The United States education system is witnessing a massive backlash against wokeness.
Parent groups across the nation are organizing to define, expose, and purge critical race theory in their children’s classrooms. Other parents are giving fiery speeches at school board meetings to demand that educators stop teaching left-wing sociological theories to their children.
“CRT is not racial sensitivity, or simply teaching unfavorable American history, or teaching Jim Crow history. CRT is deeper and more dangerous than that,” one African-American mother recently declared to the Florida Board of Education. “I don’t know about you, but telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are black is racist, and saying that white people are automatically above me, my children or any child is racist as well.”
Within the classroom, there is a contingent of educators who are refusing to brainwash their students as well.
Here are four examples.
“Trickle-down indoctrination”
Monica Gill — a Virginia public school teacher — slammed her district’s implicit bias training as “trickle-down indoctrination.”
“The purpose of this training was not just to reveal implicit bias, but also to accuse our community of systemic racism that needed to be disrupted and dismantled to root out this type of white supremacist thinking,” Gill wrote for The Federalist.
Gill unsuccessfully attempted to bring the training to administrators’ attention. She also expressed concern over fellow teachers’ attempts to shame those within the school district who do not adhere to social justice ideology.
“My colleagues call parents who disagree with them ‘racist,’ full of ‘evil rhetoric,’ ‘Beetle douche,’ and ‘people who Harriet Tubman would have shot.’ I bet these same people have ‘Hate does not live here’ signs in their front yards,” she wrote.
“The willingness of teachers with different views to speak up is further suppressed by those in leadership hurling the very powerful false narrative that if we disagree then somehow we do not have the right heart to be teaching children and ought be dismissed.”
“Hostile culture of conformity”
Dana Stangel-Plowe — who taught English at the elite Dwight Englewood School in New Jersey — resigned due to the school’s embrace of victimhood ideology.
“Over the past few years, the school has embraced an ideology that is damaging to our students’ intellectual and emotional growth and destroying any chance at creating a true community among our diverse population,” she wrote in her letter of resignation. “I reject the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school.”
“The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood,” she continued. “They must locate themselves within the oppressor or oppressed group, or some intersectional middle where they must reckon with being part-oppressor and part-victim. This theory of power hierarchies is only one way of seeing the world, and yet it pervades D-E as the singular way of seeing the world.”
“In my classroom, I see up close how this orthodoxy hinders students’ ability to read, write, and think,” she told school administrators, who charge $52,000 per year in tuition. “I teach students who recoil from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the oppressor. I teach students who see inequities in texts that have nothing to do with power.”
“I reject D-E’s essentialist, racialist thinking about myself, my colleagues, and my students,” she defiantly concluded.
“It’s sinning against our God”
Tanner Cross — a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School in Virginia — cited his Christian faith in refusing to teach transgender ideology.
“My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who are suffering from gender dysphoria,” Cross told Loudoun County’s school board. “It’s not my intention to hurt anyone, but there are certain truths that we must face when ready. We condemn school policies [that] would damage children, defile the holy image of God.”
“I love all of my students but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences,” he continued. “I’m a teacher, but I serve God first, and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion, it’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
Cross — who was placed on administrative leave after his comments — successfully fought back against the school system in court.
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on Cross’ behalf. As one senior counsel for the religious liberty nonprofit explained, “public schools have no business compelling teachers to express ideological beliefs that they don’t hold, nor do they have the right to suspend someone simply for respectfully providing their opinion at a public meeting.”
On June 8, Cross was reinstated after a temporary injunction from a local judge.
“We don’t work for the school board”
Rising in defense of Cross, a woman who identified herself as a teacher slammed Loudoun County’s school board.
“Parents, the longer that you wait and you don’t hold your child’s schools accountable gives these guys more time to dictate what’s best for your child’s physical, mental, and emotional health,” she warned in reference to school board officials.
She likewise encouraged fellow teachers to continue fighting: “It may seem that our careers have come to a dead end, but I’m here to remind you that we don’t work for the school board, we work to mold the next generation of well-rounded, American patriots. So don’t give up, because it is up to us.”
For students, her message was to “challenge the staff when you’re presented with a ludicrous statement, and do not allow anybody to tell you that you can’t accomplish anything because of your skin color or to hate yourself because of your skin color.”
“It is up to you to be the next generation of victims or victors,” she told students.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.