How Black Lives Matter is destroying public education

OPINION:

Last month, many government schools participated in Black Lives Matter at School Week.

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The annual Social Justice Week of Action began in 2016 in the state of Washington and grew over the years with support from the National Education Association (NEA). In 2019, The NEA promotion included an image of students appearing to grab and shred the American flag while another student holds up the BLM flag.

What an image! This is a true reflection of the indoctrination happening in government schools. Sadly, today, children are being taught to hate America and believe our country is systemically racist.

The starter kit for schools to participate in BLM at School Week can be downloaded for review. The updated kit touts four national demands for the week of action: 1. End zero tolerance and implement restorative justice, 2. hire and retain black teachers, 3. mandate Black history and ethnic studies, and 4. counselors, not cops.

So, let’s get this straight.

BLM wants to end strict discipline in classrooms to be replaced by a theory that focuses on the victim and repairing any harm done, which has morphed into the payment of monetary reparations to victims of historical social injustice.

BLM wants to hire teachers based on their race rather than their skills and abilities. Discrimination in the name of diversity like this is rampant across our country. For example, in 2021 North Carolina’s largest district encouraged teachers to ignore White parent’s concerns about critical race theory because “their children benefit from the system.” There is so much irony in how “anti-racist” programs are so heavily steeped in racism.

BLM wants to mandate Black History and Ethnic Studies like the African American Studies class focused on social justice being implemented in my hometown. The professor who guided the teachers in the development of this course said, “Shifting [students] thinking often means disagreeing with their families, communities, and what they see as basic values in the United States.”

Should this be the focus for teachers? To shift a child’s worldview away from their family, community, and our country’s values?

BLM wants to defund police in schools and replace them with mental health counselors. Is this because children who commit crimes in school need counseling not discipline? If we continue to remove deterrents to crime and treat children who make bad choices as victims, we harm them and potentially others. Self-control is learned from suffering the consequences of bad choices.

Moreover, BLM has expanded beyond race and now includes in its Guiding Principles “Transgender Affirming (the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege),” and “Queer Affirming (freeing … from the tight grip of cis-heteropatriarchal assumptions)” and they claim, “collective value” described as “sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, economic status, ability, disability, education, location, age, immigration status, religious beliefs or disbeliefs.”

Other BLM Guiding Principles are “Black Women” defined as “actively disrupting patriarchal culture” and Black Villages intended to “disrupt the narrow Western prescribed nuclear family structure expectation” and “villages that collectively care for one another.”

These are the most disturbing of all the principles espoused by BLM. They aim to cancel dads who are the vital bedrock of family that is missing in the Black community. Social sciences agree that children fare better in every measure of well-being when they are raised by married parents and the number one cause of children living in poverty is being born out of wedlock. There is an abundance of research that testifies to the fact that fatherlessness harms children. In 1965, 75% of Black families were led by married parents. Today, nearly 70% of Black children are born out of wedlock. Children, especially boys, need a father. The BLM movement will devastate the Black community if they have their way. Furthermore, it doesn’t take a village to raise a child — it takes loving parents.

The “Frequently Asked Questions” section of the toolkit starts by telling teachers the movement is about “unpacking their backpack of privilege” and how “relying on colorblind rhetoric only perpetuates the issues and does nothing to challenge structural racism and White supremacy.”

The Q&A section goes on to include a question about teachers’ rights when teaching materials parents might find inappropriate. The response is, it is the job of an educator to raise students’ awareness of issues that affect the world and to consider solutions. This is indeed what the job of a teacher has become, but why? When children are failing academically with very low percentages of children proficient in any subject whether they are White or Black, why not focus on teaching children to read, write, and do math?

The Q&A section closes with a question from a teacher who teaches math and science. The teacher asks how to integrate this into their teaching. BLM suggests they “use numbers and maps to look at the impact of housing discrimination, low minimum wage, and the ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’” They also recommend asking students to think about ways to solve deep social problems: “how can we reduce the number of losses of life to police violence; and what are ways to end deep poverty?” And finally, they suggest just ditching math and science occasionally to “talk about how students are feeling about the world around them” and “engage with them around the work of social change, organizing and building power in the world.”

We were warned, nearly prophetically by Thomas Sowell in 2004 who said, “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

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Sheri Few is the Founder and President of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) whose mission is to end the US Department of Education and all federal education mandates. USPIE has established 20 state chapters and is growing rapidly amid the national outcry from parents who want to regain control of their children’s education. Few is a nationally recognized leader on education policy and is often quoted in conservative media. Few has written extensively about critical race theory and served as Executive Producer for the documentary film titled “Truth & Lies in American Education.”