COMMENTARY
As a candidate, Joe Biden’s number one promise was to “unite”
America. Yet in his first months as president, his number one priority has been
to divide our country by race and gender at every turn.
There is no clearer example than the Biden administration’s new
effort aimed at indoctrinating America’s schoolchildren with some of the most
toxic and anti-American theories ever conceived. It is vital for Americans to
understand what this initiative would do, what drives it and, most importantly,
how we can stop it.
For decades, the America-blaming left has been relentlessly
pushing a vision of America that casts our history, culture, traditions, and
founding documents in the most negative possible light. Yet in recent years,
this deeply unnatural effort has progressed from telling children that their history is
evil to telling Americans that they are evil.
In classrooms across the nation, students are being subjected to a
new curriculum designed to brainwash them with the ridiculous left-wing dogma
known as “critical race theory.” The key fact about this twisted doctrine is
that it is completely antithetical to everything that normal Americans of any
color would wish to teach their children.
Instead of helping young people discover that America is the
greatest, most tolerant, and most generous nation in history, it teaches them
that America is systemically evil and that the hearts of our people are full of
hatred and malice. Far from advancing the beautiful dream of the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. -- that our children should “not be judged by the color of
their skin, but by the content of their character” -- the left’s vile new
theory preaches that judging people by the color of their skin is actually a
good idea.
Teaching even one child these divisive messages would verge on
psychological abuse. Indoctrinating generations of children with these extreme
ideas is not just immoral -- it is a program for national suicide. Yet that is exactly
what the Biden administration endorsed recently in a rule published in the
Federal Register aimed at inflicting a critical race theory-inspired curriculum
on American schoolchildren.
The rule explicitly cites the New York Times’ discredited “1619
Project” as a motivation. The Times has described the goal of its endeavor as
the “re-education” of the American people, and the project even includes a
lesson plan that encourages students to practice “erasing” parts of the
Declaration of Independence. The Biden rule also directly cites a left-wing
activist and leading proponent of critical race theory whose textbook states,
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only
remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
This is what the Biden administration wants to teach America’s
children.
The Department of Education rule stems from an executive order
Biden signed on his first day in office. Biden’s order abolished the
President’s Advisory 1776 Commission I created to honor America’s founding
principles, and reversed an executive action I took to stop these depraved
theories from being imposed upon federal employees in workforce training
sessions.
Thankfully, most Americans oppose this insanity. The left has only
gotten away with it until this point because not enough parents have been
paying attention and speaking up. But that is quickly changing. From Loudoun
County, Va., to Cupertino, Calif., parents are beginning to make their voices
heard against the left-wing cultural revolution. What they need now is a plan
to actually stop it.
Here are the reforms that every concerned parent in America should
be demanding.
First, every state legislature should pass a ban on taxpayer
dollars going to any school district or workplace that teaches critical race
theory, which inherently violates existing anti-discrimination laws. Inspired
by my executive order last year, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and
other states have already taken steps to pass such laws. It needs to happen
everywhere — and Congress should seek to institute a federal ban through
legislation as well.
Second, each state should create its own 1776 Commission to
examine the public school curriculum and ensure that students are receiving a
patriotic, pro-American education — not being taught that the United States is
an evil nation.
Third, parents have a right to know exactly what is being taught
to their children. Last year, many parents had the chance to routinely listen
in on classes for the first time because of remote learning. As students return
to the classroom, states need to pass laws requiring that all lesson plans have
to be made available to parents — every handout, article, and reading should be
posted on an online portal that allows parents to see what their kids are being
taught. Furthermore, in many places, there are rules preventing students from
recording what teachers say in class. States and school boards should establish
a “Right to Record.”
Fourth, parents need to organize locally — in every school
district in America — to eliminate “Action Civics” and other versions of the
effort to contort traditional civics education into a vehicle for political
indoctrination. The left’s new argument is that our “divisions” stem from a
lack of “civics education” — a problem they intend to “fix” with lots of new
taxpayer money and a redefinition of “civics” in schools, just as they are
trying to redefine the meaning of “infrastructure.” Right now, Congress is
working on a $1 billion bill known as the Civics Secures Democracy Act. No
Republican should trust the Biden administration with a billion dollars to
spend on such programs. Even worse, the legislation threatens to establish a de
facto national curriculum for history and civics, effectively bribing states
into adopting the left’s anti-American curriculum. It is Common Core all over
again -- but much more extreme. And like Common Core, parents must unite to
stop this new federal power grab.
Fifth, any parent who objects to the material being taught to
their child in public school should get an automatic voucher, empowering them
to pick another school of their choice. The government has no right to
brainwash students with controversial ideologies against their parents’ will.
Sixth, states need to take back control of their schools of
education and credentialing bodies to ensure they are not churning out
radicalized teachers. To be clear, the overwhelming majority of our nation’s
teachers are some of the most selfless and wonderful people there are — but
regrettably, many have graduated from extremely biased education schools and
may not even be aware of the degree to which leftist ideology has permeated
their curriculum. States should set up alternative credentialing bodies that
can certify great teachers who know how to instill a sense of love for America.
School districts can then make it a priority to hire teachers with these
certifications, especially for English, history, and social studies roles. States
could even set up their own versions of Teach for America to get passionate and
patriotic young people into the classroom.
Finally, states need to break the tenure monopoly in public K-12
schools. Tenure was originally supposed to protect competent teachers from
being subjected to undue political influence; it has turned into a mechanism to
protect incompetent teachers who themselves wield undue political influence
over our children. Educators who are alienating children from their own country
should not be protected with lifelong tenure; they should be liberated to
pursue a career as a political activist.
Make no mistake: The motive behind all of this left-wing lunacy is
to discredit and eliminate the greatest obstacles to the fundamental
transformation of America. To succeed with their extreme agenda, radicals know
they must abolish our attachment to the Constitution, the Declaration of
Independence, and most of all, Americans’ very identity as a free, proud, and
self-governing people. The left knows that if they can dissolve our national
memory and identity, they can gain the total political control they crave.
A nation is only as strong as its spirit. For our children, we
must act before it is too late.
Donald Trump was the 45th
president of the United States.
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