Ultra-Woke Indoctrination In Government Schools Is Closer Than Most Realize

As some of you may already be aware, Illinois is currently getting ready to pass radical new measures that will transform government schools into centers of 'woke', i.e., leftist prog, indoctrination. I know many think that's what they are already, and you're right if that's what you think. However don't kid yourself that we've reached the bottom of the slippery slope yet.

Stanley Kurtz has a lengthy article about what so far looks like will become law in Illinois--Ultra-Woke Illinois Mandates Are Top Threat to U.S. Education. Here's how he sets up his detailed analysis:

Step aside, California. Minnesota, hang your head. Illinois is the wokest of all, and what it does will spread.

Yes, woke K-12 curricula grounded in neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory are on the march through America’s schools. We’ve just learned that a California elementary school is forcing third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities and rank themselves by “power and privilege.” ... The egregious 1619 Project has already been adopted by school districts across the country.

Keep your eye on the under-the-radar case of Illinois, however. That is where woke has gone for broke, and America may soon pay the price.

On February 16, The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) of the Illinois General Assembly will decide whether to officially enact a rule already approved by the Illinois State Board of Education. The new rule is called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.” It’s a doozy. Should the rule be ratified on February 16, the entire Illinois teacher corps will be effectively forced into political re-education and compelled to turn their classes into woke indoctrination sessions. We’ll look at details, but the most extraordinary in a raft of outrageous dictates is that teachers must “embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives.” Illinois is literally about to mandate that every one of its licensed teachers adopt progressive political orthodoxy and impart that ideology to students. I’ve seen some pretty extreme stuff in my time, but my jaw is now officially on the floor.

And I’m only just getting started. Yes, the new Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards are filled with commands that utterly politicize the classroom and very likely trample the free-speech and religious-liberty rights of teachers. The larger problem, however, is that Illinois has already laid the groundwork for this assault on the Constitution by enacting a so-called civics law that forces teachers to discuss current political controversies in class. The Illinois civics law also compels teachers to organize adventures in “action civics” (student protests or lobbying expeditions on behalf of causes like gun control or the Green New Deal.) These so-called civics requirements are transparent attempts to import leftist political activism and indoctrination into Illinois schools.

Kurtz isn't exaggerating. These rules are detailed and leave un-woke teachers nowhere to hide. State Rep. Steve Reick is attempting to fight these rules off, and his blog offers a line by line look at what's in store for Illinois--and will likely be imitated across the country. All of this is happening at the local level, but will undoubtedly be supported by the Zhou Baiden regime's Department of "Education". It all appears to be patently in violation of the First Amendment, but ask yourself this--if measures like this are enacted across Blue America, what recourse do normal people have? Court challenges? Expenses aside, how long will it take for court challenges to work their way through the system? Do you think that one SCOTUS reverse will actually force Blue districts to fall in line? I don't. Rule of law is by the boards, and as long as the Zhou regime is safe behind the New Army of the Potomac, there will be no enforcement of SCOTUS decisions. Moreover, with Progs in iron fisted control of education schools that train "teachers," normals who want to be certified will be systematically weeded out.

These indoctrination initiatives have been at the heart of the Prog Cause since the 1960s, and with their hands on the levers of power, they are--as Kurtz says--going for broke. Well meaning people like Trump's lawyer Michael van der Veen, who wants to see Left and Right meet in something he calls "the middle"? They're dreaming. There is no such thing as a middle ground when the Progs only keep pushing to the Left. There can be no compromise without mutual good will and respect. Compromise is inevitably simply one more step to the Left. The revolution is now--at least in Blue America.

Here's Steve Reick. He's quoting government rules and regs, but believe me--this won't put you to sleep. It'll make your hair stand on end. Understand--teachers will be rated on their enthusiastic participation in all this. They will lose their jobs and certification if they fail to conform:

“Culturally Responsive Teaching” – Putting Activism Before Learning

Posted on January 6, 2021 by Steve Reick

Writing in Education Week last February, Bettina Love, professor at the University of Georgia and co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network, declared that “Anti-racist teaching is not a teaching approach or method, it is a way of life.” That thinking has landed here in Illinois.

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Like every state, Illinois requires that programs for developing teachers adhere to a defined pedagogy by which certain standards of competency in the subject matter are to be taught and which assure mastery of the means of imparting that knowledge to students. Our standards are laid out in 23 Ill. Adm. Code 24. Section 24.130 contains the minimum requirements for any program leading to teacher certification, such as mastery of subject matter, varying plans of instruction for diverse students and the like.

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This month, the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (of which I’m a member) will be asked to approve an amendment to Section 24 which layers “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” onto the minimums established in Section 130. “Culturally responsive teaching” (also called culturally relevant teaching), is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning. To give you a flavor of what JCAR is being asked to consider, I’ve excerpted certain sections from the amendment:

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Section 24.50 The Illinois Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards

a)  Self-Awareness and Relationships to Others – The culturally responsive teacher and leader will: 

1)  Understand and value the notion that multiple lived experiences exist, that there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something, and that what is seen as “correct” is most often based on our lived experiences;
10)  Assess how their biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc.). 

b) Systems of Oppression – Culturally responsive teachers and leaders understand that there are systems in our society that create and reinforce inequities, thereby creating oppressive conditions. The culturally responsive teacher and leader will: 

4) Know and understand how current curriculum and approaches to teaching impact students who are not a part of the dominant culture.
5) Be aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.
7) Know and understand how a system of inequity reinforces certain truths as the norm. 

e) Leveraging Student Activism – The culturally responsive teacher and leader will: 

5) Create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy.
6) Research and offer student advocacy and activism content with real world implications. 

g) Content Selections in All Curricula – The culturally responsive teacher and leader will: 

5) Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.
9) Ensure teacher and students co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.

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You get the picture. If adopted, these standards will lard our teaching programs with additional mandates just at the time when Illinois is suffering from a shortage of teachers. At the start of the 2020 school year, there were 2,000 teacher vacancies reported in Illinois schools. With these new requirements, we risk increasing the teacher shortage and losing quality, new teachers. But what we’re really seeing here is not so much an attempt to expand our teacher rolls as it is a means by which those who set education policy are cementing social activism into our schools. I don’t say this solely based upon what the amendment itself says, but also upon an examination of the reading list upon which ISBE relied in creating the standards, among them:

• Pursuing Social and Emotional Development Through a Racial Equity Lens: A Call to Action
• A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching
• White Fragility: What It Looks Like in Schools

The General Assembly has created a number of mandates for schools to teach students about racism, sexism, and other biases including, but not limited to:

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1. Character education so that students are taught respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, trustworthiness, and citizenship intended to raise pupils’ honesty, kindness, justice, discipline, respect for others, and moral courage for the purpose of lessening crime and raising the standard of good character.
2. Holocaust and Genocide Study.
3. Black History, including history of slavery and the contributions of African Americans in Illinois and U.S. history.
4. History of Women, including women’s contributions and the fight for suffrage and equality.
5. U.S. History and the role and contributions of a number of defined ethnic groups made to Illinois and the U.S.
6. History, roles, and contributions of the LGBT community.
7. Civics education so that students are well-informed and can be productive citizens.
8. Violence prevention and conflict resolution.
9. Anti-bias education so students can understand differing groups.
10. Anti-bullying prevention and education.
11. Disability history and awareness.
12. Social and emotional learning.

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This amendment does not establish a “woke” curriculum on its own. What it does is create a vehicle by which curriculum will be curated to conform to the standards, which will ultimately have the same effect. In a recent article in National Review, the author examined the trend of creating new history and civics standards for which this amendment will be the implementing vehicle, using the initiatives that are found in IllinoisCivics.org as an example. The Chicago Public School system has begun to implement The 1619 Project Curriculum as part of its curriculum, even though the assertions in the 1619 Project as credible history have been strongly and effectively rebuffed. This amendment is nothing more than a Trojan Horse which will only accelerate the movement to get an undefined progressive agenda permanently into our schools.

There's no doubt at all that what we're seeing here is the institutionalization of what Progs hope will be final search and destroy mission against what remains of Western Civilization. Our American Founding witnessed an ideological contest between the American and French Revolutions. At the time, it appeared that a more moderate and tempered form of Liberalism had prevailed in America. What we're seeing is a drive for victory by the descendants of the French revolutionaries, reinforced now by Hegelian and Marxist thought, as expressed in modern Prog ideologies. The goal, as always, is power. Power over all creation, beginning with power over normal people, to transform them into woke revolutionaries against the divine order of creation.

As it happens, how we came to this pass is the subject of an article at American Thinker today: The closing of the American mind.

In 1987, Alan Bloom published his insightful book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of American Students. ...

Bloom argued that American students have become impoverished in the soul because they no longer engage with the classics of Western civilization. ...

Radical students of the 1960s did not subscribe to that commitment. Because they were sure that their revolutionary Marxian, Freudian, Nietzschean, and Darwinian views contained all truth, they sought to cancel any other views, especially religious views. They directly assaulted traditional American values of God, family, and nation. They treated with disdain anything related to traditional Christian morality.

During the 34 years since Bloom published his book sounding an alarm about the closing of the American mind, what he feared has come to pass. The students so ill served in the 1980s and beyond have taken their revolution outside of academia. Now they dominate in media, education, government, entertainment, the arts, and sports. Not only have they fully embraced the radical atheistic ideas of Marx, Freud, Darwin, and Nietzsche, but they refuse to permit anyone who embraces traditional religious and liberal ideas to work in those institutions.

Until recently this ousting of normal people from key societal institutions was done more or less informally--although no less effective for that. What we're seeing in Illinois and elsewhere is the legal institutionalization of what is now called 'cancel culture' in education. Do not doubt that the goal is to extend this to all other areas of life.

As I suggested recently in The Christian Intellectual Tradition the only remedy is individual conversion--a new Great Awakening, but this time one that woke to the traditional intellectual principles that arise from seeing Man and his nature as holding a place within a God created order. The decline of this awareness is what led to the victory of the Left to this point. Recovery or defeat and the crushing of truly human existence are the alternatives.