California’s Board of Education is expected to pass on Thursday a divisive and radical educational curriculum that would force a series of courses into the public school system based in critical race theory and the social justice agenda of the Left.
California has been considering the ethnic studies model curriculum for a while now. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have forced public school students to take these ethnic courses in order to graduate because the curriculum was still unfinished and full of so many problems that even the state’s Education Board and the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times rejected it out of hand. But three revisions later, the curriculum has barely changed.
The completed curriculum is still designed to turn children against the “dominant narratives” in America that they are now supposed to view as tools of oppression. White Christians are accused of having committed “theocide” against indigenous peoples, which led directly to “colonialism, dehumanization, and genocide,” the curriculum states. Students are taught that the much-discussed American dream, or the idea that “anyone can achieve their ambitions through hard work and perseverance,” is an inherently racist idea meant to preserve slavery.
The curriculum also teaches students that “the causes of racism and other forms of bigotry” can be found within our “governmental policies.” It openly cites as its “key theoretical framework and pedagogy” critical race theory, which holds that the story of this nation’s history is simply one of white Americans using racism to gain and maintain power.
Previous revisions of the curriculum described capitalism as a “form of power and oppression, alongside “patriarchy,” “racism,” “white supremacy,” and “ableism.” These early drafts were also flagrantly anti-Semitic. The boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement was listed alongside Black Lives Matter and #MeToo as an example of a historical social movement in the United States, and the 1948 Israeli War of Independence was described as the “Nakba,” a Palestinian nationalist term that means “catastrophe” in Arabic. Even now, the final draft of the curriculum excludes Jews and Arab Americans from its content and gives each ethnic group only a brief mention in the appendix.
In sum, the curriculum effectively teaches that America is evil and will always be evil because it is filled with inherently racist people. It dismisses individual merit and opportunity and instructs students to instead view the world through the lens of oppression, of which there are four types: ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized, according to one of the course’s worksheets.
This is easily one of the most radical proposals ever to appear before a state legislature in the U.S. And California’s lawmakers are about to put it in all of the state’s classrooms, where young, easily influenced minds will be swayed away from common sense and toward the Left’s race-obsessed insanity. If that’s not an attempt at indoctrination, I’m not sure what is.
Two of the state’s largest school districts, Fresno Unified and Los Angeles Unified, have already said they plan to make this curriculum mandatory for graduation. Newsom is proposing $5 million in the 2021-22 state budget to help teachers adopt the new curriculum. These courses will become the new norm in California, and before long, they will spread to other blue states too.
Parents in California should, if possible, start looking for alternative educational options. It is hard enough for college students 18 years or older to resist the pull of leftist dogma taught in public universities. Imagine how much worse it will be for young children who are going to be raised up with this ideological brainwashing.
The curriculum’s authors had exactly this in mind when they wrote it. These courses are not an educational effort but a political one that sacrifices education. They want to create a new generation of leftists, and they’re using public money and public schools to do it.
