by Larry Sand
An essential mission for many educators throughout the country is the indoctrination of their students. The newest arrival on the propaganda front is Israel. In August, one of the topics of a United Teachers of Los Angeles meeting was “How to be a teacher & an organizer. . . and NOT get fired.”
History teacher Ron Gochez elaborated on stealth methods for indoctrinating his students. He talked about transporting busloads of kids to an anti-Israel rally — during the school day — without arousing suspicion.
“A lot of us that have been to those [protest] actions have brought our students. Now, I don’t take the students in my personal car,” Gochez told the crowd. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained: “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.”
Gochez further explained, “It’s like tomorrow I go to church, and some of my students are at the church. ‘Oh, wow! Hey, how you doing?’ We just happen to be at the same place at the same time, and look! We just happen to be at a pro-Palestine action, same place, same time.”
The unionistas then burst into approving laughter.
John Adams Middle School teacher and UTLA panelist William Shattuc agreed. Wearing a keffiyeh around his neck, he said, “We know that good history education is political education. And when we are coming up against political movements, like the movement for Zionism, that we disagree with, that we’re in conflict with — they [Zionists] have their own form of political education and they employ their own tools of censorship.”
Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, ethnic studies teacher at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in Los Angeles, who received a National Education Association Foundation Award for excellence in teaching, insists that the course she teaches, and whose curriculum she helped develop — ethnic studies — is fundamentally incompatible with supporting Israel. “Are you pro-Israel — are you for genocide?”
In Portland, OR, the Intifada begins in kindergarten. For example, the teachers union suggests that kindergarteners be gathered into a circle and taught the history of Palestine: “Seventy-five years ago, a lot of decision-makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with white skin. There’s a BIG word for when indigenous land gets taken away to make a country; that’s called settler colonialism.”
The brainwashing is hardly limited to Israel.
In the San Diego Unified School District, students must confront and examine their “white privilege” and acknowledge when they “feel white fragility.” Additionally, children are told to “understand the impact of white supremacy” in their work.
Courtesy of the 520-page Black Studies Curriculum, public school students in New York City now receive lessons on the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement and that Black Americans should receive reparations. Students also learn about the evils of capitalism, that student loans are equivalent to “debt peonage,” and the difference between defunding, reforming, and abolishing the police.
At an unspecified school in California, a parent confronted a teacher who told students that “only those who voted for Kamala Harris in their mock election will get a pizza party.”
The educator explained that there were five periods and only one would not get the party. “The Democrats are more for feeding the hungry, free medical care, more services — just pay higher taxes, so I would be willing to buy pizza for the class,” the teacher told the parent.
The teacher confirmed that the class that voted for Trump would not get free pizza, explaining “They just do what the conservatives do — which is pay for yourself.”
And then there is the transgender obsession, which shows no sign of abating. The invaluable Parents Defending Education lists the school districts that have policies that openly state district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents. As of Oct. 30, there were 12,222,924 students in 20,951 schools across the country affected by this protocol.
Not only is indoctrination a moral disgrace, it is also very expensive. A recent report surveying 467 superintendents in 46 states reveals that culturally divisive conflict in schools costs public K-12 schools, i.e., taxpayers, about $3.2 billion during the 2023-24 school year.
The cost of school-based culture wars includes “additional security, communications, and legal expenses. Schools incurred indirect costs from using staff time to address misinformation, social media threats, media inquiries about book bans, and growing demands for public information requests.”
John Rogers, a UCLA education professor, and lead researcher for the poll, claimed in a media release, “This research makes clear that culturally divisive conflicts in the nation’s schools are generating fear, stress, and anxiety that is disrupting school districts and taking a personal toll on the educators and staff members who work in them. Sadly, as superintendents have told us, the cost of these conflicts not only has a financial impact but is also eroding teaching and learning and undermining the trust between schools and the communities so essential to our democracy and civic life.”
Notably, according to many of the superintendents interviewed for the report, members of Moms for Liberty and those speaking out about such controversial topics shouldn’t get a platform.
Tiffany Justice, cofounder of Moms for Liberty, responded that the report’s findings are “ridiculous” and a “gaslighting tactic” to make it look like the parents are the problem for opposing sensitive topics being taught to their children without their consent.
Justice adds, “This is more obfuscation, this is more deflection by school districts for not liking the fact that parents are calling out a failing system, and we will not be silenced to protect a failing system.”
“What would be the better thing?” Justice asked. “We just shut up and go along with the indoctrination and the demoralization of our children so we don’t cause a problem and cost the school district money? If they weren’t doing so much nonsense, they wouldn’t have to deal with the ire of parents.”
Fortunately, many adults are indeed catching on to the problems with our wayward schools. According to the results of a Gallup poll released in August, only 43% of American adults indicated they are somewhat or completely satisfied with the quality of education students receive in kindergarten through grade 12 in the United States today.
Additionally, the EdChoice Schooling in America Survey asked respondents about the trajectory of K–12 education in the United States. The responses to this question were red flags for both parents and the broader public. Fully 70% of the public and 64% of parents of school-age children think K–12 education is on the wrong track.
A Pew Research Center poll found that only 16% of Americans were willing to say things are going in the right direction in education.
The 2022 NAEP, or “Nation’s Report Card” shows that Americans’ concerns are valid. The test revealed that nationwide, 29% of the nation’s 8th-graders are proficient in reading, while just 26% are proficient in math.
Clearly, all parents need to be aware of the massive indoctrination going on in the nation’s government-run schools and act accordingly. They have options, which I will delve into in a future post.
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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
