President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday demanding an end to racial ‘indoctrination’ in K-12 schools he accused of spreading ‘anti-American’ ideology.
The order is just the latest effort to combat what Trump and his allies term ‘woke’ ideology, and came on a day he revived a directive to create a sculptural ‘garden of heroes’ and said he would expand migrant facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to accommodate 30,000.
In recent years, ‘parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,’ according to the order.
‘Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination. In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.’
The order provides a discourse on schooling, which is generally governed by municipalities and state law, while getting funded from sources ranging from local property taxes and federal grants.
The order calls out ‘false ideologies’ being spread in the schools, on a day Trump also called for fighting anti-semitism on college campuses.
‘Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority,’ says the order.
The order also calls out demanding ‘acquiesence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” saying it in fact ‘promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.
The order then brandishes the influence of federal education funds that flow to the states.
While public schools operate under local control, they rely on federal funding to states to operate.
President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on ending ‘racial indoctrination’
‘My Administration will enforce the law to ensure that recipients of Federal funds providing K-12 education comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in various contexts and protecting parental rights, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,’ says the order.
The administration has cited examples like the Harrisonburg City Public Schools in Virginia requiring teachers to use student’s preferred pronouns and the Madison, Wisconsin school district calling on schools to ‘disrupt the gender binary,’ the AP reported.
Former Trump primary rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stressed ‘woke’ ideology and ‘critical race theory’ in his campaign, and Trump picked up on many of the issues in his.
The order says the ‘indoctrination’ creates an ‘echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination’
Trump has signed other orders restricting so-called gender-affirming care for minors and stating that there are only two sexes.
Another order bars transgender people from serving in the military.
Meanwhile, the administration faces more basic academic challenges in K-12 education. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results appear to show steep learning loss carryover from the pandemic.
The number of eighth graders with below basic reading skills has reached a third of the cohort – a three decade low.
