Intro
Always looking at how we got here and where we’re headed in local, state and national education trends, I’ve drafted a follow up to an earlier article I wrote in August 2021 on how we got to Common Core via Dewey and the Socialists in higher education. In my latest installment “Word Games”, we see how CRT and SEL have been seamlessly blended into our education lexicon and into our schools.
But before we go there, I wanted to share an even earlier philosophy about America’s education system. Thomas Jefferson was truly a man for all times!
Jefferson on Education:
The key to local school districts, according to Jefferson, is that they give parents direct and ultimate control over how their children are educated. …A government can no more manage schools than it can manage “our farms, our mills, and merchants’ stores.” Elementary education should be the concern of local communities under the supervision of parents…In his “Plan for Elementary Schools” (1817), Jefferson warned that if a governor and state officials were to control the district schools, “they would be badly managed, depraved by abuses,” and would soon exhaust the available funds. https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/excursions/thomas-jefferson-public-education-part-1.
Despite his sage advice, we now have Education, Incorporated…
Word Games
I first started this journey through the land of Education Incorporated (Ed. Inc.) when I heard about the newly proposed position for our district – Diversity Equity Inclusion Senior Officer. I found out that the DEI nomenclature had been gaining prominence for a number of years in the higher education realm…entire departments had been created to offer degrees and certificates in DEI. There was growing demand at all levels of society, and it was big business for universities.
The use of a special language allowed those in Ed. Inc. to justify hiring staff and consultants and to create and sell new curriculum to instill DEI into our schools and businesses. I found phrases like infuse the curriculum, equity lens, compositional diversity profiles, reinvent the culture to be cohesive and morally just, reduce disproportionality, Restorative Justice throughout Ed. Inc., and in government and businesses. Interestingly enough, no one wanted to offer definitions or explanations.
Back in my corporate marketing days, we were always beholden to the Finance Guys because they held the keys to the kingdom (the unquestionable financials) and they bestowed the budget goodies. With Ed. Inc. I found new key-holders who controlled the words and got all the budget goodies…they weren’t going to explain the meaning or need for all of this, heaven’s no. That would require exposing the BS for what it was – the hollow driver of exorbitant funds all originating from the pockets of taxpayers.
Exposing the DEI scam meant exposing the Critical Race Theory and Culturally Responsive Teaching philosophies for what they were…the glossy coverings of the theory that white people have always been and will always be suppressors of black people. Culturally Responsive Teaching also pushed the new phrase… “students learn more if everyone around them, including people in books “look like them.” This requires hiring new staff and replacing textbooks and library books. (Notice, the 2 CRTs shell game – if it doesn’t fit under one, it will under the other). The end result…black people will always need a different set of educational achievement and behavior standards to be judged by – to be fair.
But it didn’t stop there…Ed. Inc. had a bigger goal in mind and the DEI scam was just one part of it – a means to a greater end. The real goal was raising a crop of compliant socialists/globalists who would readily work for the betterment of the collective under the direction of a global government. And so, we find another set of undefined words, like keys, used to that end – Social Emotional Learning.
What parent wouldn’t want their child to learn proper socialization skills like knowing their place in society, respecting everyone’s differences, and being a good citizen? What parent wouldn’t want their child to learn better self-control, personal responsibility, and empathy. They might not if “respecting everyone’s differences” and being “empathetic” meant understanding genders and sexual preferences starting in kindergarten…if working for the common good meant not striving for individual excellence but rather for an equal grade for every student in the reading group…if this “personal responsibility” meant supporting Reparations and Global Warming mandates.
Social Emotional Learning is truly a Trojan Horse. It’s a teaching method and curriculum with a hidden agenda. Ed. Inc. has deftly crafted a means for taking our cultural norms and shared values…the symbols of a civilized society…and using them to condition our children to accept and perform as the Radical Socialist power brokers want them to. What better teaching tool for all ages – the personal responsibility of following Pandemic Directives?
We’re told those silly little pronouns aren’t a big deal. Teachers and staff just explain to 1st and 2nd graders learning the meanings of words…learning to READ that people can feel like any gender. Kids can be a boy or a girl or something in between and they can pick whatever pronouns they want to use. And their parents, friends, and teachers must use their preferred pronouns which they can change whenever they like. This sets the basis for the next step – medically changing your gender.
Not only does this undermine our established sciences of Anatomy and Biology but it also undermines the parents’ position within the nuclear family and in the life of the child. God working through the parents created that child and it wasn’t “assigned a gender at birth” – it was a boy or a girl – period! When you have the power to change established science and even more power to change the meanings of words, it represents rendering asunder the very heart of our culture – our language.
There is a strong power struggle going on here and it’s happening within our communities and our schools. Worse yet, it’s being funded by our own tax dollars spread throughout Ed. Inc Fortunately, parents and community members are waking up to the scheme and are exposing those who claim it’s not happening in their community or it’s nothing to worry about…because it is!
With the increase in conservative school board members across the country and Governors like Ron DeSantis, we will have the power to stem the tide, but it must start with defunding Ed. Inc We must not accept the textbooks and curriculum being sold by the publishers of Ed, Inc. We must not accept the instructional methods and tools forced on our teachers by the Ed. Inc universities and consultants. AND we must not allow our state education departments and county school districts to be managed by members of Ed. Inc.
The time is now to end the Word Games and start teaching the truth. That can only be done by defunding Education Incorporated and taking back our schools. Let’s get to work!
(Inspired by a talk by Alvin Lui: https://courageisahabit.org/ )
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