The End of the American Mind

A parent whose two children attend New York public schools sees clearly what those schools are doing to his children. They are more involved in indoctrinating children in wokeness than in teaching anything. It did not begin with the Black Lives Matter insurrection. It has been going on for years now.

If you hate America, if you believe that white people are solely responsible for the failures of people of color-- Asians excepted, of course-- then you cannot do better than to teach wokeness. If you expect these children to grow up to become computer engineers, scientists of mathematicians, you are seriously deluded. 

The point is simple. The products of America’s appallingly bad educational system are not going to compete in the world markets, in fields like technology and science. If you imagine that we can simply wave a magic wand and bring the high tech jobs home, look at what the schools are doing to our children.

The father in question told his story anonymously to The New York Post. It begins in 2017:

In 2017, our 5-year-old son came home from kindergarten and said he was studying a famous teenage transgender girl in school. I’d never heard of her, but he said her name was Jazz Jennings (formerly a boy who transitioned a few years ago and has so far had three gender reassignment surgeries.)

Beginning in kindergarten children are being trained to become transgender. It’s not just a social contagion, though it is certainly that, but transgenderism is being actively promoted by schoolteachers-- to the most vulnerable children.

And naturally, the children are taught that sex differences do not matter. 

Not long after that, our son came home and told me the teacher said it was wrong to give little girls pink toys and little boys blue toys. That same year, teachers urged my son and his classmates to march around the school chanting, “Pink and blue is for everyone!” in a gay-rights walk.

And then there is critical race theory. Not only does it teach children to hate their country, it teaches white children to hate themselves for suffering from too much privilege. At the least, it does not teach them how to think. It makes them stupid. Again, this insanity predated the BLM riots this past spring and summer.

So, the school wanted to soften up parents, so it told them to read books about critical race theory. Presumably, the indoctrination would then extend beyond the classroom into the home:

In 2018, my son and daughter were in the same elementary school, and their principal started involving parents as if they were part of the problem, too. We were told to read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and Ibram X. Kendi’s book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” I read both books, and had issues with them both. Alexander argues that the war on drugs is racist. This is crazy talk because drugs were and still are devastating the black community. Kendi says that unless you’re actively pushing for “equity” all the time, you’re racist. So, for example, the city wants to abolish testing for its more competitive schools because there aren’t enough black kids passing the test. But this lowers the bar for everyone. In my opinion, this so-called anti-racism is hurting black people.

For 7th graders, literature is out, critical race theory is in:

This year, my daughter’s 7th-grade reading material is about how blacks are being persecuted, like Kendi’s book “Stamped” and anti-police books, such as “Children of Blood and Bone” and “Ghost Boys.” Some of what she’s reading is fair. Still, I’d love it if she could read a few of my favorite authors from high school, like Nathaniel Hawthorne or F. Scott Fitzgerald. But that would be considered racist and supremacist according to school thinking.

Are these schools preparing children to do the jobs of tomorrow? Of course not. They are teaching children how to be activists:

My daughter’s 7th-grade humanities curriculum focuses on encouraging students to become activists. The way they do that is by teaching kids America has a history of discrimination and racism, and that it is currently racist and discriminatory. Then they show examples of people who have protested against the system.

For example, my daughter learned that it was discriminatory for the Washington Redskins to name their sports team after Native Americans, and that Native Americans protested the name. But it was never pointed out that the team probably named itself after something they admired back in the day. A team doesn’t name itself after something it feels is inferior.

Obviously, this curriculum is making children hyperconscious of race. And it making members of different races resent each other:

They believe they are doing a good thing in promoting an anti-racist curriculum. But, actually, they’re creating resentment between the races by telling black people that white people are inherently bad and hate them. This leads to the very racism they say they’re trying to prevent.

This father is fighting a rear guard action against those who hate America. He wants his children to be proud of their country:

I think kids should be taught to be proud of their country. It’s a place many people still want to come to, after all. They should be taught about the good parts of capitalism as well as free speech. Instead, kids are taught to look down on their country, and they’re afraid to speak up.

It’s strange as a parent to feel you have so little agency. The kids know it, too. They know they can’t speak up or they risk angering their teachers and maybe losing their friends.

I wish I had a plan for how parents could fight back. But I don’t. This madness is infecting all schools. There’s nowhere to run. To be frank, it’s frightening. I’m voicing my concerns here because it’s the only outlet I have.

And now that these practices are enshrined in federal government policy, thanks to the Biden administration, what hope is there for America?