Parents send their elementary children to school expecting them to learn to read, write, and how to do arithmetic—not be prepared as activists at protests.
Commentary
Instead of effectively equipping educators to teach students to read and do basic math, the Hayward Unified School District in the Bay Area of California
reportedly spent $250,000 on “Woke Kindergarten” teacher training.
So, what is “Woke Kindergarten,” and what does the company producing this teacher training seek to do? According to its
website, “Woke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem and visionary creative portal supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”
They offer workshops, consultations, woke read-alouds, woke word of the day, and content listed as “Teach Palestine.” The website also features “a sensory guide for kids” called “
So You Made It to a Protest!” with content including protest signs reading, “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” “queer power over fear power,” “abolish prisons,” and “black lives over white tears.”
The district threw federal funds received for their underperforming school status on a woke agenda instead of academics. At one school within the district, Glassbrook Elementary, fewer than
12 percent of students are at grade level in English and fewer than 4 percent in math, yet this teacher training took priority.
The
training reportedly included telling teachers how to be “anti-racist” and how to “disrupt whiteness” in their classrooms. Yet just
3.4 percent of the 474 students enrolled at Glassbrook Elementary are white, which is 16 students in total. That translates to, on average, less than one white student per classroom.
The quarter-million-dollar teacher training price tag is enormous. Imagine if those funds were allocated to academics such as phonics instruction training, literacy coaches, or math tutors.
Parents send their elementary children to school expecting them to learn to read, to write, and how to do arithmetic—not be prepared as activists at protests. These children, ranging from age 5 to 12, need a solid academic foundation.
Hayward Unified School District isn’t an outlier. Look no further than the
Parents Defending Education IndoctriNation Map to see these harmful political ideologies taking place in school districts’ policies, practices, teacher training, curricula, and classroom instruction nationwide. And the degree to which the woke agenda is being pushed is growing rapidly.
Unquestionably, district public schools have gone off the rails across the country, kowtowing to the far left and teachers unions’ radical ideologies and political agendas. In the process, they aren’t just driving away students but also losing quality teachers who have had enough of the non-academic nonsense. In some cases, teachers are reprimanded and even let go for voicing concerns.
In one of the latest examples, Glassbrook Elementary third-grade teacher
Tiger Craven-Neeley was told to leave a faculty meeting and then placed on employee leave by the district after he questioned the content of the training. Mr. Craven-Neeley’s apparent crime was asking what it means to disrupt whiteness in a third-grade classroom. The leave reportedly included taking his keys and laptop.
Parents must be empowered with education options so they can leave schools that aren’t meeting their children’s academic needs. District public schools aren’t just failing to produce students with foundational academic learning; they’re also using absurd amounts of taxpayer money to prioritize teaching extreme and inappropriate content to children. It’s education malpractice, and the public school monopoly must be broken down for the sake of children and the future of our country.
Now is the time for all parents to demand education freedom and for state lawmakers across party lines to represent their constituents’ best interests and wishes by getting the job done of enacting universal school choice.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
