Government run Public Schools have come under scrutiny this year due to Marxist concepts, principles and perversion being taught to students. This has led many parents to vocally address school boards.

One result of the COVID lockdowns is that many Americans have had a huge awakening as to what their children were being taught. In 2020, many parents were either locked down due to “non-essential” work closures and many schoolchildren were involved in distance learning. This allowed the at-home parents to see what they wouldn’t have otherwise. Additionally, due to the overreaching of those pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT) concepts and other such divisive concepts during the 2020 BLM protests/riots, many Americans learned about CRT for the first time. Many parents have been shocked and disappointed, as the nation can see during the various contentious school board meetings. Additionally, after the notorious incident of a 14-year-old daughter being raped in a bathroom by a biological boy claiming transgender status in the Louden County, VA school district (and the sexual assault incident itself being covered up), the Progressivism being pushed is under intense scrutiny. Questions are raised of not only the content of K-12 public education, but “who” ultimately controls education. Let me explain.

A 14 year old girl was raped in a Loudon County, Virginia public school bathroom by a boy dressed as a girl who called himself a ‘transgender’.

First, it is beyond reasonable dispute that CRT concepts are being pushed in K-12 schooling. These concepts go well beyond objective history of slavery and Jim Crow in America, which parents do not object to being taught.

Deshawn Ray and Alexandra Gibbons, who have written extensively of their belief that the systems in America are inherently racist, defined CRT in a Brookings Institute article this way:

Simply put, critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures.

Their abbreviated definition is actually part of an attempt to downplay the threat of CRT in K-12 teaching, yet clearly goes beyond the teaching of slavery or Jim Crow. Famed African-American Pastor and CRT expert, Dr. Voddie Baucham defines CRT as having four tenets:

1. Racism as normative (it’s normal, it’s everywhere, and it’s unavoidable).
2. Interest convergence (white people are unable to take righteous action against racism unless it converges with their own individual interests).
3. Anti-objectivity.
4. The social construction of knowledge.

Included within CRT is the divisive theory and idea of so-called “white privilege”. Despite the divisiveness of the concepts, the National Education Association (NEA) has asserted it is “reasonable and appropriate” to continue teaching CRT concepts in K-12 curriculum. Some schools have claimed they don’t teach CRT, yet have been caught teaching the concepts of CRT as opposed to objective history.

There is a parental war against Marxist based Critical Race Theory at school board meetings across America.

At a recent Virginia Governor’s debate, Democratic Candidate Terry McAuliffe admitted this: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”. This was in the context of parental concerns about CRT. This issue of control of education is at the heart of the burgeoning conflict between parental direction of education, and those who believe children’s education is almost exclusively under the power of progressive ideology and state control.

It’s clear we have fallen far from the original American view of education. In 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, the Northwest Ordinance provided the first mention of children’s education in a foundational American document. It included the provision: “Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Throughout much of American history up to late 19th century, schooling was a function primarily performed by parents and/or local communities and by privately run schools. Almost all schools included Bible reading, School prayer and Biblical moral development. During the early 20th century John Dewey, known as the “Father of Modern Education”, helped develop what would become the modern standardized curriculum for children.

Dewey flirted with Socialist ideals of state control of children’s education, and in a 1928 book, “Impressions of Soviet Russia and The Revolutionary World”, Dewey openly admired the Bolshevik (Communist) educational reforms of putting education firmly under state control and to state ends. Regardless, the Supreme Court has always held that the parental right to control the direction of their children’s education is a guarantee of the 14th Amendment (incorporating the Bill of Rights). As recently at 2009, in Espinosa, the Court affirmed parental right to that direction. Throughout most of American history, schools have been expected to help foster American unity and bedrock morality under parental control.

Unfortunately, the “Bolshevik” position of primary state control of education has become the view of many on the Left and this is against the rights and views of many American parents. In campaigning with Terry McAuliffe, Barack Obama followed McAuliffe and others in marginalizing the other side: “We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony trumped up culture wars, this fake outrage”. The progressive left is not accustomed to parents knowing what children are being taught, and so now can’t understand the sincere outrage that parents know.

The Left has been caught red-handed pushing division through progressive ideology, and the parental outrage is not going away. It’s time for all Americans to demand we move back to parental control of our education system, back to solid history and not CRT, and back to respecting parents’ concerns about the future of their children.

Bill Connor, is an Orangeburg, S.C. attorney, Army Infantry Colonel and author of the book “Articles from War.” 

We at The Standard put our necks on the line to report and bring news to you on sometimes “touchy subjects” others would prefer remain ‘behind the curtain’. Support Independent journalism! The Standard does not have billion dollar corporations or political bosses directing what we can and cannot print in our news. We print what people really want to know! And that information is more critical now than ever! You know how important it is to get proper news information—support that information source!