• It's Not Civics Class, It's Progressive Activist Indoctrination!

    February 6, 2024
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    While test scores plummet and a majority of the students can't do basic math, the Southern Poverty Law Center has stepped up to provide a curriculum to help students be...activists.

    Yes, that is correct. The SPLC, a group that designates anyone who doesn't go along with their Marxist agenda or donate to their cause, as domestic terrorists, white supremacists, and anything else nasty they can think of, has decided to help teachers develop student activists.

    It's not the only time the SPLC has sent materials to classrooms to subvert the teaching of academics and replace it with leftist propaganda that teachers can use to indoctrinate our children.

    From October 2023:

    Free Propaganda Lessons Delivered To The Mailbox Of Your Child's Teacher - Easton Gazette

    The above is a magazine filled with articles that demean our country and anyone who disagrees with their Progressive mantras.

    This set of lessons comes from what appears to be a front group, called "Youth in Front." (youthinfront.org) The materials were published in 2021. They couch their lesson under the guise of "civics" lessons. That designation would be fine if the lessons truly addressed the full scope of civics including the Constitution, our rights, history etc. and had the context of living in a great country that allows freedom of speech and real rights. Unfortunately, the lessons in their handouts are mostly about identity politics, victimhood, and hating America.

    https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RDYaUI2lykxCmPXEOKE5Yw9BimL-jjOI6ZR0OJVHX3c/edit?usp=sharing

    Here is text from one of the slides:

    The labels say more about who’s labeling, than who is labeled

    Toni Morrison, the American writer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote: “The definitions belong to the definers, not the defined”. Each label we place, with the objective of limiting the others, actually restricts our world. Each label is the expression of our inability to deal with complexity and uncertainty, with the unexpected and the ambivalent.

    In other words, facts are not facts if you don't like them.

    And then we have this Kamala Harris type gem:

    In fact, we usually resort to labels when reality is so complex that it overwhelms us psychologically, or when we don’t have the cognitive tools to assess in a fair measure what is happening.

    From this perspective, each label is like a tunnel that closes our vision to a more vast, wide and complex reality. And if we don’t have a global perspective of what is happening, we cannot respond adaptively. In that moment we stop responding to reality to begin to respond to the biased image of reality that we have built in our mind.

    One phrase stands out, "global perspective." The other is the "biased image of reality that we have built in our mind." Seems like we are telling kids not to follow what they KNOW because it is "biased." In other words, "Disregard the facts, listen to us and no one else."

    In one unit, they teach educators how to "support student activism":

    1. Effective adult supporters keep youth in front by listening carefully, asking questions as needed, and sharing their understanding of the school and local community when youth seek guidance. 
    2. Teachers’ personal and professional identities influence which roles and actions they take in supporting student activists. 
    3. Teachers’ personal and professional identities shape how students and colleagues view them as supporters. 
    4. Teachers can build alliances with other personnel to develop strategies for supporting student-activism in their schools.

    Apparently, they want to allow the personal beliefs and "identities" of teachers to determine how they steer students' political activism.

    And here is this nugget in the form of a "web" students fill out on themselves:

    The name in the middle is a coincidence, right?

    There are three units in this "curriculum:"

    Each unit contains 10 plus lessons. If each lesson in one class period, this "unit" will take up 20 class periods. In a nine-week semester, that boils down to four weeks. Four weeks of learning activism instead of reading, writing, math, history, science, etc.

    Youth in Front : YouthInFront

    Teaching civics on its own is not a bad thing. When one confines civics to "activism" and leaves out all the contextual information kids need to know, it is indoctrination and a disservice to our young people.

    If teachers need to teach "civics" perhaps they should look at resources from the Heritage Foundation:

    Civics Lessons and Resources | The Heritage Foundation

    Resources are divided by purpose, audience, and grade level and most are free. They actually cover the Constitution, history of this country, etc. You know, things children should learn.

    Someone should call the SPLC. Or maybe not, they will probably designate all the groups posting this information as "terrorists" and "racists."

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    Author

    Jan Greenhawk

    Jan Greenhawk is a former teacher and school administrator for over thirty years. She has two grown children and lives with her husband in Maryland. She also spent over twenty-five years coaching/judging gymnastics and coaching women’s softball.
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