Right-wing indoctrination in US education
By Clare Bailey
‘If our kids don’t grow up understanding America is an exceptional nation, we’re done.’ ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, November 21st 2022
The American public education system is under attack on a number of fronts. In many states, classrooms and school libraries have been turned into battlegrounds where campaigns to establish ‘patriotic education’ have been rapidly gaining ground.
SCHOOL BOARD TAKEOVERS
Steve Bannon, tireless instigator and coordinator of ideological conflict on behalf of the more far-sighted and ambitious elements of the American right, said in a podcast in May 2021: ‘The path to save the nation is very simple – it’s going to go through the school boards.’
The American public school system, less centralised than in the UK and France for example, gives individual counties (within individual states) powers to examine and set the curriculum, to access records, to review and select books. The school boards – elected by local vote – give parents a decisive voice in many of these cases. Bannon is not the only actor to have targeted them for particular attention. Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been courting the evangelical right assiduously for many years, has had them in his sights for a while. In May 2021, speaking to the Family Research Council, a religious organisation which has been designated a hate group by anti-racist campaigners, Pompeo urged listeners to ‘First, speak your faith… Second, live it. Run for school board.’
CENSORING BOOKS
Campaigns to take over school boards are well-orchestrated, often run by groups like No Left Turn in Education, which organises parents to fight for the removal of lessons on systemic racism from the curriculum. At least 10 states have passed laws giving parents more power over which books appear in school libraries. In one district in Texas school librarians have ordered 6000 fewer books in 2022 than in 2021 because under a new ruling parents must be given 30 days to review titles before the school board votes to approve them. In Florida many school librarians have had to stop ordering books altogether while they wait to go through a retraining programme and library shelves have been covered pending state governor DeSantis’s approval – via ‘media specialists’ – of individual titles. One Florida pastor has described this as welcome scrutiny conducive to ‘pristine’ school libraries. A maths teacher who posted a video of empty library shelves has been fired.
In the face of increasingly confrontational school board meetings, some school principals are playing safe. Librarians report having to submit book orders to their principals for approval and finding them returned with many titles crossed out. Hostile boards also inundate districts with time-consuming records requests and bring cases alleging discrimination against white students. In Florida, two years ago, DeSantis said he would get the ‘political apparatus involved so we can make sure there’s not a single board member who supports critical race theory’. Critical race theory is an academic term used in law schools, highjacked by the far right and used to attack any curriculum that addresses the history of racism in the US. The Nevada Family Alliance has called for placing body cameras on teachers to ensure they are not teaching critical race theory.
Over the past two years, thousands of books have been targeted. According to PEN America, in the period July 2021 to June 2022, 2,532 individual books were banned by school districts and it also records that the attacks are coordinated and ‘narrowly focused on LGBTQ issues and the origins of racial tension’. According to journalist Benjamin Wallace Wells, students are being cut off from anything that addresses historical responsibilities ‘as if, with each generation, America were created blameless and new.’
PATRIOTIC MYTHS
‘We have to protect our kids from some very pernicious ideologies that are trying to be forced on them all across the country.’ Ron DeSantis
In June 2021 Florida’s Board of Education passed a rule banning the teaching of systemic racism and in April 2022 DeSantis signed off the Individual Freedom Act (also known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act), which states that students must not feel ‘guilt, anguish or other signs of psychological distress while learning American history.’ This law is widely considered to be impossible to implement – what it’s designed to do in reality is make teachers, especially teachers of history and civics, police themselves and classroom discussion for fear of breaking a deliberately vague law.
It’s worth noting that Native American history is nowhere mentioned in these laws and confected conflicts: ‘It doesn’t take a law to erase Native history from most classrooms – it already isn’t there.’ (Maggie Blackhawk, Professor of Constitutional and Federal Indian Law at NYU)
Universities and colleges are also under fire. HB999, due to pass into Florida law on July 1st 2023, is less vague. (1) It radically revises existing education law, removing all reference to citizen involvement and public service, and completely removes faculty members from employment processes. Colleges would not be able to run courses that ‘espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion’. Seizing the right to determine what history is, it establishes the Florida Institute for Governance and Civics that will ‘develop academically rigorous scholarship on the origins of the American system of government, its foundational documents, its subsequent political traditions and evolutions…’. It states that core courses may not ‘include a curriculum that… defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.’
The American Historical Association of academics and teachers has expressed its ‘horror’ that the legislation would give politically appointed boards the power to dictate how America’s history is taught at the state universities, while the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors have issued a joint statement warning that this bill ‘would make Florida’s colleges and universities into an arm of the DeSantis political operation.’ Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, was singled out by Pompeo in an interview in November 2022 in this way: ‘I get asked “Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?” The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask “Who’s most likely to take this republic down?” It would be the teachers’ unions and the filth that they’re teaching our kids…’
REACTIONARIES IN BRITAIN
Meanwhile in the UK, Gillian Keegan (Education Secretary) and Kemi Badenoch (Business Secretary), both committed protectors of children from pernicious ideologies, announced in a press release on March 31st that a review of relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) will be undertaken by ‘an expert panel in response to concerning reports of inappropriate content being taught.’ (2) The ‘concerning reports’ are not quoted, ascribed or properly cited. The aim will be to put safeguards in place to ‘stop pupils from being taught contested and potentially damaging concepts.’ A pristine curriculum. In the same statement, they further announce that Oak National Academy will develop new curriculum materials and ‘compliant resources.’ Oak, set up during the pandemic to provide teachers with online lessons, is now designated ‘an independent public body’ whose only shareholder is the Secretary of State for Education. This stalking horse will soon be siphoning off public funds and developing materials not just for RSHE but across the whole curriculum. It has a big list of ‘partners and stakeholders’ all lining up for a cut of the £42 million it has so far secured from government. The Business Case it put to government finishes up with this strikingly candid description of intent to deceive teachers, who would feel wary of an openly government-led project: ‘…the success of Oak [in securing teacher interest during the pandemic] has created a unique opportunity to create a system leader that could secure this vital buy-in from teachers … and avoid the barriers of trust and credibility with teachers associated with a DfE-led intervention’. The names of the key players in the Oak Business Case have been redacted. (3)
(1) Florida’s HB999 https://m.flsenate.gov/session/bill/2023/999/billtext/filed/pdf
(2) Keegan/Badenoch press release
(3) Oak Business Case https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1114759/Oak_FBC.pdf
Florida school library
