Colleges Train Future Teachers to Push Woke Agenda
This back-to-school season, children are not safe from teachers steeped in woke ideology.
Many teacher training programs are riddled with far left politics parents do not want and children do not need. Red states are not immune,
Texas is one such state, having prohibited public school employees in 2021 from teaching lessons marinating in race and sex discrimination. Under Texas law, a teacher may not instruct students that people living today bear historical blame, or deserves to be treated differently, because of his or her race or sex.
Someone needs to tell the University of Texas at Austin. The state’s flagship campus is training teachers to divide students by race and sex. A Spring 2026 course on “Classroom Interactions” promised that “students will be able to… foster inclusive and equitable learning environments by addressing issues of identity, agency, race, gender, and power in classrooms.” A four-part “equity project” counted for 15% of students’ grades.
Another class, “Early Elementary Social Studies Methods,” trained future educators to view their students through the lens of equity. The course required aspiring classroom teachers to share an “artifact” from their placements in K-12 schools, such as student work, that illustrates “issues of equity (race, gender, class, religion, etc.)”
Texas is far from alone in training teachers to ignore state laws. Georgia enacted its divisive concepts law in 2022, but the University of Georgia (UGA) still requires elementary education majors to take a course titled “Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity.” The course teaches them about “the nature and function of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in schooling.” UGA also requires future educators to “evaluate how implicit bias both negatively impacts classroom practices and is used to create inclusive and equitable educational opportunities.”
These courses are not isolated incidents. The University of Alabama misuses a classroom management course to train future teachers in “culturally responsive pedagogy” – buzzwords that mean validating and affirming a student’s background before teaching an academic subject. Likewise, Early Childhood Education majors at the University of South Carolina (USC) are taught how to use “culturally relevant pedagogy” and how to teach young children “African and African Diaspora literacies.” USC is also home to an “Antiracist Education” course, borrowing the first part of its title from the writings of Ibram X. Kendi, the intellectual godfather of the so-called “anti-racism” movement, who once opined that “whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.”
The offenses only worsen at the graduate level. UT-Austin offers “Foundations of United States Schooling,” which situates its subject “in the context of…settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and contests over the meaning of democracy.” Each summer, UGA offers a course for Master of Arts in Teaching candidates that informs them of “their professional roles as citizens, advocates, and classroom activists.” The course requires students to “theorize the relevance of the prison industrial complex and school-to-prison pipeline in the lives of children of color” and complete a “Black and brown joy research assignment.”
Even socially conservative Utah suffers. Its law bans the use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Employment, and Inquiry (DEI) in employment decisions made by schools and universities, but it does not explicitly ban the teaching of CRT in classrooms.
The University of Utah exploits this loophole with a class held each Spring, titled “Racial Battle Fatigue in Education.” The Spring 2026 syllabus shows it trained masters-level students that “racial microaggressions are aggressive and gendered” and that “racial battle fatigue is a repetitive stress injury.” Course objectives included “[proposing] strategies that promote equity and inclusion within educational settings.”
The problem with these courses is not only what they teach, but what they displace. Every minute spent training a teacher to view her future students as oppressors or the oppressed, as privileged or as victims, is a minute not spent teaching her how to teach students. The United States has faced abysmal student achievement for years. We cannot afford underprepared teachers who are not up to the challenges that await them after they’ve turned their tassels.
States should ensure that their colleges and universities are truly serving future teachers, not brainwashing them with higher ed’s preferred political beliefs. The federal government, too, must ensure that federal tax dollars do not support harmful teacher programs.
America’s future teachers ought to be preparing for their challenging careers. Instead, too many colleges, even in red states, waste their time, talent, and tuition training them as classroom foot soldiers to indoctrinate the next generation in the beliefs of the far left. The country, teachers, and students deserve better.
