Perhaps you missed the story about a Naperville, Illinois elementary school where third-grade teacher, Nicholas Cosme, a 25-year-old man who “paints his nails like a woman does—and is teaching eight-year-old boys” in his class at Elmwood Elementary School to do likewise. According to the DuPage Policy Journal, he has asked his students for their pronouns, “suggesting the boys … might ask him to refer to them as ‘she.’” To top off his lesson, he read to his young students the picture book My Shadow is Pink, in which “a young boy who likes to wear dresses inspires his father to also wear a dress.”

No ideological grooming going on here. Move along.

In response to a parent complaint, the school issued a statement to the DuPage Policy Journal defending Cosme’s actions because they “align to Naperville 203’s efforts to cultivate a culture of inclusion that values the dignity and uniqueness of each individual.”

So, in the service of “inclusion” will Elmwood Elementary School introduce young children to polyamory? Zoophilia? Genetic Sexual Attraction? Kink? If not, why not?

What about parents who believe cross-dressing undermines the dignity of boys and men? How does Elmwood Elementary include representations of those people?

Perhaps you missed the story from Paterson Elementary School in Fleming Island, Florida, where last January, parents Wendell and Maria Perez were called from their 12-year-old daughter’s school following her second suicide attempt in two days. The parents were told that she attempted to hang herself in a school bathroom over her “gender identity crisis,” and that they weren’t notified earlier because of their Catholic faith, which the school rightly surmised would have led them not to affirm her gender confusion. The parents also learned that school counselor Destiney Washington had been secretly meeting with their daughter for months and facilitating her social transition at school.

Subsequently, the Perez’s found proper counseling for their daughter. Her sexual confusion resolved, she accepts her sex, and she no longer experiences suicidal ideation. The parents are now suing the district.

Florida father Wendell Perez tells the state surgeon general that Clay County District Schools secretly "transitioned" his 12-year-old daughter without his knowledge and "affirmed" a male name and pronouns, which contributed to her attempted suicide in a school bathroom. pic.twitter.com/VY8Le9KqCi

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) August 23, 2022

Perhaps you also missed the news story from Richard J Kinsella Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut about 77-year-old school nurse Kathleen Cataford who was suspended for a personal Facebook post that Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez described in a letter to the entire school community as “inappropriate,” “harmful,” “hateful,” and “inconsistent with what we stand for.” Here’s the allegedly hateful post:

Buyer beware. Investigate the school system curriculum … CT is a very socially liberal, gender confused state … As a public school nurse, I have an 11 yo female student on puberty blockers and a dozen students identifying as non-binary, all but two keeping this a secret from their parents with the help of teachers, SSW [social service worker] and administration.

Teachers and SSW are spending 37.5 hours a week influencing your children, not necessarily teaching [your] children what YOU think is being taught. Children are introduced to this confusion in kindergarten by the school SW [social worker] who ‘teaches’ social and emotional regulation and school expectations.

Science tells us that a child’s brain continues development into the early 20’s, hence laws prohibiting alcohol, tobacco, vaping and cannibis. But it’s ok to inject hormones into confused prepubescent children and perform genital mutilating surgery on adolescents! How incongruent is that thinking!

Which part of this is inappropriate? Is it inappropriate to expose publicly that teachers, social service workers, and administrators are conspiring to keep secrets from parents?

Which part is harmful? Is it harmful to warn parents that teachers are doing far more than teach the subject for which they were hired to teach? Is it harmful to point out the inconsistency in allowing prepubescent children and teens to make irreversible, life-altering decisions before the decision-making parts of their brains are fully developed?

Which part is hateful? Is calling the mutilation of children’s genitalia “genital mutilating surgery” hateful or true? If Torres-Rodriguez would spend some time reading the tragic accounts of detransitioners, she might find such a description true and accurate. If she has a tidbit of courage—which seems unlikely—she might even change her de facto policy of supporting social, chemical, and, presumably, surgical efforts to conceal children’s sex.

I will grant Torres-Rodriguez one point: the ideas expressed by Kathleen Cataford are very likely inconsistent with what district leaders stand for. They stand for deceit, hubris, and ignorance.

Let’s try two brief thought experiments:

1.) Let’s imagine that one day a Jewish girl from an Orthodox family decides to identify as Muslim. She changes her name to Aayat, which means “verses in the Quran.” At school, she tells her counselor and teachers that she wants to be referred to by this name because it reflects her authentic identity. She also requests a place to pray Dhuhr at its specified time near noon and a place to change into her hijab where there will be no biological boys. Finally, she tells her counselor that her parents would strongly disapprove of her trans-religious identity. In other words, her parents are not “safe.” Therefore, she wants the school to keep her trans-religious identity secret from her parents.

2.) A high school girl from a strict Muslim home converts to America’s civil religion: atheism. A long-time fan of actress Ellen/Elliot Page, she changes her name to Elliot. She changes from her hijab at school into typical American clothes, including shorts, short skirts, and figure-hugging tank tops. She changes into gym clothes in the presence of boys who pretend to be girls and use the girls’ locker room—a practice to which Muslim parents would strenuously object. She shares restrooms with those same boys. She requests that all staff (and peers) refer to her as “Elliot” and conceal their duplicity from her parents who would be shocked and angry with their daughter’s choices.

Some questions:

Would schools honor the requests of these girls?

Would parents object to schools accommodating such requests?

Since some schools today provide “transition closets” outfitted with gender-specific clothing for “trans”-identifying students to change into while at school, would schools provide “transition closets” for trans-religionists, replete with attire to match their new religious identities while concealing them from their parents?

There was once a time in American public schools when teachers served in loco parentis—in place of the parents. That is, schools assumed some parental “rights, responsibilities, and liabilities” during the time minor children attended school. Those rights and responsibilities were assumed to be delegated by parents to schoolteachers and administrators to ensure “student safety and supervision” while at school.

The doctrine of in loco parentis has morphed as teachers have expanded the areas of children’s lives over which they assume dominion, as teachers have grown in social and political power, and as they have redefined “safety” in accordance with their dogmatic sex/gender ideology.

Now teachers believe they have a right to “educate” the “whole child” which means teachers believe that the minds, hearts, bodies, and wills of other people’s children belong to them—the social constructionist “educators.” These presumptuous dogmatists believe they have dominion over what material may, should, and must be presented to children, including material that espouses—not objective facts—but arguable assumptions.

Jeff Berger-White, an English teacher at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, who fifteen years ago was teaching the obscene play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes until the community found out and whose wife, Juliet Berger-White, is an activist for “trans”-cultism, offers a glimpse into the hubris of teachers today.

In addition to teaching an obscene pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” play, Berger-White once claimed in the local press that it is the job of English teachers to challenge the emotions and morals of students, a claim that likely would surprise many parents.

More recently, in a Character Strong podcast about testing metrics, Berger-White made some revelatory claims:

I think school boards, I think administrators want something easy and quantifiable. They want to be able to say to their constituents, “Look, their reading scores have gone up. Look, the math scores have gone up.” But, um, what about our humanity? What about teaching empathy? What about teaching in this moment … the anti-racism movements across the country. …? I think all those things are essential and vital.

Were English, math, science, social studies, world languages, and P.E. teachers hired to teach empathy and “anti-racism”? Is that what parents expect them to teach? Is empathy—that is, identifying with someone and feeling what he feels—always good? Should teachers be teaching other people’s children to put themselves in the minds and hearts of people who experience disordered desires?

It is unclear what Berger-White means by “humanity,” but for many, affirming false, destructive ideas, as Berger-White does, erodes rather than cultivates our humanity.

Perhaps Berger-White should limit the scope of his endeavors to teaching students to communicate civilly and leave their emotional and moral development to their parents and those who share their parents’ beliefs and values.

And that would include parental views on what Berger-White and other leftists refer to as “anti-racism.” Parents might like to know if Berger-White is referring to the arguable critical race theory-derived ideas that racists like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Glenn Singleton profit so handsomely from promoting? If so, many taxpayers would heartily disagree that public school teachers should be teaching “anti-racism.”

While many parents value expertise, knowledge, and wisdom in their children’s teachers, Berger-White values “authenticity”—whatever that is:

I think we as educators need to be authentic. We all have a kind of classroom persona, but the closer our personas can come to our authentic selves, the better. And if we can find opportunities to share what moves us, what delights us, what saddens us, all the better. Because we model that, our young people see the adults in front of them every day. … When students trust us to be good … shepherds … they’re more likely to buy in.

All that palaver sounds admirable, but here’s the rub. What moves, delights, and saddens Berger-White may be things that do not move, delight, and sadden many parents. And those parents likely don’t want Berger-White socially constructing his preferences in their children.  C.S. Lewis argues that children must be trained to love that which is worthy of love and hate that which is contemptible. I suspect that C.S. Lewis and Jeff Berger-White might be moved, delighted, and saddened by very different phenomena.

Further, many parents do not view as “good shepherds” adults who share obscene material with minors on the public dime, who teach minors to “empathize” with those who embrace homosexual and “trans” identities, and who teach Kendi’s racist ideas.

Dogmatists like those found in Hartford, Fleming Island, Naperville, and Deerfield schools base much of their social constructionist activities on appeals to “safety” as redefined by them. They believe that “safety” is shaped by their arguable sexual ideology. A person or idea is “safe” if and only if it aligns with the unproven assumptions of leftist sex/gender ideology.

If an idea is deemed unsafe according to the nebulous criteria schools use and never share, then propagandists feel justified in banning it from the classroom, the library, and locker room usage policy. If a person is deemed unsafe, leftist activists who identify as teachers feel self-righteously justified in either firing them, muzzling them, marginalizing them, or, in the case of parents, deceiving them.

Parents, get your kids out of public schools, pronto. And churches, help make that possible.

Here’s a story of actual racial injustice that happened in a liberal North Shore school district: District 113. As you read this, imagine if the Hispanic community in Highland Park and Highwood, Illinois had known this story as it was taking place.

In 2007, District 113, which is composed of Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools, received a federal grant of thousands of dollars because Highland Park High School (HPHS) had failed to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP).  AYP is a tool for measuring how well a district’s students perform on standardized tests under the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.

The reason HPHS’ scores on standardized tests failed to make AYP is that HPHS has a sizeable Hispanic population from primarily neighboring Highwood. Most of these families do not have the financial resources available for private subject area and test-prep tutors as many Highland Park and Deerfield families do, and in many of these families, English is not spoken at home.

To be clear, District 113 had received a hefty federal grant to help Hispanic students score better on standardized tests. And what did the administration and school board chose to do with those taxpayer dollars?

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, District 113, using both the federal grant and some  district money, spent approximately $83,000 to hire the San Francisco-based shyster Glenn Singleton and representatives from his Pacific Educational Group to come  seven times to District 113 to teach employees about their “whiteness.”

Every time Singleton or his representative came, every administrator, every department chair, two teachers from every department and area (e.g., multi-media, custodial pool, technology, secretarial pool) from both high schools attended all-day meetings during which they discussed their “whiteness.” This meant that all the participating employees missed seven days of work or classes.

The $83,000 included $53,000 for Pacific Educational Group’s fees, travel expenses, and per diem; $10,000 for hiring substitute teachers for all the teachers who were absent from class to attend the all-day indoctrination seminars; and $20,000 to feed all the district attendees at the swanky Highland Park Country Club where the meetings took place.

Ironically, both Singleton and his facilitators explicitly stated at the time that neither he nor his book (Courageous Conversations) on which his “consultations” were based provided any solutions for the problem of underperformance of minority students on standardized tests.

Singleton also preposterously claimed that neither poverty, nor language issues at home, nor lack of family support, nor family mobility contributes to the racial learning gap. The causes, Singleton claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.” Singleton also declared that anyone who disagrees with his preposterous theories is “gifted at subverting reform.”

He explicitly exempted Indians and Asians from the category of “persons of color.” Why would that be? If America is systemically racist against persons of color, and if this systemic racism is the cause of the underperformance of students of color on standardized tests, why exempt them? And why do Indians and Asians manage to excel on standardized tests in the face of systemic racism?

Could it be that Singleton tacitly admitted—and hoped no one would notice—that language issues, lack of family support, mobility, or poverty may, indeed, contribute to the racial learning gap? Could it be that systemic racism didn’t exist in District 113?

I asked the District 113 School Board and administration at the time how even in theory would having secretaries, custodians, and teachers miss school to talk about their “whiteness” at the Highland Park Country Club help minority students improve their test scores. They offered no answer–as in, they literally said nothing.

Imagine if the educationally and economically disadvantaged Hispanic community had known the shameful truth that District 113 had had thousands of dollars available to help their children score better on standardized testing and used it instead to line Singleton’s pockets while district employees talked about their whiteness and noshed at the Highland Park Country Club.

In a recent article in The New York Times Magazine about “antiracism” re-education, writer Daniel Bergner told this story about attending one of Singleton’s indoctrination workshops:

At my table, Malik Pemberton, a Black racial-equity coach at a middle school, who had been a teenage father, wanted to talk, he said in the softest of voices, about “accountability,” about how “it starts inside the household in terms of how the child is going to interpret and value education,” about what can happen in schools “without consequences, where they can’t suspend.”… One of Courageous Conversation’s “affiliate trainers,” stationed at the table, immediately rerouted the conversation, and minutes later Moore [another affiliate trainer] drew all eyes back to him and pronounced, “The cause of racial disparities is racism.”

Glenn Singleton is a slicker version of Al Sharpton, a manlier version of Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project, and a blacker version of White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo. He sells the same divisive, racist Critical Race Theory dogma just gussied up in different packaging.

Hans Bader writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute shared that Singleton—who has been hired by wealthy school districts all around the country, including in Evanston, Illinois—teaches teachers that,

“white talk” is “verbal,” “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while “color commentary” is “emotional” and “personal.”

This is disturbingly similar to the ideas in a chart posted by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on their online portal about race and racism—a chart the Smithsonian was forced to take down and apologize for.

The chart promoted the false and racist idea that the following are “aspects and assumptions” of communities of color:

• de-emphasis on objective, rational, linear thinking
• de-emphasis on cause and effect relationships
• de-emphasis on planning for the future
• de-emphasis on working before playing
• devaluation of hard work
• devaluation of respect for authority
• devaluation of delaying gratification
• devaluation of politeness in communication

Critical Race Theory and its many ugly faces solves no societal problems and creates many. IFI is deeply thankful that the Trump administration has ceased the use of federal funds for promoting Critical Race Theory, which is fomenting race and class warfare in America.

“Progressives” have obscenely exploited the disadvantaged among us for votes and power for decades. “Progressives” pretend to care about the impoverished even as they promote policies that destroy their families, their schools, and their communities.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/A-Story-of-Actual-Racial-Injustice-in-an-Illinois-School-District.mp3

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The ideology of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other “social justice” organizations teaches that all whites are racist oppressors, thereby justifying verbal attacks on people who are deemed inveterate racists and justifying riots to destroy everything that has emerged from an allegedly irremediable racist system. In promoting an explicitly racist ideology, BLM and other “social justice” organizations institutionalize racism, and we are suffering the fruits of that poisonous ideology.

In the hell-bent quest by America-hating revolutionaries to destroy America by destroying its institutions and history, 60 monuments have been removed, ordered removed, defaced, or torn down. In addition, according to Reinsurance News,

While no estimates of the costs of the damage is available yet, a look back at the costliest U.S. civil disorders shows that there’s potential for claims from the current riots, which are in multiple cities, to have easily run into the billions of dollars already.

Worse still, this BLM-led revolution has resulted in 25 deaths, hundreds of injuries—including injuries to 700 law enforcement officers—and the establishment of a rogue nation in the midst of downtown Seattle with the blessing of the incompetent mayor who called the squalid, uninhabitable, and dangerous encampment a free-love street festival.

The culture-destroyers are not done yet. Well-known racist activist Shaun King, whose purported racial identity and numerous fundraising projects are questioned by even leftists, recently tweeted,

Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.

and

All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.

BLM, with whom King was previously associated, is a destructive revolutionary group leading a Maoist-like cultural revolution, and many conservatives don’t seem to understand that. Those who support BLM and its skin-pigment-obsessed divisive, separatist, elitist ideology are de facto racists, no matter their skin color.

In National Review, Kyle Smith describes the white liberal BLM disciples as “the White-Guilt Cult”:

Amidst nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, a black man and woman are seated on a park bench while a white woman … takes to her megaphone. “We repent on behalf of, uh, Caucasian people,” she says. A small crowd of white people comes to kneel before the two seated black folks, who are co-pastors of a local church. Some of the kneelers wash the feet of the black people. … Several people start audibly weeping, or keening, as the speaker continues. Roughly a dozen people join in the gesture and kneel before the black couple. “We have put our necks, put our hands, our knees, upon the necks of our African-American brothers and sisters, people of color, indigenous people.” …

The original sin in the White Guilt Cult, the New Church of Anti-Racism, is to be, “uh, Caucasian people.” … If anything, the Great Awokening’s response to the George Floyd killing seems to be bolstering racial barriers rather than eradicating them. By making a religion of anti-racism, white people carry on with the longstanding project of “othering” black folks. … Take the principles of Woke in vain and you invite instantaneous ritual chastisement—the most thrilling, ecstatic element of the woke religion. The techno-narcissistic innovation of the Wokesters is that they have made themselves, as a collective, their own godhead, equipped with the authority to wield and unleash the thunderbolt of righteousness on blasphemers here and now, on their own authority. …

“White silence equals violence” is one new precept gaining currency. …  How exciting it must be to upend the meanings of words in service of the greater cause of smiting one’s perceived enemies, or even whatever suspected counterrevolutionaries there may be among one’s sworn allies. No one dared to be the first to stop applauding a Stalin speech. 

Even Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy has joined the anti-biblical white-guilt Cult, last week calling for white people to pay penance for sinful acts of racism that they never committed by shining the shoes of black people.

The ideology of BLM grows out of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is essentially repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. CRT like that espoused by BLM and scores of other organizations and ideologues emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. Those whose worldview has been shaped by CRT–also known deceptively as “social justice warriors,” seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

CRT focuses on race, sex, class, “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity.” It encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics, dividing groups into “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Those who are identified as “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. CRT promotes the idea that “institutional racism,” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals, is the cause of differing lots in life.

“Social justice” activists cultivate the racist, sexist, heterophobic belief that whites (especially males and heterosexuals) are oppressors—a belief that robs minorities of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives, telling them that their lots in life cannot improve through their own efforts but only through endless confessions of guilt on the parts of the purported oppressors. CRT cultivates a sense of perpetual victimization and powerlessness on the parts of minorities and an irrational and illegitimate sense of guilt on the parts of whites (or men or heterosexuals).

Finally, social justice theory is distinctly anti-American and hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings. CRT diminishes or ignores the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

Racism peddlers—including colorless racism-peddlers and profiteers like Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility—disseminate their cancerous ideology everywhere. Many Americans view our colleges and universities as the primary indoctrination centers, but they should look at government middle and high schools, because indoctrinating the next generation begins long before college.

Through “professional development”—which are the teacher training workshops, seminars, and conferences that take place during summer breaks, institute days, and late-arrival days—teachers are being coached and pressured by administrators and colleagues to adopt the beliefs of “anti-racism” and diversity trainers whose hefty fees are paid for by the public.

Teachers are forced to attend these indoctrination workshops, which never include resources or experts that challenge the assumptions of “anti-racism” trainers. Teachers are then expected to incorporate these revolutionary, leftist, and dubious beliefs into their classroom instruction. Our taxes are being used in government schools to teach children to hate America.

The predatory “anti-racism” scammers profit from peddling guilt to whites, shaming them into falsely believing—or pretending to believe—they are racists. The snake-oil salesmen and women do that in two ways. First, they redefine racism. Racism no longer refers to the belief that people with brown or black skin are by nature inferior. Nor does it refer to individual acts of incivility, unkindness, oppression, or violence. It refers to being white in a culture whose power structures used to be controlled by whites. Whites are guilty of racism and oppression based on nothing more than the color of their skin. This repugnant redefinition is the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for America. It is also unbiblical.

The second way snake-oil salespersons peddle their ugly wares is equally sneaky. They recast all criticism of or opposition to their ideology as something negative, thereby making those who disagree reluctant to express their opposition. Robin DiAngelo insultingly describes the denials of white-skinned people that they are racists as “white fragility.” Those whites who  aren’t racists don’t want to deny being racists because if they do, they’ll then be charged with non-existent white fragility on top of their non-existent racism.

When I worked at Deerfield High School, the district hired expensive racism huckster from California, Glenn Singleton, to teach District 113 employees about their racism. At his first lecture to the entire district, Singleton pre-classified his audience as falling into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were those “who are gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent criticism by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagreed with him. This dishonest labeling tactic works because conservatives let it.

Organizations, resources, and profiteers that provide “anti-racism” propaganda to government schools are numerous, but here are some that taxpayers should watch out for:

• The 1619 Project—a much criticized revision of American history by the New York Times and racism-peddler/activist Nikole Hannah-Jones

• Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center

• Deep Equity

• White Privilege Conference

• Pacific Education Group/Courageous Conversation About Race—founder Glenn Singleton

• National SEED Project (Seeking Education Equity and Diversity)

• “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”—essay written by Peggy McIntosh

• The People’s History of the United States, a revisionist history written by Howard Zinn

It is not racist to criticize the loathsome and radical BLM that is explicitly committed to “disrupting ” the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure led by a father and mother, and to normalizing homosexuality and “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. Such justifiable criticism does not become racist just because leftists shriek over and over and over that it is. Their epithet-hurling is not a magical incantation that turns truth into ugliness. It is a means of intimidation that leftists use all the time because conservatives quake and crumble in its wake.

Snap out of it, conservatives or you feed and strengthen the belching behemoth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Fomenting-Racism-in-the-21st-Century_audio_01.mp3

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UPDATE: A Freedom of Information Request has revealed that the cost for speakers for New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day are almost $28,000, with $15,000 alone going to Colson Whitehead.

Much virtual ink has been spilled, money wasted, and fallacious arguments spewed by supporters of the bias inarguably present in the sessions offered on New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day titled “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights,” which takes place tomorrow Feb. 28.

A closer look at the money spent and diversity ideology promoted—often through fallacious logic—may lead parents to do two things: 1. Keep their children home on “progressive” dogma day. 2. Pursue changes in future seminars with the doggedness and passion (if not the fallacious reasoning) of “progressives.”

Pacific Educational Group lines its pockets with taxpayer money to subsidize Leftist definition of “diversity

On Feb. 19, the North Cook News reported that New Trier has paid almost $90,000 to notorious snake oil salesman Glenn Singleton and his Pacific Educational Group. Here’s a little anecdote about another affluent school district on Chicago’s North Shore that was similarly beguiled by the oily diversity scammer Singleton: District 113 which encompasses Deerfield and Highland Park high schools and which is where I first encountered the ethically-challenged Glenn Singleton. This is my former place of employment and the school from which all four of my children graduated.

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, District 113, using both federal and district money, spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $83,000 to hire the San Francisco-based Glenn Singleton and representatives from his Pacific Educational Group to come  seven times to teach District 113 employees about their “whiteness.” This figure included Singleton’s fees, travel expenses, per diem, and costs of hiring substitute teachers for all the teachers who were absent from class to attend the all-day indoctrination seminars. The $83,000 included $10,000 for substitute teachers and $20,000 to feed everyone at the Highland Park Country Club where the meetings took place.

I asked then-superintendent George Fornero why we were hiring Singleton and was told it was due to Highland Park High School’s failure to make “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act. The district had received federal money to help the Hispanic students perform better on standardized tests, and Fornero used it to hire Singleton. Both Singleton and his facilitators explicitly stated that neither he nor his book on which his consultations were based (Courageous Conversations) provide any solutions.

Every time Singleton or his representative came, every administrator, every department chair, two teachers from every department, and area (e.g., multi-media, custodial pool, technology, secretarial pool) from both high schools attended all-day meetings during which they discussed their “whiteness.” This meant that all the participating employees missed seven days of work or classes.

I asked the school board and administration how even in theory does having secretaries, custodians, and teachers miss school to talk about their “whiteness” at the Highland Park Country Club help minority students improve their test scores.

They offered no answer.

At the all-staff, all-faculty meeting to introduce District 113 to his “social justice” theories, Singleton made some surprising statements. He explained that many experts believe the causes for the underperformance of minority students are poverty, language issues, mobility, and lack of family support. He then made the startling claim that none of those factors is the cause. The causes, he claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.”

He went on to classify audience members into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were “those who are gifted at subverting reform.” In other words, those who dare to suggest that limited English skills likely affect test scores are “gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent dissent by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagree with his theories.

Toward the end of the year, Singleton visited classrooms to evaluate the continued need for his services. He also visited the writing center where I had worked for eight years. After school, he met with the administration which included all department chairs to “debrief.” The next day, one department chair told me and two others confirmed that Singleton had called for me to be fired citing as justification the following quotes I had on my wall:

“Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” (The Supreme Court of the United States, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

Despite incessant repetition of the word ‘diversity’ in academe, the tragic fact is that the academic world is one of the most intolerant places in America when it comes to diversity of ideas” (Thomas Sowell, African American, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution).

“One is an individual, not an instance of blood or appearance. The assault on individual identity was essential to the horror and inhumanity of Jim Crow laws, of apartheid, and of the Nuremberg Race Laws. It is no less inhuman when undertaken by ‘diversity educators’” (Alan Kors, Professor of Intellectual History at University of Pennsylvania).

“‘[D]iversity’ — nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses – [is] the . . . belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation” (George Will, syndicated columnist).

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling” (Thomas Sowell).

Singleton also boasted in the meeting that he had gotten employees in other school districts fired. Two weeks later, I was demoted.

After spending thousands of dollars on Singleton’s doctrinaire and racist theories, Fornero, perhaps unintentionally, acknowledged precisely what District 113 got for their time and money in a 2009 letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

Dear Honorable Duncan,

. . .

As was the case in the spring of 2008, our non-English speaking students were once again asked to demonstrate their academic abilities by taking the ACT and the WorkKey assessments in English. And once again, despite taking the test seriously and despite working for hours longer than other students to complete it, when these students receive their results next fall, they will all fail [emphasis added].

One would think that an admission like that would be the nail in the coffin of divisive, intellectually vacuous, ideologically-driven expenditures. But the public should never underestimate the fervor of true proselytes driven by political motives. They will continue to abuse their access to public money until community members publicly and vigorously oppose them.

Fallacious arguments of seminar defenders

Getting to the gist of the concerns of critics of Tuesday’s seminar is made challenging by the pervasive use  of fallacious arguments by “progressives” to obscure the critics’ arguments. Here’s a quick look at some of the fallacies New Trier “progressives” use:

1.)  Traitorous critic fallacy (an ad hominem fallacy):  Criticizing or dismissing an opponent’s argument by attributing it to some unfavored group rather than responding to the substance of the argument.

The use of this fallacy was on full and unabashed display by New Trier father Paul Traynor when he appeared recently on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight  ( a must watch segment for a lesson in fallacious reasoning) and dismissed the arguments of New Trier parents by suggesting these parents are somehow connected to Breitbart and IFI.  Traynor twice claimed IFI is a “hate group registered with the Southern Poverty Law Center” clearly suggesting that IFI is, in reality, a hate group. In addition, Traynor complained that “IFI—this hate group—has gone after me personally.”  What did IFI do to warrant his fear? I critiqued his public comments that he voluntarily provided to the Chicago Tribune. Instead of responding to the substance of the seminar critics’ arguments, Traynor attacked two organizations that have written about the controversy.

2.)  Abusive fallacy (ad hominem): Verbally abusing one’s opponents rather than responding to their arguments.

For example, seminar supporters have repeatedly called seminar critics “racists.” In addition, on Chicago Tonight, Traynor criticized the suggestion that Colonel Allen West or Sheriff David Clarke could be  invited to represent conservative ideas and criticized Dennis Prager as a member of the “alt right.” (Apparently, Traynor views invited “queer Latinx” speaker Monica Trinidad as a moderate—Trinidad who once “tweeted a picture of mounted police officers with the comment ‘Get them animals off those horses.’”)

3.)  Straw man fallacy:  Refuting an argument never made by one’s opponents.

So, when seminar supporters say things like “Racism exists,” “New Trier kids are sheltered,” “Colson Whitehead and Andrew Aydin [two of the invited speakers—both liberal Democrats] have won national book awards,” “Students may express dissenting views,” “New Trier is a great school,” “The seminar was carefully constructed,” or “Parents were included,” they are not responding to the central argument made by critics who justifiably see the seminar sessions as biased. All of these claims made by seminar supporters are true (well, most of them) but irrelevant to the arguments of seminar critics.

4.)  Appeal to popularity (argumentum ad populum, appeal to common belief, bandwagon fallacy): Expressing the idea that because a belief is popular or widely held it must be true.

Both seminar supporters and superintendent Linda Yonke employed this fallacy saying that most community members support the seminar as currently constituted. Whether or not such a claim is true is irrelevant.

Maybe, just maybe New Trier community members can wade through the flurry of fallacies to get seminar supporters to answer the only relevant question: Do you believe the sessions are relatively balanced between conservative and “progressive” views on race-related topics. If so, can you point to the resources used and speakers invited that represent conservative perspectives.

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Conservatives claim that government schools are in the tank for “progressivism” and that “progressive educators” lie when they claim to value diversity. There is no better evidence for those claims than the upcoming “All-School Seminar Day 2017” on Feb. 28 at New Trier High School (both campuses), which serves the affluent communities of Northfield and Winnetka, Illinois.

A perusal of the list of workshops being offered at this mandatory event reveals a Leftist dream for “education.” No need to travel to the next White Privilege Conference. New Trier parents can just send their kids to school for a smorgasbord of ideologically non-diverse seminars on “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights.”

Esteemed Chicago attorney Joseph Morris describes the seminar as “a rather bold and raw effort at hard-left propaganda with decidedly anti-American, anti-free-market, anti-family, anti-parent, and bigoted biases on display.”

In our quixotic quest for the holy grail of education–ideological diversity–let’s meander about the day’s agenda (click here and here) to learn about some of the workshops and speakers.

Seminars/workshops

• “Whose Civil Rights?: Transpeople of Color Navigating the U.S.”: “Civil rights are social and political freedoms that everyone in our society is supposed to have access to; however, because of socialization, bias, and discrimination, many trans people (particularly trans people of color) do not have access to these freedoms. In this session, we will explore the current cultural climate that enforces a gender binary and, therefore, forecloses civil rights for many trans people. We will examine how trans people are challenging and changing these systems.”

• “21st Century Voter Supression” [sic]: “A group discussion about the methods and regulations used in the US to deny or limit the voting rights of various minority groups…..The main emphasis of the workshop will be how to recognize, identify, and combat modern voter suppression tactics. Attendees should come out with a few concrete plans or ideas to help address the problem moving forward.”

• “Blackenomics 101 (The Movement, The Music, The Solution)”: “Rapper, entrepreneur, and activist, John the Author explores systemic racism in relation to building a black business and artist presence in minority communities.” I wonder what New Trier students will learn from little-known Chicago rapper who penned this little ditty about economics (my apologies to Mr. Author for any translation errors):
  

  CHORUS:
  
  Blackenomics nigga (repeat 8x)
  Black beat black, nigga
  Black beat black, suga
  Black heat black, nigga
  Take a back seat back nigga
  Not graduate from back
  Give back, nigga,
  Tell them get back, nigga
  Blackenomics nigga (repeat 8x)
  Black beat black, nigga
  Black eat black, suga
  Black heat black, nigga
  Take a back seat back nigga
  Not graduate from back
  Give back, nigga,
  Tell them get back, nigga
  

  VERSE 1:
  
  I seek to restore
  That’s why I opened the store
  That’s why I seek to rebuild
  ‘Cause I know they seek to destroy
  So when they look to the hills,
  That’s when I look to the Lord
  And when he tell me to kill
  That’s when I reach for my sword
  Die motherf*cker die
  I’m surprised that you’re still alive
  I heard you sold your soul a long time ago, but not I nigga, not I
  I’m a freedom fighter
  Need a lighter—no need cause I’m streakin’ fire, you can buy it from me
  All the lyin’ eye of tiger (?) I ain’t lyin’, come to my side you can try it for free
  Savor the taste, cause too much can endanger your taste buds
  Hope you niggas know what is and what ain’t love
  Cause if you don’t, then you can f*ck around and make love
  I’m from a city where we had a black mayor but they took his ass
  The public school system wasn’t built to last
  No equal opportunity or (?) to land on
  The only way we stand a motherf****** chance is if we break (?)
  

  CHORUS
  

  VERSE 2:

  Blackenomics, that’s the logic, that’s the target
  That was not a threat at all, that’s a promise
  It’s apparent if you feel it, you will flourish
  If you don’t you will perish, incoherent
  Lost souls—you lost souls when you crossed over,
  Trying to pass like a gallstone
  Raised from the foster home
  Niggas lost hope when the walls broke
  They crucify me, but the cross broke
  Heavy is the head that wear the crown
  I don’t wanna be king, but I’m the only one ready for it now
  Cause all these other niggas selling out
  Individualism is all these mothersf*ckers yelling about
  Divide and conquer, white supremacy the silent monster
  I see you sneaking in the corner trying to have some karma
  We ain’t looking to know your honor
  No your honor we (?) problem
  The resolution is an economic revolution
  All in the name of retribution, you ready? Let’s do it
  They integrated then infiltrated through immigration
  The richest folk in our neighborhood ain’t even our neighbors
  They take the dollar back across town, don’t you dare tell me to calm down
  (?) mister doghouse
  We want it all now, it’s time to push ‘em all out—I’m ready to start now

  If this is what passes for education in one of Illinois’ best public high schools, imagine what kind of education our poorest performing schools offer.

• “R.E.A.L.: Race, Equity, and Leadership – A Unique Course for High School Students”: Students will “Experience a snapshot of a unique high school course that is grounded in the Courageous Conversations Protocol. The “Courageous Conversations” protocol was developed by skillful race-baiter Glenn Singleton who exploits public schools to advance Leftist assumptions about how to think about race. I first encountered Singleton and his Pacific Educational Group when I worked at Deerfield High School, where seven one-day visits to District 113 to teach faculty and staff about their institutional racism and “whiteness” cost almost $100,000.

• “Not a Day Has Passed”: Students will watch a slide show based on an article by Lee Mun Wah. According to his bio, Mun Wah is among other things “an…Asian folkteller, educator, community therapist and master diversity trainer.” I first learned of Lee Mun Wah’s “Stir Fry Seminars” when one of Deerfield High School’s premier “change agents,” Daniel Cohen, became a disciple of Mun Wah. Cohen, now an English teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High school, is listed as Stir Fry Seminar “facilitator-intern”:
  

  As a white man dedicated to anti-racist, anti-sexist work, Daniel works to recognize his own assumptions and biases….Daniel has come to realize that he carries his whiteness, his maleness and his heterosexuality with him everywhere.

  How dare he. Surely Cohen has learned from the Left that he can dump his maleness like a hot potato. And if he can do that, it should be easy-peasy to shed that politically-incorrect whiteness and heterosexuality that mark him indelibly as an oppressor.

• “A People’s History of Chicago”: “In the tradition of Howard Zinn, A People’s History of Chicago is a poetic, progressive history that celebrates this great American city from the perspective of those on the margins whose stories are not often told.” For those who are unfamiliar with Howard Zinn, he was a far Left historical revisionist who wrote The People’s History of the United States, which is used in many high school social studies classes. Eminent economist Thomas Sowell said this about Zinn’s pseudo-history book:
  

  It speaks volumes about our schools and colleges that far-left radical Howard Zinn’s pretentiously titled book, “A People’s History of the United States,” is widely used across the country. It is one indictment, complaint, and distortion after another. Anyone who relies on this twisted version of American history would have no idea why millions of people from around the world are trying, sometimes desperately, to move to this country. The one virtue of Zinn’s book is that it helps you identify unmistakably which teachers are using their classrooms as propaganda centers.

• “Western Bias in Science”: “Newton, Darwin, Curie…Can you think of a nonEuropean [sic] or non-American scientist in history? Come examine the western bias in science education, its sources and its implications, in this interactive workshop.”If the theme of the all-day seminar is race, why would all European and American scientists be excluded? Don’t students learn about African American scientists George Washington Carver and Mae Jemison?Moreover, by the end of high school, how many scientists have students learned about in depth? 12? 16? 20? Here’s a question for those rummaging for racism: How many of the 20 most influential scientific discoveries or theories in over 2,000 years of history were the accomplishments of non-European and non-American scientists? And let’s not forget that America and Europe together cover vast geographic territories and include wildly diverse cultures and ethnicities over this time period. Many important American and European scientists are also excluded from the short list of scientists about whom students learn.

• “Developing Empathy & Acceptance by Reading Picture Books to Children”: “Come to the Northfield Library and read picture books to a group of children (ages 3-5). The picture books will focus on themes of embracing diversity…and social justice. Students will lead activities related to the books with the young children.” One wonders what picture books students will be reading to toddlers and who chose them? What forms of “diversity” will be depicted in these picture books?

Speakers

Andrew Aydin is the keynote speaker at the Northfield campus. Aydin is a policy advisor to liberal congressman John Lewis. Aydin has contributed to the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center and the dystopian feminist comic book Bitch Planet.

Monica Trinidad “will share her organizing work with We Charge Genocide….She will then lead a hands-on workshop that will guide participants through a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement today.” Trinidad “is a queer, latinx artist and organizer born and raised on the southeast side of Chicago.” The word “Latinx” was invented by those who detest “gendered” anything, including language. The goal is to “move beyond gender binaries….Latinx…makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.”

OiYan A. Poon: “Dr. Poon challenges students to critically analyze systems of higher education, student affairs practices, and to understand their power to transform oppressive structures as social justice change agents…. she received….a 2013 National Distinguished Educator award from the Pacific Education Group’s Courageous Conversations Summit.” An award from the Pacific Education Group is confirmation that Poon is a Leftist.

Suggestions for ideological diversity on race

• The Winnetka campus is offering a seminar on “Mass Incarceration: Race and Prison in America.” Perhaps in the interest of ideological diversity, seminar organizers could have students read Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald’s testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary titled “The Myth of Criminal Justice Racism.”

• In the workshop on black economics, students might be better served by reading some essays by black economist and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell.

• New Trier could invite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece Dr. Alveda King to talk about the “black genocide”: the disproportionate number of black babies being aborted relative to the number of blacks in the population.

• Seminar organizers could have students read or listen to and discuss an interview with black author Shelby Steele on “The Future of Race in America.” Steele asserts that fatherless families and the use of “victimization as a rationalization” are the chief causes of the plight of blacks in America.

• Perhaps New Trier could offer students the opportunity to listen to a presentation by author and member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board Jason Riley, who happens to be black, in which he discusses his book Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed.

I can almost see the scornful scowls on the faces of the organizers of New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day at the thought of exposing students to assumptions about race with which they—“progressive” dogmatists—disagree.

What can parents do?

• New Trier parents could file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents including electronic communication that mentions “All-School Seminar Day,” “civil rights,” “race,” “racism,” “systematic racism,” “institutional racism,” “bias,” and “microaggression.” Those are broad terms, but they can limit the time frame that their request covers to, for example, Feb. 1, 2016-Jan. 9, 2017. This would help them know who the propagandists organizers are. Leftist teachers depend on their anonymity, autonomy, and absence of accountability to exploit their positions and taxpayer money to proselytize and propagandize.

• New Trier parents could call their children out of school on All-School Indoctrination Day. They could call them out for “personal reasons,” or tell the school administration and board members exactly why they’re calling them out. No school administration wants to risk the bad PR that would result if they tried to take disciplinary action against students for their absence, and no teacher wants to risk the bad PR and wrath of parents if he or she tried to dock a student’s grade for their failure to attend an indoctrination day.

• Parents could ask for the total cost to the district of holding this event, including speakers’ fees (and flights and per diem if speakers have come from out of state), cost of materials, and cost of any substitute teachers that may be needed.

• Parents could attend the next school board meeting to criticize (winsomely, of course) the absence of ideological diversity on these topics, which violates the most basic pedagogical obligations of a sound education. School administrators and faculty often respond to parents who challenge obvious bias and viewpoint discrimination by saying that students are free to express dissenting views, but that’s a red herring. The central issue is not whether students are free to express dissenting views. The central issue is whether all students should have their views challenged by the voices of experts or just conservative students. Should all students have the opportunity to have their views reinforced through reading and hearing the voices of experts or is that opportunity reserved just for “progressive” students?

• Parents should request that another “All-School Seminar Day” be offered with equal number of opportunities in which dissenting views (i.e., conservative views) on matters related to race (or gender dysphoria) are presented. If the school administration refuses, they should be asked to defend their refusal. Conservatives are always on the defensive. It’s long past time that we use the hypocrisy, intellectual inconsistency, and rhetoric of “progressives” to put them on the defensive.

It should be obvious that it’s not ideological diversity that we find in government schools today. It’s ideological incest committed by Leftists. And the kind of de facto censorship of conservative ideas that is corrupting New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day is what transmogrifies education into indoctrination.

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The young black man in the video below, Frederick Wilson II, expresses views that are arguably far wiser and more helpful in the debate over justice and racial reconciliation than anything Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, or Jesse Jackson has said in recent years.

And Wilson’s views are exponentially more helpful than these inflammatory words from Louis Farrakhan who spoke recently at Morgan State University:

The young are God’s children, and they’re not goin’ down peaceful. You may not want to fight, but you better get ready. Teach your baby how to throw the bottle [Molotov cocktail] if they can [he then imitates a child throwing, while the audience laughs and applauds].

We’re gonna die anyway. Let’s die for something. Elijah Muhammad said…near fifty years ago…there were 20,000,000 of us, he said “If 10,000,000 of us lost our lives, there would be 10,000,000 of us left to go free….”

In this book [Farakkhan holds up a book], there’s a law for retaliation: Like for like. The Bible says, an eye, a tooth, a life. As long as they kill us, and go to Wendy’s, and have a burger, and go to sleep, they’re gonna keep killing us. But when we die and they die [cheering and standing ovation], then soon, we’re gonna sit at a table and talk about it We want some of this earth, or we’ll tear this G##d#mned country apart! As-salaamu alaikum.”

Perhaps this kind of rhetoric contributed to some blacks believing that the way to end racial injustice in Ferguson, Missouri was to steal and destroy the property of fellow blacks.

I hope that those high school social studies teachers who currently use tax dollars to promote their Leftist social and political views about race would show the Wilson video to students to balance out the whole “institutional racism” theme.

A few years ago when I was helping a Deerfield High School (DHS) student with a paper for her American Studies class, she shared that by the end of her first semester in that class, she hated America and hated being white. Great job, teachers. I’m sure that’s just what American taxpayers want their hard-earned money to subsidize.

Political proselytizing in public schools continues unabated. DHS teachers Ken Kramer and Neil Rigler continue to teach American Studies, and this year’s curriculum includes an essay by Leftist homosexual playwright Tony Kushner and five essays (some of which come from controversial history book A People’s History of  the United States) by Leftist American history revisionist Howard Zinn:

“American Things” by Tony Kushner

“A Kind of Revolution” by Howard Zinn

“American Ideology” by Howard Zinn

“Columbus and Western Civilization” by Howard Zinn

“We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God” by Howard Zinn

“Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom” by Howard Zinn

Other authors include Eric Foner, Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine Ali, and Leon Litwack, all liberal.

“Progressives” will argue that these scholars are well-respected scholars and prize-winners, which is true but ignores the bias that shapes their work, determining which facts to include, which to omit, which to emphasize, and how to frame their analyses. It also ignores the academic mission of both Zinn and Foner to use their role as historians to advance their political agenda.

Let’s take a glimpse at the writers whom public school “agents of change” promote.

Former Leftist, now conservative writer David Horowitz writes this about Eric Foner:

In 2002, Columbia University hosted a conference of academic radicals called, “Taking Back The Academy: History of Activism, History As Activism.” The published text of the conference papers was provided with a Foreword by Professor Eric Foner, who is a past president of both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, and a leading academic figure. Far from sharing Professor [Stanley] Fish’s view that a sharp distinction should be drawn between political advocacy and the scholarly disciplines, Professor Foner embraced the proposition that political activism is essential to the academic mission: “The chapters in this excellent volume,” wrote Foner, “derive from a path-breaking conference held at Columbia University in 2002 to explore the links between historical scholarship and political activism….As the chapters that follow demonstrate, scholarship and activism are not mutually exclusive pursuits, but are, at their best, symbiotically related.”

Kramer and Rigler include in their coursepack the essay “And Our Flag Was Still There,”  in which well-known author and liberal Barbara Kingsolver takes aim at patriotism:

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who’ve spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder? Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to demolish our own ideals.

Thomas Sowell (who happens to be black), Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution ), has this to say about Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States of which Kramer and Rigler are so enamored:

It speaks volumes about our schools and colleges that far-left radical Howard Zinn’s pretentiously titled book, “A People’s History of the United States,” is widely used across the country. It is one indictment, complaint, and distortion after another.

Anyone who relies on this twisted version of American history would have no idea why millions of people from around the world are trying, sometimes desperately, to move to this country. The one virtue of Zinn’s book is that it helps you identify unmistakably which teachers are using their classrooms as propaganda centers.

One wonders if all the “progressive” public school “agents of change” around the country tell their students and their parents that Zinn is a controversial historian. One wonders if they require their students to read criticism of Zinn’s revisionist history and discuss Zinn’s open admission that he used his work to advance his Leftist political goals. One wonders if Leftist “educators” require students to spend equal time reading the work of Thomas Sowell, and Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom—you know, in the service of diversity, balance, and “critical thinking.”

It’s not just curricula that are infected with biased Leftist ideas that distort American history and foster division rather than unity among disparate groups. School administrations also promote Leftist assumptions through professional development conferences, workshops, and seminars that taxpayers subsidize. These include controversial racism-profiteer Glenn Singleton’s National Summit for Courageous Conversations, Regional Summits for Courageous Conversations, and “Beyond Diversity” seminars, which suck money from Americans through their public schools.

For the uninitiated, liberal theories regarding oppression almost always address homosexuality. Here’s an excerpt  from one of the sessions offered at last fall’s National Summit for Courageous Conversations in New Orleans:

Phase 2 seminar. Journey back to a time when homosexual men and women were exalted in their native cultures (”Two Spirits”), only to have it stripped away when Eurocentric ways took control.

And we can’t forget one of the most infamous wastes of taxpayer money: the annual White Privilege Conference that seeks to persuade whites that they are racist oppressors by virtue of nothing other than their skin color.

The curricular choices of liberal teachers present a lopsided picture of America that over-emphasizes America’s flaws and de-emphasizes those aspects of America that have made this the greatest nation in history. Biased Leftist resources transform education into indoctrination and exacerbate rather than mitigate racial hostility.  The Leftist assumptions about race, oppression, and justice that emerge from the writings of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, Peggy McIntosh’s invisible knapsack, the White Privilege Conference, and Glenn Singleton’s dizzying array of money-making seminars and summits are corrupting education and disuniting Americans.

Race ballyhooers who line their pockets from the sale of their snake oil that aggravates racial wounds thus ensuring the perpetuation of their schemes claim they seek courageous and honest conversations.  They don’t. The only kind of “conversations” they want are ones that involve them pontificating and others sycophantically echoing.

It would behoove taxpayers to send an email to their local school administrators, asking if any district money has been or will be spent on any of these professional development conferences.

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