The ‘radical indoctrination’ that Trump supposedly banned persists.
The ‘radical indoctrination’ that Trump supposedly banned persists.
I n Trump’s second term, there has been no scarcity of columns declaring a vibe shift, the passing of peak woke, and a conservative cultural ascendency. While I cannot speak to other sectors, I come to warn you that progressivism remains entrenched in American schools.
Republican lawmakers certainly passed plenty of policies demanding that schools “stop it!” In the early 2020s, 44 states introduced and 20 passed legislation to prohibit the instruction of fringe ideologies such as critical race theory in their schools. This policy trend culminated in Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” which banned any “indoctrination in K–12 schools” that was “based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Both federal and state law restrict progressive indoctrination, so it should all be gone now, right? If only that were so. As with a light dusting of snow, it takes just a brush or a bit of sunshine to expose the overgrown lawn and crumbling sidewalk still underneath.
For example, last month, over a thousand educators gathered together for the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference, which was sponsored by the Portland Association of Teachers, the Seattle Education Association, and Rethinking Schools (an educational magazine and a frequent partner with the NEA to promote activist classroom materials).
What do teachers learn at such a conference?
The available sessions betray the most extreme obsessions of activists:
- A movement to oust the Anti-Defamation League from schools for being too Jewish
- Four other presentations in support of Palestine
- Sessions on how to queer history and math
- An exploration of the “Power Rainbow”
- Discussions of how to deal with parents who contest objectionable materials
- A workshop to advance climate justice and decolonize science education
- Example lessons for how to teach second graders about the evils of capitalism
Variations of “Palestine” and “Palestinian” appear 22 times across the agenda. Phonics appears not once. I believe they call that “revealed preference.”
And the proliferation of such fringe theories extends beyond coastal conferences and into schools and mainstream institutions.
Take my local district of Milwaukee, for example. They’ve maintained a “Why Race Matters” initiative that features hundreds of readings for teachers on anti-racist education, microaggressions, whiteness, systemic racism, critical race theory, and, of course, DEI. It even includes resources for educators to use in their own classroom, such as a reading of Anti-Racist Baby for kindergarteners.
As I reported in The Hill last month, progressivism remains recalcitrant in teacher prep programs, too. Harvard offered a course this fall on “Queering Education.” Students attending that course would learn “practices, curricula, programs, and policies” to promote “gender and sexual identity development” for U.S. children and teens. They would also dissect “the ‘hidden curriculum’ of heteronormativity and cisnormativity” in schools and learn “why and how heteronormative schooling detrimentally impacts all students.”
Most everywhere you look in American education, the very “radical indoctrination” that Trump supposedly banned persists, and it’s not even particularly hidden: Major districts push pride curricula; leading professorial associations endorse Hamas by hosting roundtables such as “Intifada isn’t a Metaphor,” and prioritize research focused on identity and equity instead of classroom management and instruction; and major educational publishing companies feature glorified agitprop in place of actual instructional materials.
For a short time, American schools were the focus of conservative policy and the culture war more broadly. Policymakers passed a flurry of reforms, and school board meetings — traditionally sleepy affairs and a beat reserved for local reporters — became flashpoints of heat and controversy, making it to national headlines. But inflation, immigration, and international relations have once again (perhaps rightly) dominated discourse, and K–12 schools have been downgraded to a secondary or even tertiary issue.
Thankfully, there are efforts equal and opposite to leftist activism to improve American schools. Classical institutions continue expanding, red states are seeing a marked improvement in outcomes due to a handful of sensible policies, and alternative institutions are forming within higher ed to combat progressive capture.
But we must be careful lest our declaration of victory resemble Macbeth, who looks upon his enemies and declares that his forces will “beat them backward home,” only three scenes before his downfall. We’d be wise to instead heed the words of Horace Mann, the leading light of the Common School Movement, who observed in 1848 that “the training of the schoolroom” expands “into the institutions and fortunes of the State.”
If the K–12 schoolroom continues to promote Marxist-tinged, anti-Western, and critical and gender theory nonsense, such ideologies will continue their spread. It must be stopped.