CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2021, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CRITICAL ETHNIC STUDIES USING BACK
DOOR INTO PUBLIC SCHOOLS”
Critical
Ethnic Studies couldn’t get in the front door of California’s public schools,
so now adherents of the historical perspective that’s considered by many to be
both anti-white American and anti-Semitic are trying to enter through the rear.
Grappling with the prospect of
developing new ethnic studies programs for middle and high schools, districts
in many parts of California are hiring co-authors and backers of a rejected
first version of the state’s new Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum as well-paid
consultants.
Such
courses are not yet required to receive high school diplomas in this state, but
soon will be if legislators pass a proposed law known as AB 101. That bill lets
local school districts design their own ethnic studies programs and not use the
state’s new, better-vetted curriculum.
With few
consultants available to help, several early adopters of ethnic studies appear
to be influenced by Critical Ethnic Studies (CES) adherents, whose focus is
largely on past persecution of minority groups which together today make up a
majority of California’s populace.
The
strong CES focus on the roles of slavery and white supremacy in American
history and the part colonialism played in world history was largely rejected
in the state’s model curriculum. But many districts appear about to spend millions
of dollars on their own curricula that would once again bring those factors to
the fore, advancing themes rejected at the state level because they were
factually incorrect and likely to spur ethnic discord.
Some
districts are using authors of the faulty first draft of the state curriculum
to create their own programs. These would stay in force under AB 101 if it
passes.
The
school board in Hayward’s unified district in the East Bay suburbs of San
Francisco, for one example, last month voted to spend $40 million on a program
designed by the for-profit Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute
(LESMC), a consulting firm aiming to sell versions of the state’s rejected
first draft, which featured overtly false anti-white, anti-Semitic and
anti-Zionist elements. That group’s website lists several contributors to the
dumped draft as member consultants.
The
resoundingly rejected curriculum taught that virtually all whites historically
backed racism and slavery, despite realities like these: About half the
“Freedom Riders” during the civil rights movement of the 1960s were white and
one-fourth were Jews. Northern whites and Jews established and funded schools
to further education for freed slaves and their children during post-Civil War
Reconstruction, when public education was denied them in the former
Confederacy. Many more historical facts also contradict CES claims, which
falsely hold that virtually all white immigrants to America quickly gave up
their old identities in favor of new “white privilege.”
San
Diego’s district appears set to approve a $77 million plan to emphasize ethnic
studies in all subjects taught from kindergarten to 12th grade. As conceived,
its program would be largely written by an LESMC member who also helped write the
dumped state draft.
And the
Jefferson Elementary School Board in Daly City approved a $40,000 consulting
contract with another LESMC member.
Plus,
LESMC members consult for the state Board of Education and with Stanford
University’s influential Instructional Leadership Corps.
This adds up to a picture of
something like a taxpayer subsidized guerilla war waged on many fronts by CES
advocates whose anti-white, anti-Semitic ideas could not win state approval
even under a liberal Black state schools superintendent.
It’s now
up to local citizens to let their school boards know they won’t put up with
this subversion of the new emphasis on ethnic studies.
“The
Jewish community alone does not have the bandwidth to oppose LESMC in each of
the hundreds of school districts (in California),” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin,
director of the AMCHA Initiative, which tracks anti-Semitism in education.
That
makes the new reality one of needed local activism: if parents and other
citizens don’t act, Critical Ethnic Studies could soon become standard fare for
many California schoolkids, unnecessarily breeding even more divisions than now
plague this state and nation.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
No comments:
Post a Comment