Guidebook gives real-world examples and advice for fighting 'woke' schools
Guidebook gives real-world examples and advice for fighting 'woke' schools
Real-world examples from North Carolina before Critical Race Theory made headlines
On May 12, the Southeastern Legal Foundation published a new guidebook that takes parents will want to peruse.
The guidebook, titled "America’s guide to saving schools," includes real-world scenarios of ideological and political indoctrination that parents have reported they are increasingly seeing in their child's classroom.
“Critical race theory was dreamed up by legal scholars seeking to subvert the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution," SLF General Counsel Kimberly Hermann said in an interview with FOX News. "Those scholars and the K-12 cartels have worked for decades to push critical race theory into every aspect of America’s education system,"
Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) describes itself as a "national, nonprofit legal organization dedicated to defending liberty and Rebuilding the American Republic."
SLF was founded in 1976, with work done to "reclaim civil liberties, protect free speech, combat government overreach, and secure property rights in both the courts of law and public opinion."
"We hope that our guidebook shows parents that the law is their most powerful weapon. The law can be confusing, but whether public schools can treat people differently based on race or compel students to affirm ideas they don’t believe in," Hermann said. "We will not win this constitutional war without fighters … This is also about courtrooms.”
The guidebook includes what rights parents have and what legal recourse may be available to them. Also included are a number of situations that parents and students may find themselves faced with inside the classroom.
One of the situations covered is the “privilege walk.”
More to the point, a privilege walk instructs participants to segregate or order themselves based on their level of privilege or victimhood or "oppressed" from the "oppressors." This is a core component of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Here’s a recent example of a privilege walk taking place in a K-12 school in North Carolina involving Hendersonville Middle School, located in Henderson County.
The “EITC” in the Twitter account stands for “Eye Inside The Classroom.”
The documents tweeted by EITC show students at Hendersonville Middle School were assigned to do an “Opportunity Walk” also known as a privilege walk.
This type of affinity group activity was spawned by Peggy McIntosh's “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and is often adapted and used in CRT training.
To view a closer look at the documents posted by EITC, click here.
Now view two examples of McIntosh's privilege walk activity:
Note they are very similar and example two is almost identical to that of the Hendersonville Middle School "Opportunity Walk."
EITC’s discovery of the privilege walk in an NC middle school was highlighted by WBT Radio host Pete Kaliner.
A Twitter user took issue with Kaliner’s assessment that a "privilege walk" is an example of CRT":
Actually, yes, that is CRT; a privilege walk is a prime example of the core component of CRT being applied.
In the past, objectionable activities and lessons fell under the umbrella of "Social Justice," which was rapidly crowding out actual valid academic subjects like reading and math. These days, a finer point has been put on things with "social justice" being broken down into categories like Critical Race Theory, political indoctrination, Critical Social Justice, and so on.
The Hendersonville example is just one example. There have been hundreds of inappropriate lessons and activities from across North Carolina reported to Lt. Governor Mark Robinson's The Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students (F.A.C.T.S) task force.
Questionable and inappropriate activities, radical ideologies inserted into curriculum and biased political pushes in the classroom are not new nor did the pandemic first reveal Critical Race Theory.
Here are some past examples from North Carolina.
A former Efland teacher resigned and later left the state entirely after he read a homosexual-themed 'fairy tale' to his 8-year-old students back in 2015. Omar Currie did not inform parents he would be reading "King and King" to their children. Currie later claimed he read it to address "bullying" and became upset when the school instituted a policy requiring parents to be notified of future activities.
During the 2016 election year in Orange County Public Schools, a former Cedar Ridge High School English teacher Amanda Harder had been regularly trashing Donald Trump in her classroom and inserted her own political views into her lessons. Students in the class became fed up with Harder's assertions about the future president and decided to record one of her classes. The audio that the students turned over to me included Harder making the claim that "white, Christian males" are the only ones "safe" from Trump.
Back in 2017 and right here in North Carolina, the Rockingham County School board heard allegations from a parent that a Western Rockingham Middle School teacher forced white students to stand up and apologize to black students for their "white privilege."
That same year, a white supremacy pyramid appeared on the wall in the classroom of Franca Gilbert, a French teacher at the Franklin Academy High in Wake County. Students also reported Gilbert often made derogatory remarks about President Trump such as ‘what a horrible person and president’ he is.
In 2019, students at Heritage High School, also located in Wake County, were subjected to a “Diversity Inventory” worksheet that asked highly personal and invasive questions about religion and sexuality. The school yanked it after outraged parents posted images of the sheet online and the district said it was not a "district-provided resource."
Also in Wake County, the school district's Office of Equity Affairs (OEA) has been systematically conducting CRT-themed training for at least the last six years. The OEA training draws from Glenn Singleton's "Courageous Conversations" series.
In addition to Wake County schools training teachers in CRT, which the district claims isn't being used in the classroom, in 2019 the OEA created an "equity in action" document. That document draws from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Social Justice Standards and its "Anti-Bias Equity Framework,” and includes an opening quote from the Marxist Paolo Friere.
Another example goes back to May of 2019 when children as young as five attending the Central Park School for Children charter school were subjected to a Pride and Liberation" event featuring a Drag Queen Story Hour.
Jumping to the first year of the pandemic, Justin Parmenter, a regional representative of the N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE), boasted in a tweet about sending a book called “White Fragility” to outgoing Supt. Mark Johnson.
Parmenter's tweet came a few weeks after NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly tweeted that educators should “pledge” to participate in year-long Black Lives Matter activities in their classrooms. Unsurprisingly, Kelly's second in command, Vice President Bryan Proffit is a self-identified socialist. It's also worth noting that Proffitt's significant other, Holly Jordan, was ahead of the pronoun and microaggressions curve back in 2016.
Not to be forgotten is “Edcamp Equity.” In 2020, I published the findings of a records request for an event organized by the district’s Office of Equity Affairs. Christopher Rufo included my findings in his initial article kicking off a series on CRT. Wake County Schools superintendent Cathy Moore was a keynote speaker.
But none of this is happening in K-12 schools, remember?