{"id":3562,"date":"2021-06-04T21:36:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T21:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=3562"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:01:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:01:48","slug":"the-radical-reshaping-of-k-12-public-education-part-2-civics-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2021\/06\/04\/the-radical-reshaping-of-k-12-public-education-part-2-civics-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Radical Reshaping of K-12 Public Education (Part 2): Civics & History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: This is Part Two of a three-part article. Click to read <\/em>Part One: Gender Redefinition & Self-Selection<\/em><\/a> and Part Three: Critical Race Theory & Woke Academics<\/a>.]<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six former U.S. education secretaries, serving both Democratic and Republican Presidents, are sounding the alarm<\/a> about the grave danger our constitutional democracy faces. Years of political polarization have culminated in riots in our cities spanning months, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol. They point to a root cause of our plight: our failure to provide sound civics and history teaching in our K-12 schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when civics and history are taught, there is discord concerning the content and how to teach it. And too often, teacher unions, rather than modeling positive social behavior, instead promote indoctrination of students on partisan political viewpoints. They also make outlandish demands in exchange for teachers returning to the classroom to provide the services they\u2019ve been hired to fulfill \u2014 in-person schooling for our children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is far more than a slippery slope \u2014 it’s an outright abandonment of a fact-based education in exchange for an agenda-based indoctrination.<\/p>Keri D. Ingraham<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Failure to Teach Civics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Civics, defined<\/a> by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as \u201ca social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens,\u201d is nonexistent in most American schools today. Forty-two of our 50 states don\u2019t require civics for graduation. This was not always the case. Civics used to be foundational to a public education. As Charles Salter points out<\/a> in an article for Education Week, since its beginnings, public education\u2019s basic purpose was to \u201cpreserve and perpetuate a functioning democratic society by educating citizens in the ways of that democracy.\u201d Thomas Jefferson<\/a> wisely noted public education\u2019s aim to \u201ceducate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salter goes on to say that without civics, we are producing \u201can electorate that has not been taught to think deeply about how a democracy is supposed to function, the public\u2019s role in making it function, or how to assess the information it receives before making decisions.\u201d This lack of education results in an inability to self-govern effectively. Look no further than mob rule that has been commonplace in America\u2019s largest cities during the last year for a dramatic example of this ignorance of civics playing out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This deficiency is especially problematic in an age of the proliferation of news based not on a balanced and objective presentation of facts, but rather intended to trigger emotion and manipulate public beliefs. Flipping between polar news stations will result in widely conflicting summaries of the day\u2019s events \u2014 with a given event spun to fuel the larger narrative the station promotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students are usually not prepared to make an independent knowledge-based assessment of what is being presented from the media and through social media. A prime example is the reporting on the \u201cmostly peaceful\u201d rioting in American cities throughout the summer of 2020 and beyond, which caused billions of dollars of damage to public and private properties and numerous injuries and deaths of law enforcement personnel. But depending on what media outlet you follow, your impression of the destructive events may vary greatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another example is the conflating of a phrase that virtually everyone supports \u2014 that black lives, do in fact, matter \u2014 with the Black Lives Matters (BLM) organization. Protesting in cities across America by the millions, many of these BLM supporters were unaware that they are championing Marxism \u2014 let alone what Marxism<\/a> is at its core:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism\u2026. As a result of the revolution, Marx predicted that private ownership of the means of production would be replaced by collective ownership, under socialism first and then communism. In the final stage of human development, social classes and class struggle would no longer exist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Patrisse Cullors<\/a>, co-founder of BLM, confirmed the connection between BLM and Marxism, explaining that she and fellow organizers are \u201ctrained Marxists. We are super-versed.\u201d In her book When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir<\/a><\/em>, Cullors describes her introduction to Marxism as prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Eric Mann. She devoted years to studying Marxism under the former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, leaders holding high government offices at the federal and state levels are quickly exploiting an underlying principle: The less educated our citizens are regarding civics, the more pliable they are to the acceptance of radical philosophies and agenda, and the more government power can grow. The end result will be a loss of the American Dream \u2014 life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Don\u2019t believe this? Take a look at the citizens of today\u2019s socialist and communist countries around the world. According to Ben Shapiro<\/a>, \u201cwhile advocates of Marxism today disown the Stalinists and the Maoists and the Castro regime and Venezuela and North Korea, all of those nations thought they were fulfilling Marx\u2019s dream, too.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Defeat Radical Indoctrination<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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We need your help. An unprecedented campaign is underway to win the hearts and minds of vulnerable children in classrooms across America with extreme ideologies. Public schools are being transformed into radical indoctrination centers pushing gender redefinition and self-selection, rewriting history, and promoting Critical Race Theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not too late to intervene and reverse these new radical policies, practices, and curriculums that go against our country\u2019s best interest and that of our students. The American Center for Transforming Education<\/strong>, a program of Discovery Institute, is defending American ideals and fighting against radical indoctrination in our schools. As a non-profit organization, our work is made possible only by the generosity of our supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking action now is critical because those promoting radical ideologies are becoming ever more aggressive in systematically pushing their agenda in our K-12 schools, with alarming success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will you join in a growing movement to expose and end this damaging indoctrination taking place in our schools?<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Donate Now<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The 1619 Project<\/em> \u2014 Redefining U.S. History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones\u2019 controversial 1619 Project<\/em><\/a>, published in The New York Times Magazine<\/em> in August 2019, \u201caims to reframe the country\u2019s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.\u201d Hannah-Jones\u2019 major premise reads: \u201cOur democracy\u2019s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scroll through the 1619 Project<\/em> home page and you\u2019ll find something other than straightforward historical content. Rather, in support of a radical reinterpretation of America\u2019s founding and history, it outlines what Princeton historian Sean Wilentz describes as \u201cfalsehoods, distortions, and significant omissions.\u201d Teachers are encouraged on the website to utilize the content in their classrooms, and a link is provided to access free resources, including curriculum, guides, and activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) wasted no time adopting the1619 Project<\/em> as official district curriculum in September 2019, a mere month after its publication. The CEO of the district, Dr. Janice Jackson<\/a>, provided each CPS high school with 200-400 copies in what she describes as a \u201cresource to help reframe the institution of slavery, and how we\u2019re still influenced by it today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three states<\/a> \u2014 Arkansas, Iowa, and Mississippi \u2014 are looking to ban the 1619 Project<\/em>.  However, the Biden Administration<\/a>, despite the widespread criticism of the project\u2019s historical accuracy, cited it as the type of instruction that would be a priority in a new American History and Civics Education grant program. This is far more than a slippery slope \u2014 it\u2019s an outright abandonment of a fact-based education in exchange for an agenda-based indoctrination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An alternative to the 1619 Project <\/em>is 1776 Unites<\/em><\/a>, which \u201crepresents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of writers, thinkers, and activities focused on solutions to our country\u2019s greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility.\u201d The group acknowledges racial discrimination exists and works toward eliminating it. However, rather than attempting to \u201cdemoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within,\u201d or turning Americans \u201cagainst one another with false history and grievance politics,\u201d 1776 Unites<\/em> seeks to bring hope and solutions for America\u2019s future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizations such as the Freedom Education Foundation<\/a> have been diligently at work to counteract the civics void in American high school and college classrooms by providing schools with an alternative. Their FreedomCivics curriculum is based on traditional U.S. history, free enterprise, and the founding documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, history content in today\u2019s classrooms is largely taught from a partisan viewpoint \u2014 that of the left and often the far left. Instead of presenting historical facts and fostering higher-order thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, etc.), the indoctrination of our future electorate aims to produce generations who will blindly support ideologies without fact-based evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teacher Unions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Teacher unions play a powerful role in shaping this radical narrative within K-12 schools. It starts with indoctrinating teachers through leveraging union influence obtained by controlling teachers\u2019 purse strings. In turn, teachers indoctrinate students with far-left ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conjunction with indoctrinating teachers, unions attempt to sway the curriculum used in classrooms to align with their agenda. Randi Weingarten<\/a>, President of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher union in the U.S., unashamedly boasted of her work to get \u201cthe 1619 Project lesson plans directly to educators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, teacher unions themselves model a strong lack of respect for civics and history. As increasingly seen during the pandemic, teacher unions exploit their power to manipulate state and federal governmental policy. Case in point is their lack of urgency for getting students back into classrooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, last July, the Los Angeles Unified School District\u2019s teacher union, 35,000 members strong, asserted their schools should not reopen unless a host of demands were met on the state and national level, far exceeding any area of which they could claim legitimate union interests \u2014 and over which the local government does not have any influence. Their demand list<\/a> included: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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implementing a moratorium on charter schools, defunding the police, increasing taxes on the wealthy, implementing Medicare-for-All, and the U.S. Senate and President Donald Trump approving House Democrats\u2019 HEROES Act, which allocated an additional $116 billion in federal education funding to states.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These demands are so far outside the scope of their members\u2019 teaching roles in K-12 classrooms they\u2019d be laughable if not for the harm being done to our students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teacher union misbehavior doesn\u2019t stop there. The American Federation of Teachers<\/a> (AFT), the mega union with 1.7 million members, has resolved to support the Green New Deal and its more radical aspects. Additionally, the California affiliate of the AFT, known as the CFT<\/a>, has made a similar resolve, and California schools have adopted this content into school curricula. The result has been extreme fearmongering of our children, who are led to believe that the earth and all our lives are in imminent danger due to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The void of civics teaching, redefining history, and teacher union overreach goes hand-in-hand with the recent intrusion of extremist agendas in the political sphere more broadly. Using taxpayer money, a new wave of teacher training and student indoctrination is storming schools. Part Three of this series will expose Critical Race Theory teacher training, student woke education, and the redefining of mathematics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The indoctrination of our future electorate, instead of presenting historical facts and fostering higher-order thinking skills in students (analysis, synthesis, etc.), is producing generations who will blindly support ideologies they have yet to evaluate for themselves based on fact. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":3570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":7,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[533],"tags":[541,542,269,539,534,543,535,395,205,379,246,378,538,537,544,83,536,545],"coauthors":[1073],"class_list":["post-3562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indoctrination","tag-1619-project","tag-1776-unites","tag-american-federation-of-teachers","tag-black-lives-matters","tag-civics","tag-freedom-education-foundation","tag-history","tag-indoctrination","tag-k-12-education","tag-k-12-public-education","tag-k-12-public-school-teachers","tag-k-12-public-schools","tag-karl-marx","tag-marxism","tag-redefining-history","tag-teacher-unions","tag-u-s-history","tag-void-of-civics"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Keri D. Ingraham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3562"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}