New York City Public Schools BLM website, discussing how to instill the principles of the BLM movement in young children. (Screenshot from the website)
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has long moved beyond street protests and taken hold of the U.S. K-12 Education system, establishing a growing presence in the public school system and instilling the concept of Black Lives Matter in children from an early age. Matter at School,” a new book to be published in December 2020, explains how to change the entire system of K-12 education in the United States, claiming that action to promote it is “urgent.
Last June, pro-Black Lives Matter supporters occupied New York City Hall Plaza to demand budget cuts for the police department. (Huang Xiaotang/The Epoch Times)
The BLM program is not mandatory, but it has spread to dozens of schools in many cities. The photo shows a school promoting BLM Week in February. (Twitter screenshot)
The New York Times bestselling author recommends the new book as “a great resource for building an anti-racist school system. The synopsis reads, “The BLM (Black Lives Matter) in Schools curriculum outlines BLM’s success in challenging academic racism in a school movement that began in 2016 and has spread from one school to hundreds of schools across the country. This book will inspire hundreds of educators to join BLM’s anti-racism education efforts in schools.”
Educating BLM in Schools
The BLM in Schools movement began in Seattle in October 2016 when teachers organized a “BLM in Schools Day” in a Seattle school that made national news, and when word spread, the National Education Association passed a resolution endorsing it and “BLM in Schools Day ” became “BLM Week of Action in Schools,” held the first week of February each year to set the tone for Black History Month.
During the 2017-2018 school year, thousands of educators in the U.S. wore Black Lives Matter expensive shirts to schools and organized curricular weeks of action about structural racism, black history and anti-racism movements. By 2018, school districts in more than 20 major cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle, were scrambling to incorporate “BLM in the Schools Action Week” into their curricula and get more students to participate.
The incorporation of BLM (Black Lives Matter) into the curriculum of K-12 schools has since exceeded one week per school year. In a letter of support, BLM co-founder Opel Tometi described it as “a new outbreak of racial justice in schools across the United States.
The National Education Association (NEA), one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, is encouraging its members to participate in the BLM’s Week of Action in February, but not just for lesson plans. The programs are not mandatory, but have taken off in a big way, now spreading to more than 40 cities. According to the Black Lives Matter at NYC Schools website, 62 New York City schools and organizations participated in February’s BLM Week of Action.
To many well-meaning teachers and Parents, this all seems rather innocuous, so what’s wrong with pursuing “racial justice”? Unfortunately, these are just trendy terms for the left, and a deeper look at these programs shows that the intent is clear: to advance a left-wing political agenda.
“BLM in Schools” Questions the Importance of Family
The “BLM in NYC Public Schools” website writes that their four basic national “demands” are: repeal of “zero tolerance” discipline and implementation of restorative justice; hiring more black teachers; requiring (all) K-12 students to take courses in black history and ethnic studies; and funding counselors rather than school security because “the increase in school security has created a punitive and oppressive Culture.
In the late 1990s, U.S. schools began to implement “zero tolerance” punishment policies for drug and violence-related issues in order to keep schools safe and orderly. Suspension rates for African-American students have risen more rapidly, potentially leading to racial disparities in discipline. Researchers have long linked these disparities to “zero tolerance” discipline policies, and a growing number of districts are moving toward “Restorative Justice” to keep students in school. school.
“The core idea of Restorative Justice is to transform traditional punishment and correction into restoration, with healing as the ultimate goal. This is the same philosophy as the Abolish Prisons movement, which seeks to end the culture of punishment in criminal justice.
There are also 13 “BLM Guiding Principles” as part of the “Week of Action” lesson plan, which encourages teachers and younger students to discuss various BLM ideological tenets, such as identifying “transgender ” “cool kids” and “black villages,” describing them as “disrupting the Western nuclear family dynamic and returning to a collective village of caring for one another.
In fact, the public school system involved has incorporated BLM propaganda into the curriculum for elementary school students, encouraging them to question the importance of the nuclear family. At the end of the program, fifth graders were asked to complete an assignment that responded to a prompt to explore a society without a “separate, nuclear family unit.
Another lesson was planned to explain the “need for the BLM movement” to second, third, and fourth graders. Also, fourth and fifth graders were asked, “How do past and present movements challenge this system of oppression?” The goal was to teach students how to overturn what the BLM considers oppressive (e.g., prisons, immigration laws).
The “BLM in New York City Public Schools” website provides links to dozens of resources and perspectives, including many videos and a look at content too staggering to excerpt in this article. Among them is the 1619 Project mentioned by former President Trump, who has said, “The left has lied, distorted and tarnished the American story. There is no better example than the New York Times’ 1619 Project. This project rewrites American history and teaches our children that our country was founded on the principles of oppression, not freedom!”
“Schools are working with Black Lives Matter.”
Parents may not realize that some of the school’s radical teachers are collaborating with the BLM.
On August 20, 2020, a parent named Matt Moss tweeted a video less than 2 minutes long: “On day 4 of my kids’ online class, they have incorporated Marxism. I spoke with the principal today and she told me in no uncertain terms: the school is working with Black Lives Matter.” The video received nearly 600,000 views and 19,000 retweets.
The parent has received positive reactions from parents across the country, and has generated some discussion among Chinese: “Our school is also supporting the Black Lives Matter movement” “It’s ridiculous that my granddaughter’s school uniform requires black clothing to support the Black Lives Matter movement, my granddaughter can’t dress like that so I make her wear My granddaughter can’t wear that, so I make her wear floral clothes.” “Some teachers in New York schools described the 2020 BLM Black Lives Matter riots as the ‘civil rights movement’ when explaining the civil rights movement in class, and compared BLM to Martin Luther King Jr. Luther King, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In contrast to Martin, BLM was the exact opposite; BLM was violent, appealed to a specific skin color, and was anti-Christian in its beliefs.”
And an extension of this topic: “The Manhattan School of Music is requiring all performances for the 2020-2021 academic year to feature African American creators or African diaspora (blacks being sold to the Americas).” “The Metropolitan Opera requires that all positions, from performance to administration, be assigned to hire people of color based on race (color) as an indicator.”
Parents must pay special attention
Returning to the aforementioned new book, “Black Lives Matter in Schools,” the book emphasizes that the Black Lives Matter movement should not be limited to history and social studies, nor should it be discussed only during action weeks: “For BLM to become a reality, BLM principles in schools must become part of a broader school culture and permeate all disciplines, including social studies, English art, math, science, music, art, world languages, drama, etc., to be truly valued in education.”
The “BLM in Schools” website also states, “This work takes place nationwide throughout the year.”
However, many members of the conservative community see the BLM curriculum as a political tool for radical teachers to “brainwash” their students. BLM-related courses in high schools across the United States have been boycotted by some conservative parents.
Last September, Fox News reported on the “horrific curriculum in Buffalo, New York, public schools,” with host Tucker Carlson warning, “They’ve got a lot of people in the classroom. Carlson warned, “Their goal is simple. Parents must be especially aware that they want to redefine education at all levels in order to make it a shell of their propaganda.”
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