For years, parents and conservative activists have been battling critical race theory (CRT) in educational settings and state legislatures, even as leftists have been busily rebranding it as “ethnic studies,” which ingeniously combines CRT with several other radical left ideologies as part of a “social studies” curriculum.

The Center of the American Experiment’s Senior Policy Fellow, Katherine Kersten, writes in The Federalist that, in 2021, “California became the first state to make an ethnic studies course a high school graduation requirement.” She reports that state education policy officials adopted “a deeply flawed, leftist curriculum after rejecting an initial ‘liberated’ draft as too radical,” which begs the question of just how bad was the original?

In 2022, Frontpage Magazine ran a piece by investigative journalist Matthew Vadum which disclosed that the original curriculum “encouraged public-school students to pray to bloodthirsty Aztec deities. The quaint religious practices of Mesoamericans about 700 years ago included slicing out human hearts along with flaying victims and wearing their skin.” Given that this thoroughly outrageous portion was dropped — where was the leftist dogma of “separation” when it was written — parents can well imagine what the curriculum may still include.

Vadum answered that in part, noting that in 2022, ethnic studies was already being taught in at least one school district in Monterey County, California. “Schoolchildren there learn that capitalism is bad and are encouraged to embrace ‘redistribution of wealth’ and a ‘shift in economic thinking.’”

He added: “One chart students examine identifies Christians as the ‘privileged/hegemonic’ group that is responsible for ‘creedism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism.’ The chart also describes ‘Muslims, Jews, non-major world religions, atheists, and indigenous spiritual traditions’ as ‘oppressed/marginalized’ groups. It states that ‘religious freedom/regenerating indigenous spiritual traditions’ are a form of resistance to ‘oppression.’”

New social studies standards

Katherine Kersten points out that California isn’t the only state embracing ethnic studies; blue states including Oregon, Washington, and Vermont are following suit. But she cites Minnesota’s “new K-12 social studies standards” as exemplifying “this dangerous new disguise for CRT,” noting that Minnesota lawmakers “enacted what are likely the most radical education measures in the nation.”

Kersten is no stranger to the education scene in Minnesota. A longtime journalist, she has written for The Minnesota Star Tribune and many other publications on the topic of education. In May 2001, Education Reporter reprinted her article on the folly of “mixed-sex wrestling” — or girls wrestling boys — which was taking hold in Minnesota high schools at the time. Today, boys pretending to be girls compete against girls in many sports. In February 2002, Phyllis Schlafly published Kersten’s overview of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in Education Reporter.

Minnesota’s new standards incorporate ethnic studies throughout the core social studies disciplines of history, civics, economics, and geography. Kersten describes one ethnic studies “anchor standard” as an example: “It requires students to ‘organize with others to resist systemic and coordinated exercises of power’ against ‘marginalized,’ oppressed groups.” She explains that this is ethnic studies in its “liberated” form, which not only teaches race-based identities and “white privilege,” but incites students to act to “disrupt and dismantle” America’s fundamental social and political institutions.

And it appears the standards will not only indoctrinate but fail to teach anything of value. For example, Kersten writes that “fourth graders will no longer be required to learn the names and locations of continents, the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon, England, or China. Instead, they will ‘describe places and regions, explaining how they are influenced by power structures.’” Studies of states and capitals are required to include “a recognition of indigenous land these places were built on.”

The standards discredit American institutions, including our criminal justice system and policing. One claim is that our contemporary police departments have “historical roots in early America,” teaching that they “sprang directly from slave patrols of the Old South.” This biased, misleading, and untruthful instruction will be force-fed to fifth graders. High school students will be taught that “the notion of criminality itself is racist: ‘Explore how criminality is constructed and what makes a person a criminal.’”

Kersten worries that this campaign to further radicalize Minnesota’s public schools “has generated minimal public pushback.” A key reason for this is “the promotion of ethnic studies as a unifying cultural learning experience, while in fact it stokes interracial hostility and delegitimizes authority.” In other words, ethnic studies is being sold as a unifying program to foster understanding and empathy, when exactly the opposite is taking place.

This deceptive strategy, Kersten believes, “is likely to become a national model for activists seeking to transform our K-12 education system.” She writes:

• Ironically, Minnesota lawmakers have now injected this extremist version, not in one required course for teens but in academic standards for all subjects, including math and science, from kindergarten through 12th grade. In addition, the ideology has been hard-wired into teacher licensing requirements and fundamental school mechanics, so the transformation will be difficult to reverse.

It’s important to note here that three out of four academic reviewers — “experts in citizenship and government, economics, geography, and history — criticized the standards, some in scathing terms.” One reviewer echoed Kersten, denouncing the standards “as among the worst in the nation.” Nonetheless, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), which had hand-picked the reviewers, ignored their well-founded criticisms and kept the standards as written.

The Walz influence on Minnesota education

The extreme radicalization of Minnesota’s education standards can at least partially be attributed to Democrat vice presidential candidate and current Governor Tim Walz. Author and executive editor of The Federalist, Joy Pullmann, made the case against Walz in an August 27 article where she described how Walz’s appointees to key state agencies will require applicants for teacher licenses “to affirm transgenderism and race Marxism. Without a teaching license,” she explains, “individuals cannot work in Minnesota public schools, nor in the private schools that require such licenses.”

These teacher licensing rules were enacted in 2023 under the auspices of Governor Walz. Pullmann writes that because they require teachers to “affirm” students’ “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” the new rules will effectively “ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools.”

Last spring, the pending changes passed muster with administrative law judges. The Federalist warned that universities are also affected. Beginning in 2025, universities “must either train their teaching students to fulfill these anti-Christian requirements or be banned from offering state licensing — and thus the ticket to the vast majority of teaching jobs — to their students.”

Religious schools in Minnesota will also be affected by the new rules. Doug Seaton, founder and president of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Upper Midwest Law Center, says some will capitulate, while others will not. Seaton told The Federalist:

• Forcing people to testify to beliefs they don’t hold, often called compelled speech, is clearly unconstitutional. They’re essentially requiring people to affirm these ideas that they don’t really believe, in many cases, as a condition of being a public-school teacher or being part of a program to be a licensed public-school teacher. You can’t force that kind of speech, you can’t require adherence to ideas that aren’t believed.

Seaton further noted: “The 13-member board that made these changes is appointed by the governor, whom for the last six years has been Walz. So, Walz is poised to make similar bigoted, totalitarian, and unconstitutional policies across the United States should he be elected vice president.”

Curricular changes under Walz

Both Kersten and Pullmann note that Walz signed the law establishing the ethnic studies initiative last year.

• The department’s standards and benchmarks require first-graders to “identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation, and systems of power” and “use those examples to construct meanings for those terms” ... Fourth-graders must “identify the processes and impacts of colonization and examine how discrimination and the oppression of various racial and ethnic groups have produced resistance movements.” High-school students are told to “develop an analysis of racial capitalism” and “anti-Blackness” and are taught to view themselves as members of “racialized hierarchies” based on “dominant European beauty standards.”

Under the new requirements, teachers will be forced to teach this disturbing nonsense to their students. Teachers must now understand, for example:

• That knowledge creation, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages.
• The histories and social struggles of historically defined racialized groups, including but not limited to Indigenous people, Black Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans.
• The cultural content, world view, concepts, and perspectives of Minnesota-based American Indian Tribal Nations and communities, including Indigenous histories and languages.
• The impact of the intersection of race and ethnicity with other forms of difference, including class, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, immigration status, language, ability, and age.

Pullmann recalls that “Walz’s first executive order as governor was to install a ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ or DEI, council.” His radical “Department of Human Rights” forced school districts “to report student discipline by race and require equal outcomes (equity) in discipline,” with the result “horrific chaos and violence.”

As if all this weren’t enough, student achievement has plummeted under Walz’s watch, from “among the best in the nation to declining more sharply than anywhere else in the nation,” according to Kersten’s Center of the American Experiment. “The most recent scores show Minnesota fourth graders dipping below the national average in reading for the first time ever recorded on the well-respected Nation’s Report Card.”

Parents and observers might wonder how, given the extreme requirements for teachers (as listed above), they could possibly have time to teach anything resembling basic skills or usable core knowledge.

Kersten warns that Minnesota should be viewed as the provider of a cautionary tale. “Unless legislators and citizens understand ‘liberated’ ethnic studies’ real agenda,” she points out, “many more states will follow” its lead.

Want to be notified of new Education Reporter content?
Your information will NOT be sold or shared and will ONLY be used to notify you of new content.
Click Here

Return to Home PageEducation Reporter Online - September 2024