As if you needed another reason to support school choice legislation, a New York City elementary school principal just provided one more. A Project Veritas undercover operation showed that this individual, and likely many others across the country, are using every method possible to protect their ability to indoctrinate children into far-leftist ideology.
We have already seen that school districts are infusing their curricula with problematic teachings about race, sexuality, and gender identity without parents’ knowledge. They are even helping children supposedly transition to the opposite sex while keeping it a secret from parents.
But in this case, school administrators are weeding out teachers who might not be on board with the indoctrination. In its latest video, an undercover journalist working with Project Veritas filmed Todd Soper, an assistant principal for grades K-4 at Neighborhood Charter Schools in Harlem, admitting to deliberately discriminating against conservative teachers applying for positions at the school.
“What would you do though, as a principal, if you knew there was a conservative applying? Would you hire such a person?” the journalist asked the administrator in the video.
“No,” Soper responded. “We have very specific questions, and, like, ultimately our ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ question, like our DEI question is […] if people don’t answer that question right, they are just an automatic not hire.”
Soper then explained how responses to certain questions are designed to help them screen out teachers that could possibly have right-of-center opinions. If a candidate indicates they believe “everyone is equal,” the assistant principal posits that “those things that are well-intentioned statements, but they’re missing the depth of understanding of how the intersections of our identity live out in the world. So that person wouldn’t get hired.”
The assistant principal also brought up an educator who did not want to teach about Black Lives Matter. She later quit, but Soper said, “she would’ve probably been fired eventually just based off of mindset.”
The conversation turned to how the school is influencing small children to buy into far-leftist ideology on gender and other issues. “We have always and will continue to embrace diversity on all levels. So, the same way we embrace identities that are based off of ethnicity, skin tone, and gender, we also embrace orientation,” Soper elaborated.
“Like for kindergarten, for Pride month, we got — every kid had a mirror and we talked about — a read-aloud about an animal, or about a boy that said he wanted to be a mermaid. It’s a way to start, like, ‘You should be whoever you feel like you should be.’ That was kind of the message of [the] read-aloud.”
Soper also detailed how the indoctrination proceeds when children start to get older. He said:
“It’s delicate, right? So, in kindergarten and first grade, they [students] are five and six [years old] — but I think we start with the umbrella theme of, ‘Embrace who you are. You have to love who you are, and each part of you is beautiful, whatever you feel.’ As kids get older and the idea of gender becomes more salient, which happens more towards fourth grade… the conversations deepen as the kids get older.”
The video is part of Project Veritas’ series: “The Secret Curriculum.”
Admittedly, this is one example involving one individual. But if you think this is not happening in other schools across the nation, I’ve got some prime oceanfront property in Nebraska that you can buy for cheap.
Of course these schools are weeding out teachers who are not on board with this agenda. Indeed, some educators have faced discipline for failing to fall into line. In May, I wrote about a teacher who reached out to me because he was punished for refusing to affirm a student’s chosen gender identity.
In the same month, RedState’s Kira Davis wrote about a teacher who was suspended for refusing to use students’ preferred pronouns. The suspension occurred after he went in front of the Loudoun County School Board and explained that requiring him to pretend that students can switch their gender violated his religious beliefs.
I’ve said it frequently: We have to keep exposing this. Many parents are still in the dark, or they believe this is only happening in other schools. But the more people who are enlightened, the more of an edge we will have in this fight.
Also, it is yet another reason why parents should take advantage of school choice programs if they are in a position to do so. Yes, it is important to transform public schools back into institutions that teach reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. But right now, the best way to protect children from this sick and twisted agenda is to pull them out and place them in healthier learning environments.
