(PM.) The American educational system has been intentionally picked apart and deconstructed. Where once the goal of education was to relay cultural knowledge from arts and literature to science and maths, recent decades have seen an intentional shift toward the obliteration of that form of education, and in essence, the erasure of the cultural knowledge that has heretofore been imparted.
Critical race and gender theory are also used as part of the furtherence of these goals, which parents have spoken up against in recent years. The intent of this new form of education is the erasure of the culture, history, arts, letters and sciences that elevated American society to the echelons of global dominance.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the classroom. The course selection and the currciculum being offered in the award-winning Anaheim Union High School District, was uncovered by Parents Defending Education (PDE).
Via a public records request, PDE learned that 16 Ethnic Studies courses have been approved for Anaheim high school students. The terminology of “ethnic studies” is a ruse for a course of study that undermines American culture and seeks to turn students from scholars into activists.
“Anaheim Union High School District has peppered its district in so-called ‘Ethnic Studies’ courses,” said Caroline Moore, Vice President of Parents Defending Education. “Unlike what we’ve seen throughout California, this district purposely inserts race, identity, and racism into classes ranging from Spanish to Dance. Their students would better be served by learning history based in truth and facts, as opposed to dancing out their supposed ‘Eurocentric’ racism or ‘oppressor’ mentality.”
Approved course list
A course called “Cultural Experiences in America” intends to “provide an emancipatory education.” The goal here is to teach students the way that “their identities, including race, ethnicity, culture, and nationality” are “socially constructed.”
In short, that means the goal is to teach students the way that American culture has oppressed them. In this course, American culture is the enemy.
Course descriptions use language that, at first glance, sounds harmless enough. But it’s essential to get these definitions straight. “Emancipatory education” is a phrase coined by Paulo Freire, author of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a core text for those dismantling education.
Freire surmised that education is not about the transfer of knowledge, but is about “questioning the dominant structure of socio-economic and political relations, and supporting people not only to demand a different world, but also to discuss and prepare for alternatives.” In other words, don’t teach students about their nation’s culture or values, but how to overturn and disrupt them.
This is precisely the course of study Anaheim has in mind with courses like “English I: Ethnic Studies,” which is required for graduation. The description of the course states as its goal the promotion of political activism. The course “expands on the understanding of each student’s social responsibility to their community and the world. By encouraging agency and student voice through the use of present social reform, political movements and social justice topics, students will gain an understanding of the world around them.
“Students will explore the experiences of Indigenous/Native American, Black/African American, Chicanx/Latinx and Asian/Asian American and Pacific Islander in all their complexity and diversity,” the course description continues.
“This course seeks to empower students from all backgrounds to pursue justice and equity while practicing student agency and self-determination. Throughout the course students will see themselves as active agents of change by understanding the marginalization and systems of power in society. Students should become more socially and politically aware thus developing respect for all cultures.”
First, the course will teach students how they are oppressed, who to blame for that oppression, and show them how to be activists who protest that oppression and disrupt the culture of the oppressors in order to remake the culture entirely.
When the course description states that students will learn “respect for all cultures,” the one key culture left out is American culture. By the defitions of the Anaheim Union High School, American culture is that of the oppressor.
