Michael Farris writes for National Review Online about the likely impact of public schools embracing the dangerous ideas of the woke.
The reports coming out of the school systems of Portland, Ore., and its suburbs are simply terrifying. Children are being taught the narrative that America is fundamentally evil, and the rioters who continue to wreak havoc on that once-beautiful, quiet city are held up as heroes. As Christopher Rufo has reported, “The schools have self-consciously adopted the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ as their theoretical orientation, activated through a curriculum of critical race theory and enforced through the appointment of de facto political officers within individual schools.”
And it is working. The schools have become, Rufo notes, “a school-to-radicalism pipeline.”
But it is not just in radicalized Portland or Seattle where these forces hold sway. In my own home county of Loudoun County, Va., the radicals have seized control and plunged with abandon in a radical direction, leaving much of our community gasping at the temerity of their tactics and shuddering at the implications for the future of our community and our nation should they succeed. …
… Parents know that the curriculum has recently turned hard to the left. Racial and sexual politics are the prime directive of the school system. Every child will be immersed. And every teacher will recite the party line. No dissenting allowed.
The school district seems oblivious to the fact that they are losing not just conservative parents, but the great bulk of the middle-of-the road families who simply want their children to get a quality academic education.
The leadership of the Loudoun County Public Schools may be woke, but they are blind. They do not seem to see the growing signs of an educational revolution that is stirring in communities all across the nation. Parents have simply had enough of the politicization of their local schools and the attempts to turn their children into young but full-throated activists for the progressive movement.
