Yes, It is Real: Woke Kindergarten Destroying Bay Area School

Woke Kindergarten. It sounds like a bad joke.

But unfortunately, it is very real, and a Bay Area school is dropping $250,000 to this for-profit company to provide indoctrination to students who are already doing badly in school.

A Bay Area school struggling to boost low test scores and student attendance is paying $250,000 for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to disrupt racism and remove those barriers to learning. Its test scores fell even further. https://t.co/TumgU7EaR3

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) February 3, 2024

A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is spending $250,000 in federal money for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning.

The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement.

But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well-spent given the needs of the students, who are predominantly low-income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino.

It tells you something–nothing good, of course–that a school that is doing a horrendous job of giving kids a basic education is spending money to train teachers to turn children into woke warriors. Given that reasoning skills are counterproductive when you want children mindlessly mouthing platitudes about indigenous rights, the elimination of work and rent, and the need to eliminate Israel, it makes perfect sense.

This is the founder of the program called “Woke Kindergarten” who a California school recently paid $250k to. Their website says they have a “commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.” https://t.co/j1YME5i3IF

— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) February 4, 2024

You have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the Woke Kindergarten founders. There is a demand for their services, and they have found a way to fill the need profitably. It’s not like schools these days have any interest in doing the hard stuff like teaching math and English:

English and math scores hit new lows last spring, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and just under 12% at grade level in English — a decline of about 4 percentage points in each category.

It’s easy enough to get outraged at every example of woke idiocy in our education system, but that would be missing the point. Getting outraged at the examples hides the fact that in 21st-century America, this is the only reason why public schools exist at all, at least in the eyes of school boards, teachers, and unions.

That, and funneling money to various groups, including the Democrat Party. It is all a big money laundering scheme. This may not be the case in some higher-income areas, but the system as a whole is all about woke indoctrination and skimming off the fat of the land.

The decision to bring in Woke Kindergarten, rather than a more traditional literacy or math improvement program, aligns with the belief by some parents and educators that the current education system isn’t working for many disadvantaged children.

The solution, these advocates say, is for educators to confront legacies of racism and bias in schools, and to talk about historic white supremacy, so that students feel safe and supported. As such anti-racism programs have spread, several more conservative state legislatures have moved to restrict or ban them.

The argument that focusing on race, social justice, the war in the Middle East, or the return of land to indigenous people will somehow prepare kids for life beyond school is, of course, utterly absurd. As far as I know, there is no known economic system ever devised–from the hunter/gatherer to communism–where everybody can get by simply by mouthing the appropriate nostrums.

Then again, the Woke Kindergarten people have found a way for a few to do so–themselves. But even they rely on others to grow food, build housing, keep infrastructure up to snuff and stock the store shelves.

Woke Kindergarten, aimed at elementary-age students, is founded on the relatively new concept of abolitionist education, which advocates for abolition, or “a kind of starting over,” said Zeus Leonardo, UC Berkeley education professor. The idea is that certain things can’t be reformed, tweaked or shifted, because they are inherently problematic or oppressive. It’s not about indoctrinating or imposing politics, “but making politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo said.

There is a Babylon Bee quality to this whole enterprise. Even the UC Berkeley education professor sounds like a joke: Zeus, the education god!

Unfortunately, it is no joke. We live in a world where the Elite has given up on educating poorer children and decided that they are only useful as zombie activists.

As I wrote last week, things are much, much worse in education than you can possibly imagine. Schools are holding candlelight vigils for Fidel Castro, states are putting DEI requirements into teaching curricula, and student performance is dropping through the floor.

Instead of teaching reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, schools are spending more money to produce ever worse results.

The superintendent said Woke Kindergarten wasn’t hired to improve literacy and math scores, but that “helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement.” He added, “I get that it’s more money than we would have liked to have spent.”

Woke Kindergarten was founded by former teacher Akiea “Ki” Gross, who identifies as they/them and describes themselves as “an abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten.”

They/them. Of course.