Teachers are truly incredible people. By and large, they work hard to equip young people with the tools they need to be successful. Kindergarten teachers in particular are an essential part of laying the foundation for the future educational success of students. Their hands are full teaching the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The last thing they need is an intervention from politically correct social justice warriors with a bad agenda. That’s exactly what teachers are getting with a new curriculum developed by the dangerous Southern Poverty Law Center and a Washington, D.C. suburban school district.
This new curriculum called “Teaching Tolerance” is a complete leftist nightmare. It calls for teachers to discuss the evils of slavery with kindergarteners. That’s right. Before these kids have had the chance to master “A is for Apple, B is for Baby,” they’ll have to start learning “O is for Oppression, P is for Patriarchy.” Right now, most schools start to introduce the topic of slavery around the fourth grade or so, when students are more ready to handle that kind of weighty topic.
The Teaching Tolerance materials don’t just call for kindergarteners to learn about the evils of slavery. They also try to mold these impressionable young minds into effective social justice warriors for leftist causes. The materials say that teaching about slavery should be aimed at “discussions about current injustices—particularly those that continue to disenfranchise and oppress the descendants of enslaved people—and possibilities for activism.”
Nobody wins with a corrupted curriculum like this. Teachers lose because they don’t have the valuable classroom time they need to teach real skills and this social justice nonsense. Students lose because they get a distorted view of American history at an inordinately young age. However, the biggest losers in all this will be the young black students who will be told in kindergarten that they are oppressed and can’t get ahead in America today. The real oppression is the Teaching Tolerance curriculum. It preaches an oppression of the mind that will only serve to keep young black students from achieving their highest potential in life.
