The principles of progressivism have worked themselves into the very policies of public education, making for something like systemic woke-ism.
The principles of progressivism have worked themselves into the very policies of public education, making for something like systemic woke-ism.
W hile I applaud the journalistic efforts of Chris Rufo and the social-media account Libs of TikTok — both of whom have uncovered countless examples of individual teachers and districts pushing a progressive agenda in American classrooms — I nonetheless worry that their reporting undersells the true ubiquity of progressivism in public schools.
Watching the videos or reading the reports that they share, one gets the impression that there are indeed a handful of individual activist teachers but that the problem ends there: isolated lesson plans and teachers. Perhaps Rufo et al. are nutpicking, choosing the craziest examples of a group to slander the reasonable majority. If only it were so.
More troubling than a handful of blue-haired, over-pierced teachers preaching their progressivism to students is the way the principles of progressivism have worked themselves into the very policies of public education, making for something like systemic woke-ism.
The ways in which progressivism manifests itself in schools are endless. Math curricula that focus on identity and activism. Accreditation agencies that effectively enforce progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion onto schools seeking official recognition. Leading educational institutions that have rejected novel reading and essay writing.
Consider Jefferson County Schools in Kentucky. They recently implemented an “equity screener” as another artifact alongside résumés and letters of recommendation for consideration of prospective administrators. Within this equity screener, candidates are docked if they advance “color-blind” ideals or haven’t attended enough of the district’s professional-development sessions — including anti-racist math initiatives and presentations on how to discuss LGBTQ+ issues with preschoolers.
This screener effectively requires that any prospective hires at least utter the necessary progressive shibboleths. So even those who do not adopt progressivism’s first principles thereby assume a stance of permissiveness and acquiescence. There’s no one inside the district standing athwart yelling stop.
While I’ve written before about the ideological capture of teacher-prep programs, the wokeness of these programs is imposed from above. In Illinois, the standards for teacher preparation require prospective teachers to assess their “biases” and analyze how to mitigate their own “racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, [and] Eurocentrism.” They must critically consider the “wide spectrum fluidity of identities” and the need for “social advocacy and social action.” The standards even require that teachers “create opportunities for student advocacy.”
Progressive first principles are also influencing behavior policies. While the county bickers back and forth about defunding the police and bail-reform, public schools have quietly followed a similar path. Suspension rates are plummeting in many cities across the country despite worsening behavior in the schools of those same cities.
The reports of student behavior in schools are chilling. Fights are up. Office referrals are rising across the country. Students are vandalizing school buildings and harming each other. While society sees crime rates spike because of decreases in policing, schools are seeing similar spikes in their own buildings.
In place of traditional punitive discipline to respond to this worsening trend, schools are instead adopting restorative practices, a collection of discipline alternatives that amount to simply going light on misbehavior. Unsurprisingly, schools that adopt these approaches see upticks in classroom disruptions and bullying with concurrent drops in math and reading scores. “Defund the police” has come for K–12 schools.
Education isn’t as bad as Rufo and others portray it. It’s worse. A few renegade teachers influence only the few children in their class and are easy to sanction. When their ideas become policy, however, the fight to stymie progressivism in schools becomes a far more daunting task, necessitating the repeal of far more policies affecting far more students.