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Sarah Cowgill
Every progressive organization is trying to be on the ground floor of indoctrination when it comes to America’s kids. Long gone in so many states is the goal to educate youngsters in language skills, math proficiency, science, and the arts. But the folks behind Black Lives Matter have found a toehold and are wedging radical ideology into the classroom without so much as a note home to parents.
Under the camouflage of Black History Month, one New York City elementary school is coloring ‘queer and transgender affirming’ history pages that rewrite revolutionary politics and the all-important mantra ‘fund counselors, not cops.’ None of this directly deals with, say, the moral teachings of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, the success of American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, or the first black American to record commercially in 1890, George W Johnson.
Parents are raising eyebrows at the school in question, PS 321 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, instructing children from kindergarten to fifth grade. Naturally, some wonder why the What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book has little to do with history and [are] not pleased with the transgender section. The chapter in question begins with this phrase: “When a person is born, their grown-ups generally decide whether to call them a girl or a boy. Sometimes that decision doesn’t match who the person really is, and that person is transgender.”
Two separate sets of alarmed parents spoke to The Free Press: One couple had emigrated from Cuba; another parent had grown up in the Soviet Union. They felt the chill of Trotskyism in the terminology used in the lesson, such as ‘comrade’ and ‘dismantling,’ calling the message “the same [communist] salad, different dressing.”
Phil Wong, the former president of Community Education Council 24 in Queens, was none too pleased and went to tell the New York Post:
“If schools really want to teach racial justice, then the materials should be about Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Tubman. Recent movements have erased these names from history classes.”
It seems the hard work accomplished by Rosa Parks is not as scintillating as trans-activism or the ‘woke word of the day.’
Slipping in Without Notice
New York PS 321 isn’t the first to begin the student indoctrination process at five years old. A San Francisco Bay area school paid $250,000 to Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit business run by a former teacher. Since enacting the school’s woke training and policies, two instructors have been put on administrative leave for questioning the curriculum. And meanwhile, the students are failing miserably in basic numeracy and literacy skills.
The school has experienced the lowest test scores in its history. Could it be because of this description on the Woke Kindergartens webpage? “[W]oke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem & visionary creative portal supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”
That is a lot to unpack for a first-grader. What’s more, parents aren’t informed of this chicanery until little Bobby comes home on an e-learning day and spills the beans, such as the case in New York City. In the Bay Area, it was the teacher who was spanked for asking why the curriculum included woke words of the day like ‘revolutionary’ and what the heck ‘disrupting whiteness’ even meant.
In the ‘wokest’ environment (and there does seem to be a competition), calmer heads prevailed: the parents. The backlash was swift, and Hayward Unified School District (HUSD) spokesman Michael Bazeley came clean. “Although we respect freedom of speech and the right for individuals to hold a variety of political views, the social media and other public statements of the vendor do not align with the values of the district and those of many of our community members.”
Adios, Woke Kindergarten.
Black Lives Matter and Should Be Celebrated
Black lives matter and black history matters to America; the organization that coined the name, perhaps not so much. No parents should be shocked by their kid bringing home the latest Marxist Manifesto dressed up like history.
There is so much to be taught about the civil rights struggle and the people who laid lives on the line – ‘the Socrates of the civil rights movement,’ Bayard Rustin, or the late Rep John Lewis (D-GA). The list of black artists, entertainers, politicians, and everyday people is far-reaching. Tell their stories and educate the tiny comrades in the three Rs to get them to the next level – not to the locker room to be measured for a uniform fit for a revolution.
