Education Schools Are Pushing the Classroom Leftward

Across the nation, parents have pushed back on teachers promoting a leftist political agenda in K-12 classrooms, from the purported teaching of forms of Critical Race Theory to documented evidence of politically charged rhetoric, such as one educator in Sparta, Wisconsin, calling conservatives “ignorant and poor.” According to our report released last month, leftist ideologies in K-12 classrooms have their roots in schools of education at universities. 

We utilized open-records requests to examine the course readings and goals for several education courses at every public university in Wisconsin. We found that virtually every primary- or early-education major must take at least one course focused on how to implement “equity,” “diversity,” and “culturally relevant pedagogy”—buzzwords for radical identity politics—in their future K-12 classrooms. There is good reason to believe that Wisconsin’s universities are not the only ones suffering from this kind of indoctrination of future teachers. 

Generally speaking, university professors enjoy a great deal of trust and respect from their students. They wield considerable influence in shaping how young people, during some of the most formative years of their lives, wind up viewing the world.  

When a professor instructs a future K-12 teacher to view the classroom with reference to “interlocking systems of oppression, including . . . race, class, [and] gender,” as one syllabus for an education-major required course at UW-Green Bay describes), that future teacher may end up believing that this is the proper way to understand the school system. But describing K-12 education as a place of racial, class, or gender oppression is a radical political viewpoint. It’s not clear whether future teachers learning ideas like those at UW-Green Bay understand how damaging and divisive such ideas are. 

We also found, in a required course for education majors at UW-Stevens Point, that students were made to read both “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi and a portion of “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo. “Antiracist Baby” presents itself as a children’s book, even though it traffics in highly political ideas about race and society—most notably, that colorblindness, or treating people without discriminating on the basis of race, is, in fact, racist. “White Fragility,” for its part, argues that virtually all white people are complicit in systemic racism.

This is not to say that college courses shouldn’t expose students to politically controversial topics. Indeed, such exposure is a key part of becoming educated. But, far too often, these radical viewpoints are presented to students as the only ones through which to understand the world—instead of just another set of arguments, subject to debate and scrutiny. It is no wonder that future teachers come out of this environment primed to indoctrinate young students into similar viewpoints. 

Solutions to this problem are difficult. Hiring more conservative university faculty to reduce political bias, if even possible, would be a long-term process; such a goal stands little chance of success currently, given the dominant liberal hegemony. The most promising means to bring about change is likely through creating alternative pathways for people to become K-12 teachers. People with experience in the business world, or involved in a particular trade, bring a host of different ideas and life experiences to teaching than those trained by the education schools in our universities. K-12 students would benefit greatly from more such teachers.  

In any case, it is essential that parents and school boards recognize how pervasive radical political indoctrination has become at all levels of education. Even in the smallest towns, parents must remain cognizant of the likelihood that local teachers may have spent years absorbing an ideology hostile to values of their community—and the nation.