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How to Reduce Politicization in U.S. Schools

May 3, 2022
by Matt Beienburg

It generally pays to listen, even—or especially—to your opponents. So when it comes to the battles raging over critical race theory (CRT), gender identity and other flash points of our public schools’ K-12 curricula, parents and the public ought to simply take a moment and hear for themselves what’s being said. Doing so uncovers two important facts: First, too many public school educators are crystal clear about their intentions to politicize the classroom. Second, proposals for curriculum transparency directly threaten schools’ ability to continue pushing a political agenda and are straightforward to implement.

Politicization of the American Classroom

Left-wing educators and their supporters in the media have relentlessly tried to convince Americans that CRT is nowhere to be found in K-12 education, yet there is substantial evidence that the educational establishment both knows about and actively promotes a CRT-aligned agenda in schools. In March, Accuracy in Media (AIM) released a series of recorded conversations with public school administrators in Idaho and Tennessee who boasted, for instance, of their ability to “worm around” new state laws prohibiting instruction in CRT. In tapes subsequently released from Iowa, AIM likewise captured Hawkeye State administrators’ candid responses:

“Can you teach about systemic oppression and stuff like that and social justice?”

“Yes, we can. We’ve been careful around the wording. . . . We’ve had to move away from like ‘supremacy,’ things like that or anything that says ‘white’ anything in it. But we still use the word ‘oppression.’”

Read the rest of the op-ed in Discourse Magazine. 

Matt Beienburg is Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy and Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute.

 

 

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