While Covid-19 has a shelf life, “Woke-20” shows no sign of abating.
With many schools across the country shuttered due to Covid-19, the woke zealots are in a bit of a snit. They can’t indoctrinate students with their one-sided radical views in the traditional classroom because, well, there is no classroom. Doing it online, you see, can be problematic. Just ask Matthew Kay.
Kay, a high school English teacher in Philadelphia, is frustrated because online learning has hindered his ability to accomplish his “equality/inclusion work.” He explained the problem in a tweet: “If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kids (sic) racism or homophobia or transphobia – how much do we want their classmates’ parents piling on?”
While the ravings of one progressive ideologue can be sloughed off, the woke mob’s infiltration of our institutions cannot be ignored. An anonymous California teacher says her professional training included material based on so-called critical race theory, which argues that “racism is a permanent component of life in the U.S.,” and that “the origins of property rights in the United States are rooted in racial domination.” Not to be “outwoked,” Laurie Rubel, a math education professor at Brooklyn College in New York, insists that cultural neutrality in math is a “myth,” and that asking whether 2 plus 2 equals 4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”
Not surprisingly, the teachers unions are at the forefront of the woke-brigade. On its website, the California Teachers Association laments that white privilege “operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of ‘race’/color supremacy.”
The American Federation of Teachers delegates passed “a raft of bold, progressive resolutions” at their convention in July. Supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming workers, maligning for-profit healthcare, supporting the Green New Deal, claiming that Trump is “openly establishing himself as a despot” et al., ad nauseum, were part of the onslaught.
It’s important to note that while the teachers unions’ progressive agenda does not officially become curriculum, it certainly has an impact on what many teachers teach. On the other hand, individual states do mandate what children learn. And the wokesters have big plans for California where Assemblyman Jose Medina’s AB 331 would add an ethnic studies course to the state’s high school graduation requirement, beginning in 2024.
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal.
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