Things Are Much, MUCH Worse Than You Fear in Education

Earlier today, I wrote about a school in Washington State that held a candlelight vigil for, of all people, Fidel Castro. They were celebrating him as a “martyr” of the Social Justice/decolonization movement–an interesting idea given that he was a murderous tyrant who died at the ripe old age of 90 of natural causes.

You and I may think, “That doesn’t make sense,” missing the point that it doesn’t HAVE to make sense in the topsy-turvy world of today’s communist public school system. As has been pointed out many times in the past, getting people to insist that utterly insane things are true is an actual brainwashing technique–and that is a vital task of public schools today.

The Center of the American Experiment, an excellent think tank based here in Minnesota, sent me an email this morning outlining the (relatively) new requirements for getting a teaching certificate in Minnesota. The new standards, promulgated by our Leftist governor, Tim Walz, essentially require all teachers to become communist/DEI mouthpieces.

I would call this shocking, but obviously, it is not anymore. It is standard operating procedure as the long march through the institutions is reaching its apotheosis.

PELSB states that the Standards of Effective Practice “are the essential knowledge and skills a teacher needs in order to be effective from ‘Day 1’ in the classroom.” A new standard called Racial Consciousness and Reflection reflects “the foundational knowledge and skills all teachers must embody in order to effectively teach all of Minnesota’s students,” according to PELSB, and is necessary because “a teacher must have a foundational understanding of how race and racism are embedded in our institutions and everyday life.”

Examples of what educators will be required to demonstrate in their licensure coursework include:

• Standard 2, D. “The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities” including gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation are “affirmed and incorporated into a learning environment.”
• Standard 4, H. “The teacher demonstrates the ability to create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”
• Standard 6, C. “The teacher understands the historical foundations of education in Minnesota, including laws, policies, and practices, that have and continue to create inequitable opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for learners…”
• Standard 6, F. “The teacher assesses how their biases, perceptions, and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems and utilizes tools to mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.”
• Standard 8, C. “The teacher understands how ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity.”
• Standard 8, D. “The teacher understands that knowledge creation, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages.”

Not only do these new changes politicize teacher training requirements, they include many words with varied definitions — such as “power,” “privilege,” “oppressive systems,” “anti-racist,” “implicit bias,” “educational equity” — without sufficient corresponding definitions.

It’s your standard Marxist/DEI bulls**t, and it is required before a teacher can walk into a classroom.

Brainwashing is now the primary purpose of public schools, with reading and writing utterly irrelevant, and math is positively racist and has to be redefined entirely.

Climate change, though, is important enough to incorporate into every corner of the curriculum because every teacher is a climate scientist. The NEA is thrilled that climate propaganda is now pushed in every subject in New Jersey and other states.

Yep. “Anti-racist” scripture has been weaved into every subject of curriculum in California. That’s the case in many states, but it’s a top-down initiative there. In NJ, all textbooks now must include Agenda 2030 Climate Quixote bullshit.

Yeah, this battle has barely begun. 🤬 https://t.co/TGFU0Gm5dS pic.twitter.com/ofZCSPVvJD

— Theo Jordan (@Theo_TJ_Jordan) February 1, 2024

Ideological reasons for doing this sort of thing are obviously paramount, but an ancillary reason is that many incoming teachers don’t actually know anything except the ideological BS they have been taught. It is much easier to spew nonsense with no relevance to academic subjects than to teach math, so why not go all-in on Marxist propaganda.

It’s a two-fer!

This brings up the obvious question: To borrow a title from Lenin’s work: What is to be done?

One mildly unrealistic suggestion is to, at least temporarily, require that all new teachers come from the ranks of people seeking a second career and be at least 40-45 years old. Having an accelerated licensure might require three months or so of “how to teach” and send them out into the education world.

This wouldn’t be perfect, but you would likely weed out most of the communists, and chances are good that basic math, reading, and writing skills would be much higher than in our younger teachers.

Alternatively, we could ban unions and make every school board member read the library and textbooks.

Ah, we can dream.