Political bias continues to increase in America’s classrooms and curricula. Giving parents school-choice tools is the only real solution.
In the current school year, there have been disturbing cases across the country of teachers imposing their anti-Donald Trump political views on their students.
In Cherokee County, Georgia, a high school math teacher threw two students out of her class for wearing Donald Trump t-shirts. She compared the “Make America Great Again” slogan on their shirts to wearing a swastika.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a middle-school student was reprimanded by a teacher for using Fox News as a source on an assignment and as punishment was told to look up any of President Trump’s “many lies” and to give the teacher a full-page report on it.
In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a high school English test on George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm” included a multiple-choice question, which had as one of the possible answers, “shooting at Trump.”
In Laguna Beach, California, a piñata with President Trump’s face on it was hung in a high school Spanish class, with the teacher and students taking turns bashing it.
But the bias is not limited to venom directed at President Trump.
A high school teacher in Pico Rivera, California was fired for going on an anti-military rant against a student wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. The teacher called members of the military, “the lowest of the low” and had the student stand in front of the class to justify why he wanted to become a Marine.
Bias in the classroom, however, goes even deeper—into the curriculum itself.
“By the People: A History of the United States,” a new Advanced Placement American history textbook published by the giant Pearson Education, includes anti-Trump opinions presented as facts.
In California, many parents argue that the state-approved Teen Talk sex-education curriculum is age inappropriate, undermines the values of families, and exposes vulnerable young people to risky sexual behaviors.
In Palo Alto, parents signed a petition asking the school board to review the health curriculum, including Teen Talk, but board member Ken Dauber brazenly stated, “The curriculum review process is not for listening to the community, it is for selecting a curriculum.”
Soviet Communist leader Vladimir Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” For the sake of our nation’s future, we must give education back to parents through school-choice tools such as education savings accounts and private-school tuition tax credits so that they, and not the government, can decide what is best for their children.
–Lance Izumi is Koret senior fellow in education studies and senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He is the author of the 2017 book “The Corrupt Classroom: Bias, Indoctrination Violence and Social Engineering Show Why America Needs School Choice.”
