Living in a centrist area won’t necessarily protect your kids from being indoctrinated with woke ideology. Daniel Buck of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty explains in the Wall Street Journal:
Wauwatosa, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, is about as average as it gets. It’s politically split, helping to elect Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2014 and President Joe Biden six years later….what happens in Wauwatosa likely happens in countless other districts…
In 2022 the Wauwatosa school board approved a new sex-education curriculum…it expects sixth-graders to define different types of sexual intercourse. Kindergartners learn about genitalia with the help of cartoon drawings and third-graders are informed that, no matter their body parts, they may feel like another “gender.”…the newly adopted units are based on the National Sex Education Standards, which encourage teaching third-graders about puberty blockers, sixth-graders about abortion and students as young as kindergarten about “gender identity.”
Wauwatosa is one of thousands of districts to have adopted a “restorative justice” policy. This is an alternative to traditional discipline structures that emphasizes dialogue over punishment and focuses on revising school policy rather than changing student behavior….At McKinley Elementary School, disruptive students received treats “in the form of food and beverages” and a chance to play games in the office instead of a standard detention.
To no one’s surprise, Wauwatosa schools have developed a reputation for permissive discipline and frequent fights. The chaos that results from leniency has led to more expulsion notices than is typical.
Advanced education is also at risk in Wauwatosa. The board voted last month to close a high-performing STEM school, which regularly ranks as one of the top elementary schools in the state….A consulting group’s report recommends the district eliminate advanced math tracks for middle-schoolers and early-entry algebra for gifted students….Offering gifted sixth-graders the chance to do accelerated coursework is, the consultants say, “highly problematic.”
Wauwatosa isn’t alone….cities across the country—from San Francisco and Boston to New York and Chicago—are axing their advanced curricular offerings.
If Wauwatosa is a representative district—and all the evidence suggests it is—then no-consequence discipline, de-tracked math, gender theory for elementary schoolers and other such policies have become the norm.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has filed a complaint with a civil-rights agency alleging that the closure of the high-performing STEM school was illegal, because it was motivated by a desire to achieve racial balancing in the district, which the Supreme Court has said is a a racially-discriminatory motive, in decisions such as Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007). But schools have tended to get away with such shenanigans.
Wokeness has destroyed some charter schools that previously were a lifeline for students of color, turning “no-excuses” schools where kids learned a lot into chaotic places where kids get into fights and learn little. Obsessed with “social justice,” progressive “educators turned away from the commitments that drove their success — high expectations, relentless attention to great teaching, and safe and orderly classrooms,” an educator observes. “New conceptions rooted in critical theory — trauma-informed pedagogy, a culture of student fragility, and racial essentialism — overtook the K-12 sector.” Students were told they were oppressed and incapable. “Outcomes nosedived.”
Some schools became obsessed with “antiracist” pedagogy. “Antiracist” pedagogy often teaches kids to hate the free-market economy and to support racial discrimination. “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” claimed Ibram Kendi’s best-selling book, How to Be An Antiracist. That book was praised as a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” by the leading progressive media organ Slate. The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book was that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book.
