Late last month, Townhall reported how a new survey explained why more families have chosen to homeschool their children. According to the poll, homeschooling has become more “racially and ideologically diverse” since COVID-19 pandemic onset.
In the findings, 74 percent of respondents said that “concern about school environment” is a reason why their family chose to home-school. Thirty-one percent of respondents said that COVID-19 policies were “too strict at local public schools.” Forty-six percent said that “local public schools” are “too influenced by liberal viewpoints.”
This week, parental rights organization Parents Defending Education shared documents with Townhall showing that a school district in California paid tens of thousands of dollars to create “Ethnic Studies curriculum focused on systems of oppression, colonialism, and student activism” and train it to teachers.
According to PDE, the Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County, California proposed “Ethnic Studies” curriculum, which would “center the stories, experiences, and knowledge of people of color, challenge and dismantle racism and intersectional systems of oppression, and cultivate communities that are committed to wellness, liberation, and solidarity.”
In addition, the curriculum would focus on “systems of oppression,” broken down into specific lessons on “power and privilege” and “colonialism.” One specific example, PDE noted, is “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.”
Reportedly, three schools in the district have begun teaching pilot programs of the course, which would be offered for ninth-grade students (via PDE):
JUHSD hired Community Responsive Education Consulting Group to help develop the Ethnic Studies curriculum and train teachers. Invoices obtained by PDE indicate that JUHSD has paid Community Responsive Education Consulting Group at least $60,000 for their services.
The curriculum also includes a unit on “Social Movements and Solidarity” with links to lesson plans from the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project focused on how the Black Panther Party shaped #BlackLivesMatter.
“It should come as no surprise that American students are rallying in support of terrorists when our public schools teach ethnic studies lessons like this one from Jefferson Union High School,” Alex Nester, investigative fellow at Parents Defending Education, told Townhall.
“When children are taught to lump entire groups of people into categories such as ‘oppressors’ or ‘oppressed,’ and ‘Zionist settler colonialism’ is oppression, it’s really no wonder how a generation of American students have chosen to side with Hamas over the descendants of Holocaust survivors,” she added. “Just 13 percent of American students have a functional grasp on history. Schools like Jefferson Union that spend time teaching divisive race ideology instead of actual history are a huge part of the problem.”
