materials online. This anti-parent action from Evers followed his school-closing impulse that kept kids home and tanked their academic advancement.
“We need you to be successful and aggressive,” Kleefisch rallied, encouraging the parents fighting in local races. If the energy in the Waukesha banquet hall was any indication, these parents won’t have any problem with that.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
Americans are starting to feel the increasing collateral damage from our unprecedented, ineffective, and ill-advised Covid lockdowns. It was known before March 2020 that lockdowns would cause lifelong and avoidable damage to billions, yet the world’s ruling classes who claim to have earned their place atop a “meritocracy” strenuously demanded such damage be inflicted especially on children and other vulnerable people.
This ruling class used all their massive financial, communications, and government powers to ensure these tragic outcomes, even though anyone who was an actual expert—or, like me, just someone who reads and has common sense—predicted this false “cure” would hurt worse than the disease.
Now that people are beginning to more deeply feel the foreseeable evil consequences of ruling class responses to a novel virus, that ruling class is pulling what propaganda experts call a “limited hangout.” That’s admitting to bits of the truth in order to re-establish yourself as a credible authority while attempting to keep the whole truth hidden.
Why are they all of the sudden simultaneously changing the narrative, and effectively admitting that they have been over-counting Covid hospitalizations? Why is it so coordinated and simultaneous? pic.twitter.com/CXpqY2G0nT
So we have outlets such as The Atlantic and The New York Times, which have throughout the Covid era worked as government butt-coverers, now publishing articles admitting that lockdowns and continued rolling blackouts of school instruction is irrevocably damaging Americans, especially children and even more especially the poorest. The kids, as I pointed out in April 2020 and numerous times thereafter, will never as a generation recover.
Now that the damage is done, major corporate media organizations have decided to pivot to acknowledge just enough of the truth to cover their complicity. The Atlantic, for example, last week published an article titled “America’s Covid Rules Are A Dumpster Fire” (It took you two years to figure out what was apparent within the first month?).
CNN’s Brian Stelter recently did a segment acknowledging the foreseeable “mental health crisis” from lockdowns that is causing suicides, ruining marriages, putting formerly perfectly normal kids into rocking fetal positions, and erasing the credibility of formerly mostly ignored “public health experts” at institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Stelter made multiple statements that have gotten numerous conservatives punished by and erased from social media, such as that “Covid zero is…an impossibility” and “the CDC has turned into a punchline.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter: “It’s so sad, but it’s true, the CDC has turned into a punchline.”
Where was Stelter a year and a half ago, when data reflecting the exact same outcomes were also plentiful? Heck, Stelter was still legitimizing Covid panic one month ago, when CNN and other news organizations reinstituted lockdown measures amid omicron panic they helped inflame. Six months ago, Stelter was indicating Fox News had “blood on its hands” for reporting less hysterically than all the other major media organizations about Covid.
Clearly, Democrats are becoming ensnared by their own trap, and they’re trying to get out with this public reversal of their messaging. The limited hangout is afoot.
Brave NYT truth-teller David Leonhardt also recently published an article and an accompanying tweetstorm on the topic.
“The number of E.R. visits for suspected suicide attempts by 12- to 17-year-old girls rose by 51 percent from early 2019 to early 2021, according to the CDC,” he tweeted.
“Data now suggest that many changes to school routines are of questionable value in controlling the virus’s spread. Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances. Other interventions, like forcing students to sit apart from their friends at lunch, may also have little benefit,” he noted in the article.
No sh-t, Sherlock. So why did The New York Times run hit pieces on Trump medical advisor Scott Atlas for being one of the few scientists courageous enough to point this long-ago known data out more than a year ago, when the damage could have been mitigated? Why did Stanford University colleagues and formerly respected medical journals, boosted by corporate media attack campaigns, try to discredit Atlas and colleagues such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for saying things The New York Times, Atlantic, and CNN are admitting now?
Why did the CDC punish world-renowned vaccine scientist Dr. Martin Kulldorff for publicly disagreeing with them on vaccine safety? Why does Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook shadowban nearly every Federalist article on anything touching Covid-19, and why did they spend two years on massive information suppression campaigns against scientists, politicians, podcasters, and just ordinary citizens who had some questions, contrary data, and objections to elites’ demanded Covid response?
Because it was politically expedient to sacrifice science, Americans’ civil rights, human lives, and the world’s future then, and it is not politically expedient to face the consequences for that choice now. And they think nobody can or will hold them accountable for their deadly and despicable lies.
All the misery these too-late admittals underscore appears to be true, but it also could have been prevented. CNN and The New York Times not only did nothing to help prevent this kind of irreversible damage, they willingly, even gleefully, participated in this completely unwarranted mass abuse of Americans. The left lied, children committed suicide.
The corporate left’s morally abominable Covid propaganda operation demands justice. The people who could and should have known, and in fact likely did know, that lockdowns would harm millions of innocents while not protecting the vulnerable can never be trusted again.
Did any of these people tell the truth back when it could have saved the generation that comprises the world’s future? Nope. They not only watched it happen, they cheered it on and viciously ostracized all who told the truth.
All these people have erased all their moral authority and their claims to expertise. The same goes for all the education “experts” and “leaders” who didn’t spend the last two years screaming at the top of their lungs that school shutdowns are a stupid, scientifically unwarranted, and evil idea. Yes, that’s basically all of them.
Experts who knowingly allow mass child abuse because they don’t want to harm their careers are not experts, they are cowards. They deserve not one ounce of public trust or even to retain their jobs. They certainly should have no public funds nor authority over any portion of the upbringing of American children.
Not one parent or elected official should give these education and public health “experts” the time of day. In a time of dire need, these keepers of the nation’s children and controllers of billions in public funds piled American children on a funeral pyre, lit it on fire, and cheered as it burned. Requiring that they find a more honest line of work would be an act of mercy.
These “experts” and “leaders” have shown themselves to be grossly incompetent at discharging their crucial public trust and duties. They should be relieved of those duties as soon as possible. If state lawmakers will not do it, citizens must. If they do not, they are also complicit cowards and also deserve to be sanctioned and socially shamed for their willingness to sacrifice the most vulnerable for their personal comfort.
For a long time now, American parents have registered deep dissatisfaction with the public schools they feel forced to stick their kids in. Even before lockdowns, unscientific and education-damaging forced masking in schools, ridiculous repeated quarantines of healthy kids, and rolling “brownouts” of in-person schooling, polling shows most American parents wish they didn’t feel like the public schools in their ZIP code were their only option.
After all this incompetence-imposed life chaos, the current surge of parent outrage at local school board meetings is only the tip of the spear. As more evidence emerges of the unnecessary harms we knew beforehand would result from lockdowns, public anger will only grow. It won’t be limited to schools, either.
If more exciting school board meetings, primaries for craven politicians, and parents yanking funding from schools that don’t serve them are what it takes to run every one of these moral cretins out of every position of power they’ve abused throughout their careers, then go, Americans, go. Do it for the kids. Our future will remember who stood up for the truth, lives, and liberties, and who made billions of precious humans needlessly suffer.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Sign up here to get early access to her next book, “How To Control The Internet So It Doesn’t Control You.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
The woke-o-meter in public schools is about to ramp up. Parents who think they don’t have time to homeschool may soon realize that, compared to the effort involved in monitoring and countering the nonsense from leftist classrooms, homeschooling is the relaxing alternative. Not all teachers buy into the leftist narrative of race-obsessed anti-Americanism. But leftist K-12 administrators want to ensure that, eventually, all teachers will present only approved ideas and counter any wrongthink children are taught at home. Many of these educrats are now embracing a technological fix.
Trade publication Education Week recently reported that about 500 school districts around the country are rating teacher applicants according to their “cultural competency,” another code for “wokeness.” Many of these districts are contracting with a teacher-hiring company called Nimble, which uses artificial intelligence to examine applications and interview answers to determine which candidates harbor the correct political and cultural attitudes.
A central concern of Nimble and its leftist clients is mindsets about race. The goal is to hire only teachers who are “anti-racist” activists, who will reject equal treatment of all students in favor of discrimination against some (whites) for the supposed benefit of others (racial minorities). Note that under this rubric, Asian students, who as a group work hard and consequently excel, don’t qualify as an oppressed racial minority.
“Now that we’ve become a little more aware of the concept of anti-racism and maybe a little more woke as a culture, I do think that districts have started to emphasize these questions a little bit more,” Nimble CEO Lauren Dachille told EdWeek. “They might be more common, they might be more explicit.”
Anti-racism as a motivating societal force was popularized by Ibram X. Kendi, who along with other savvy race grifters is profiting handsomely from the concept. Getting points for honesty if not integrity, Kendi teaches that discrimination against white people is a positive good, and indeed necessary to establish the “equity” of equal outcomes for all regardless of intelligence or effort. This is what is meant by anti-racism: “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.”
Note the racism inherent in anti-racism. “Anti-racists” assume that black and brown children are “less than” white or Asian kids—they can’t excel in academics, they can’t follow basic rules of personal conduct. It’s necessary to change all standards to accommodate these presumed “inferior” beings. Such a theory ensures minority kids will never overcome personal obstacles because they’re told they don’t have to. This is the system that, with Nimble’s help, many schools are trying to establish and perpetuate.
EdWeek identified a Boston elementary school principal who “will tell candidates the school’s priorities around anti-racism and ask them to respond.” To make crystal clear the political attitudes expected from successful candidates, “she will ask them what they’ve done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist.” Presumably, getting arrested at a Black Lives Matter riot would be, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, a resume enhancement.
Applicants in Indianapolis may be asked “how [they would] ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation.” Of course, there’s only one way to ensure such an outcome: manipulate it to guarantee that all students end up at the same low level. Any students who threaten the leveling by working too hard or achieving too much will have to be brought to heel—at least, if they’re the “wrong” race.
Indianapolis teaching applicants may also be asked, “Why do you think that low-income students predictably perform lower on standardized tests than their more-affluent peers?” One would be pretty safe to assume a preferred answer would be “because of systemic racism,” not “because those students, largely due to decades of misguided government policies, are more likely to come from fatherless families and grow up in a dysfunctional environment.”
Throughout the article, district officials emphasize the importance of hiring teachers who are amenable to the schools’ “priorities” and “values.” But how is it appropriate for a public institution, funded by taxpayers who hold a wide range of political opinions, to institutionalize one set of those opinions? Even worse, how is it appropriate for the institution to guarantee the propagation of those opinions by limiting hires to candidates who agree with them?
These questions illustrate the bubble mentality of the left. Leftists are so certain of the objective correctness of all their views that they cannot conceive of any person of goodwill taking a different position. In the leftist mind, anyone not willing to engage in discrimination against whites or Asians in the name of “equity” is the moral equivalent of a Klansman. And who would object to screening out Klansmen from the teacher corps?
Parents who hope the public schools are still salvageable might want to reconsider. The skyrocketing wokeness of administrators who control teacher hiring will ensure that all classrooms are increasingly devoted to indoctrination rather than education.
How exhausting it is for parents to constantly monitor what their children are being fed in every class and then try to repair the intellectual and moral damage at home. Viewed in this light, does choosing another schooling arrangement really seem so hard?
Jane Robbins is an attorney and a retired senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington DC. In that position she crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy, and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.
While documenting my former high school’s attempt to indoctrinate me with critical race theory six years ago, I remarked that now, several years later, “the situation has undoubtedly worsened.” Worsened it has. Now, Campbell Union High School District has promoted more than 100 “equity resources” to students and staff, including a document that taught students how to put a curse on those who say “all lives matter.”
Colorblindness, Cops, and Curses
The page serves as a vast library for CRT resources and features 60 different links, including a Google Drive folder with 45 different documents. The list made sure to include the full range of CRT buzzwords, with links like Raising Race Conscious Children, the infamous 1619 Project, Anti-Racism for Beginners, and Social Identities and Systems of Oppression, among others. One link takes you to an “Anti-Racism Resource List,” which teaches about “white fragility” and claims that racism can only be perpetrated by white people. One of the “resources” provided was a Trevor Noah speech labeled “Why rioting makes sense,” followed by an unhinged anti-white rantfrom Sonya Renee Taylor, demanding that white people “throw your white body” on police officers and “put their bodies on the line for the purpose of justice.”
The list also addresses white people when it says, “We are socialized into white supremacy from the moment we are born” before going on to say, “It is about completely dismantling how you see yourself and how you see the world, so that you can dismantle … white supremacy.”
Samuel Martin graduated from CUHSD’s Branham High School in 2019 and was appalled by the district’s actions. He told The Federalist, “The idea that white students must ‘dismantle themselves’ in the context of their personality is cultish. Not only is it cultish, but it is deliberate in that this school system wants its’ white students to hate themselves. Do these people honestly think that drilling racial identitarianism into childrens’ heads from a young age is going to make them less racist?”
CUHSD also links to the Black Lives Matter Resource Guide, specifically their section labeled “high school,” which itself includes 45 different texts. Amid a wide variety of CRT inspired assignments is a document that includes writing prompts on police brutality and racist violence.
One section titled “Hex” tells the reader, “Hexing people is an important way to get out anger and frustration.” It becomes increasingly deranged, suggesting that those who say, “all lives matter” or commit “microaggressions,” should be targeted. “Write your own hex poem, cursing that person,” it instructs.
When asked her thoughts on the document that instructed K-12 students to use witchcraft on political opponents, Branham teacher Meredith Allen told The Federalist she hasn’t read the documents her district recommends, so she “can’t comment,” but that she is generally “opposed to the ‘all lives matter’ message.”
Another section labeled “A World With No Police” cites police and military as “systems or institutions that … contribute to oppression.” It asks, “What would the world be like without them?” before telling the reader to write a poem discussing “a world without these institutions.”
“The Black Radical Tradition,” is a 565-page e-book that includes articles from the Communist League and Noel Ignatiev under the pen name Noel Ignatin. Ignatiev was a Marxist who argued that “abolishing the white race is … so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
Then there’s a slide show entitled “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?” which is made for children and was produced in part by teachers at LAUSD. It includes a glossary of terms like “white supremacy,” the definition of which includes the line, “systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.”
The ADL’s linked document “George Floyd, Racism, and Law Enforcement” defines racism as “the … oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” a definition that reinforces the malicious lie that white people can’t be the victims of anti-white racism.
The district’s equity resources page is just the most visible result of a series of steps in support of CRT that started long ago. In fact, the district was a testing ground for CRT before it spread throughout the nation. The book “Research Studies on Educating for Diversity and Social Justice” was published in 2018 and describes the process. An entire chapter, written in part by my former teacher, is dedicated to discussing how CRT was used at my high school so it could be replicated.
The book noted the use of the theory, saying, “CRT is used here to centralize the discussion of race and racism at Branham High School.” It went on to describe an “equity advisory” class that I was placed in as a sophomore, where “Students learn about the different types of oppression along with the privilege it affords the oppressors.” The authors hoped their tactics would spread, writing, “the intent behind sharing the process Branham underwent is to provide a model that could be followed by other schools across the nation.”
The district’s Board of Trustees supports this agenda, recently offering unanimous support for a resolution resolving to “dismantle institutionalized racism in our society and our school district” and is “committed to … implicit bias training, Ethnic Studies, and resources that foster dialogue around the guiding principles of #BlackLivesMatter.”
Note the district’s adoption of the term “equity” rather than “equality.” Here’s superintendent Robert Bravo two hours and 39 minutes into a board meeting saying he believes “equity is about equity of outcomes.”
CUHSD even established an Anti-Racism Team, which is divided into eight Equity Teams that include teachers, principals, administrators, and even two students who must be “BIPOC.” That means white students are banned from the “Equity” Teams. They’re tasked with “challenging imbalances of power and privilege,” among other roles.
Michael Espinoza is a member of one such Equity Team and a teacher at Branham High School who won the district’s teacher of the year award. Here he is calling a Native American tribe the “rightful stewards of the lands our schools and district offices stand on” and telling teachers to recognize “the power of critical race theory and use it in our lesson plans.”
He also gave a speech to the class of 2021, where he levied leftwing complaints against America and quoted Huey Newton, imploring students to engage in revolution instead of “conforming to the machine that is the United States.” On his Instagram account, Espinoza celebrates mandates for ethnic studies classes and complains of living under “white supremacist, heteropatriarchal rule” in a plea to his “co-conspirators.”
If this is CUHSD’s model teacher, what does their model student look like? Espinoza’s students created a variety of leftwing posters in his ethnic literature class. One poster demanded “Dear White PPL: Start Listening, Stop Talking” and others that said, “Wear UR F-cking Mask” and “Give us back our land.” Principal Lawton took down the posters amid outcry before caving in and apologizing to the leftwing agitators.
Co-Conspirators? Or A Conservative Counter Culture?
The full ramifications of our education system’s descent into leftwing radicalism is yet to be fully realized, although we can be certain that many of the students it doesn’t lose to homeschooling will be successfully transformed into “co-conspirators.” But as the rhetoric of revolution becomes standard for stodgy school administrators, its appeal to youth might wane.
Conversely, they run the risk of creating a small but clever cadre of conservative youth who understand from firsthand childhood experiences the consequences of toxic racial grievance politics. Don’t be surprised if the propagandizers who intend to give permanency to left-wing hegemony instead give rise to a nascent conservative political force that will uproot it.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
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