What Are Your Kids Learning in School?

Public educators are increasingly teaching radical-left concepts to children, including very young children. Recently, Chicago public schools adopted an American history curriculum based on The 1619 Project published and promoted by the New York Times.

The 1619 Project embraces left-wing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and asserts that America's founding was not marked by the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but the arrival of the first African slaves in Jamestown in 1619. Historians from across the political spectrum have denounced this claim as historically inaccurate. While the Times has walked back that foundational claim for its project, it has continued to promote several other historically flawed assertions.

As defined by Britannica, left-wing Critical Race Theory (CRT) is “the view that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of colour.” The view holds that America was founded in and is inherently defined by racism.

Related video: “What’s Wrong With The 1619 Project?” – Wilfred Reilly

"Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" is a euphemism for Critical Race Theory (CRT), which teaches that racism is woven into the very fabric of America. As an example of how this operates in the schools, middle and high school students in Wellesley, Massachusetts are taught to be on the lookout for both conscious and "unconscious" racial bias in their classmates.

In announcing a new “advisory council for [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion], comprising students in grades 7-12,” an email from Dr. Charmie Curry, Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, invited students to join the schools’ efforts to prevent “bias-based incidents in our school communities.” The email read in part: “A bias incident is any conduct, speech or expression that has an impact, but may not involve criminal action, but demonstrates conscious or unconscious bias that targets individuals or groups that are part of a federally protected class (ie. race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, or disability). We need your help! Your school leaders will be working with you this year on how to be proactive about preventing bias incidents, and how to report them should they occur.”

Related video: “There Is No Apolitical Classroom” – Max Eden

In Colorado, public educators are teaching radical gender theory to children as early as first grade. First graders in some schools are being taught that just because someone looks like a boy does not mean they are; only they can know who they truly are. Gender is fluid and something they choose for themselves based on how masculine or feminine they feel, first graders are told. or that they are not fully a boy or a girl, but something in between, first graders are told. “One dad went to school to find out what was going on,” The Federalist reported in April 2019. “He walked into his daughter’s regular first-grade classroom and saw kids whose parents had opted them out remaining in the classroom and watching the video ‘He, She, and They – What is Gender.’ After the video, the teacher had the kids partner up to talk about how they felt inside and what pronoun they each preferred.”

The video “He, She, and They – What is Gender” is part of a series called “Queer Kid Stuff,” which the elementary school has used for multiple classes and grade levels.

The lessons being promoted by the school to elementary students is part of a larger effort to promote LGBT theory described as “queering the curriculum.”

Related video: “Why Good Students Want School Choice” – Rebecca Friedrichs

Public education is increasingly promoting alarmist theories about climate change and left-wing theories about how to address the issue.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has fully endorsed the most radical aspects of The Green New Deal, declaring in a resolution of support that “the AFT will work with local school districts and other organizations, as appropriate, to educate students about climate change, economic inequality and potential solutions to these problems, such as a Green New Deal,” and supports radical tax initiatives in order to fund the Green New Deal. “[T]he AFT supports a Green New Deal, prioritizing projects, union career opportunities and investments in working-class communities, low-income communities, and communities of color, which, historically, have been disproportionately impacted by pollution, high unemployment, poverty and environmental injustice,” reads the resolution.

Related video: “Why I Fight For School Choice” – Cecilia Iglesias

“Recent years have seen a rise in Americans 12 to 25 saying they are unhappy,” one report notes. “Since 2012, the proportion of 8th and 10th graders who tell the Monitoring the Future survey that they felt unhappy has crept up from 13 percent to 18 percent. In roughly the same time, the proportion of 18- to 25-year-olds who say they are unhappy has risen from 11 to 17 percent, according to the General Social Survey.”

A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that a vast majority (70%) of U.S. teens view anxiety and depression as a major problem among their peers — a significantly larger percent than those who view bullying or drug addiction as a major problem.”

Psychological problems among children in many Western countries are on the rise in recent decades. In England, rates of childhood mental health disorders have increased over the last 20 years. “One in four young women aged 17-19 have a mental disorder, according to the latest figures from the NHS, and one in five have anxiety or depression, or both,” one study found. “For all children and young people aged five to 19, the new data shows that one in eight have a mental disorder.”

“The proportion of five to 15-year-olds with a mental health disorder rose from 9.7% in 1999 to 11.2% in 2017, with emotional disorders (such as depression and anxiety) becoming more common in particular,” studies found. “Now, on average, three children in a class of 30 will have a mental health disorder.”

Researchers found that these mental health issues have also had an increasingly worse impact on young people afflicted with them, concluding that “children with mental health problems have worse relationships with their peers, worse grades at school and worse mental health in adolescence compared to children who had mental health problems 40 years ago.”

Related reading: Interview with Dr. Sarah Coyne on the increase in teen suicide - The Institute for Family Studies