A left-wing nonprofit is teaching young American children to view life through the lens of racialized politics and in the process, critics say, is breeding a new generation of social justice activists using taxpayer dollars.
Critics have long said that leftist indoctrination of kids takes place in public school districts across the country as children are taught that white people in the U.S. oppress nonwhites, men oppress women, Christians oppress non-Christians, heterosexuals oppress gays, and the wealthy oppress the poor.
They say public school teachers across the United States are largely driven by ideology, not a desire to educate, and they teach students that the United States, a nation flawed in its conception by the original sin of slavery, has never truly experienced reforms, as if the Civil War and the Civil Rights Era never happened.
Children are taught, critics say, that corporations and the rich oppress the citizenry daily as the United States pushes around less powerful countries, especially Muslim-majority countries, and that the United States is so fundamentally corrupt and evil it can only be fixed by radical changes. Educators in Seattle recently declared that math was “racist.”
Encouraged by radical groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, students are being urged to walk out of class to protest pro-Christian fast-food chain Chick-fil-A selling its products near schools.
A similar group is Pollyanna Inc., a New York nonprofit that, in its own words, “advances systemic change by developing stronger communities,” by offering educational curricula to teachers across the nation free of charge.
Racism, according to the group, is “a primary institution” of the United States, and must be combatted.
“Pollyanna works with academic and other institutions to achieve their diversity, equity and inclusion goals. Through its unique conference models, discussion platforms, and racial literacy curricula, Pollyanna increases cultural competence,” according to its website.
Pollyanna’s “Racial Literacy Curriculum” pushes students to become activists, Marina Medvin wrote in Townhall.
Its educational materials, “Stories of Activism – How One Voice Can Change a Community,” teaches young students “how we can be agents of communal, social, political, and environmental change.”
In a course summary, Pollyanna urges fourth-grade teachers to provide their charges with “the ability to critique and dispel Eurocentric perspectives that favor a myopic appearance of race.”
Eighth-grade teachers are taught to “set commitments for rectifying current social ills, such as learning and planning how to carry out anti-racist activism and/or social advocacy in their communities and/or to improve their everyday lives.”
Pollyanna is gaining acceptance among educators.
The group boasts that it hosted 35 people from 15 schools from six states on June 1 in New York as part of its “K-8 Racial Literacy Curriculum” workshop, and many more workshops are scheduled in coming months.
Pollyanna announced that four new schools became “host schools” and that the group’s first Canadian school, St. Clement’s in Toronto, plans to host a conference later in the school year.
Efforts by The Epoch Times to reach Pollyanna for comment were unsuccessful.
Pollyanna is just one of many left-wing groups working to carry out what critics describe as far-left, anti-American indoctrination.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, provides free lesson plans to teachers as part of its “Teaching Tolerance” program. The SPLC pushes the idea that there is something called “the Trump effect” that grabbed hold of society after Donald Trump became president and is responsible for political violence and other social ills.
As The Epoch Times reported in July, concerned parents belonging to a group called Fair Education Santa Barbara are suing the Santa Barbara Unified School District in California state court over taxpayer-funded “implicit bias” instruction.
The parents claim Just Communities Central Coast, which is under contract with the school district, falsely portrays the United States as a cruel, oppressive, and racist country. In their legal complaint, they describe the group as an “anti-Caucasian, anti-Christian organization” that alongside the school district engages in “discriminatory actions and teaching” that “unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, and religion.”
In cities like Edina, Minnesota, critics say the left has transformed K-12 schools into indoctrination factories with the overarching purpose of training students to be reflexively racist and anti-American.
Elementary school students there read an A-B-C book titled “A is for Activist.” Among the bullet points are:
“A is for Activist. Are you an Activist?”
“C is for ... Creative Counter to Corporate vultures.”
“F is for Feminist.”
“T is for Trans.”
“X is for Malcolm as in Malcolm X.”
In Tennessee and elsewhere, left-wing groups have been promoting Islam in public schools.
The terrorist-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations has been demanding that public school students in overwhelmingly Christian areas be taught that the Islamic prophet Muhammad is the one and only true messenger of God.
