Do a web search on the phrase “public education is going woke,” and the results are shocking. There are dozens of linked articles about the ongoing corruption of the US public education system by cultural Marxists, including BLM theorists/activists, woke white liberals, and other assorted leftists. Here are a few to wet your whistle from the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (via Newsweek), and the Heritage Foundation. There are dozens and dozens more along these lines.
Virtually every day, there is a new shocking report from a school system somewhere in America in which woke and cancel culture brainwashing of students is exposed in some form or fashion. Before surveying a few recent examples, a definition of “woke” is in order. From Merriam-Webster:
Woke is a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE).
Stay woke became a watch word in parts of the black community for those who were self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better. But stay woke and woke became part of a wider discussion in 2014, immediately following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The word woke became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement; instead of just being a word that signaled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action. Activists were woke and called on others to stay woke.
And the woke activists are heavily focused on indoctrinating/brainwashing children in America’s public schools, including substituting Marxist American history textbooks for traditional American history materials, radicalizing and dividing students via Marxist critical race theory (sic) training, and paying homage to other woke priorities to the exclusion of all else. Here are a few examples from just the last week or so that may have escaped your attention since the legacy media are “woke enablers” for the most part:
- We live in the greatest, freest, and most prosperous country EVER on God’s green Earth – which did not just magically happen! – and yet the woke Marxists are hell-bent on brainwashing school children to hate America by teaching false history. As this article states, the Marxist version of American history (e.g., Howard Zinn’s, “A People’s History of the United States”) now being taught in many schools is “‘a complete and total reversal of reality’ and the root cause of the civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd.”
- The lunatic woke-sters in Seattle masquerading as public officials and school board members insist that homeless encampments near public schools remain in place despite the turn to in-person learning in the public schools. The “learning experience” outweighs concerns about health and safety hazards and drug abuse.
- Black nationalist and former commie Angela Davis has been mainstreamed since her radical activist days in the ’60-‘70s. Nowadays, she’s in high demand as a speaker at schools across the country, purveying her anti-capitalist crapola that is straight out of Karl Marx. Recently she spoke at a webinar “hosted by the Heads-Royce School, a prep school that costs just over $47,000 a year in tuition.” This brainwashing explains how the kids of a lot of elitist white liberals become newly minted socialists and Antifa and BLM activists.
- Woke-sters are hypersensitive to symbols, statues, school names, etc., that they deem to represent the white patriarchy and the “systemic racism” that they claim persists in America. This example might just take the cake: “Portland Public Schools Board of Education delayed adopting a high school’s new mascot of an evergreen tree after concerns arose from board members that the tree might have a negative connotation because of its alleged ties to ‘lynching.’” That’s insanity.
- Cancel culture activists are not “Jewish-friendly”; in fact, many of them – like the Squad – are downright anti-Semitic. And that applies to woke Jewish “educators” in spades, as it seems like liberal (non-practicing?) Jews like Bernie Sanders and Randi Weingarten (president of the American Federation for Teachers) are sometimes almost as anti-Semitic as the Muslim Brotherhood. Weingarten recently had “a message for fellow Jews: they should not criticize the unions, because they are part of America’s ‘ownership class.’ Weingarten’s comment, which invoked a stereotype of wealthy Jews commonly viewed as antisemitic, came during a recent interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.” America’s ownership class corresponds to the white patriarchy that is the bugbear of woke-sters.
- This next example jacks my jaws. Critical race theory training is endemic at West Point, the Naval Academy, Coast Guard Academy, and the Air Force Academy. It is brainwashing the next generation of military leaders through relentless cultural Marxist claptrap. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) has recognized the danger and sent a letter to West Point’s superintendent: “While we should always eradicate extremism of all forms from our ranks and never tolerate racism, I am alarmed that this doctrine that focuses our future leaders on race in ways that will be detrimental to unit cohesion, destructive to morale, and strain the readiness of our armed forces.” That’s a polite way of saying that critical race theory is divisive and negatively impacts team cohesion, military readiness, combat effectiveness, and good order and discipline.
- Colleges and universities are the source of the cancel culture theories that dominate public education. Woke-sters dominate the non-scientific fields in particular and seem to spend their days dreaming up new ways to cancel American history and culture. Recently, an associate professor of practical theology at Baptist-oriented Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, wrote a prayer asking God to “help her hate white people”: “Dear God, please help me to hate White people, or at least to want to hate them. At least, I want to stop caring about them, individually and collectively. I want to stop caring about their misguided, racist souls, to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist…. Lord, if you can’t make me hate them, at least spare me from their perennial gaslighting, whitemansplaining, and White woman tears…. Lord, if it be your will, harden my heart. Stop me from striving to see the best in people. Stop me from being hopeful that White people can do and be better. Let me imagine them instead as white-hooded robes standing in front of burning crosses.” Hmmm. This is what many if not most of the woke-sters and BLM crowd actually believe. And I’m supposed to be the racist one because I was born white?
Yes, those are some pretty horrific news reports, but all is not lost, as Americans around the country are fighting back against the Marxists and other assorted leftists polluting the public school system. Heck, even some liberal white parents are concerned about the brainwashing of their kids in elite schools, as noted here. And then there is this recent article about “How to Woke-Proof Your Kids.” These are the recommended rules, and the details in the article are words to live by if you have kids:
- Speak truth to gender, and never shut up.
- Teach abortion as a horror movie.
- Channel your inner patriotic boomer.
- Radically Rehab Your Entertainment Diet.
- Make Wokeness Cringe.
Finally, Republican state legislatures are getting into the act of preserving our cultural heritage. For example, the Florida House passed a patriotic education bill last Friday that would teach students about the perils of communism: “HB-5 will require these three social studies credits to ‘include a comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States.’”
Time for other Red states to follow Florida’s lead (where have we heard that before?) by adopting similar measures to roll back the woke-sters. Our children are the future; we ignore their brainwashing by the cultural Marxists and cancel culture at our collective peril.
The end.