Miseducated: The Decline of America's Schools | Short Documentaries

This ideology and these lessons are poison for all kids. The design of this is to put into the minds of kids as young as kindergarten that you are not like him, he is not like her. All of these things are designed to divide you. As teachers and teachers unions continue to push critical race theory in the classroom. Critical race theory, the study of the impact of racism, it is becoming a flashpoint in American schools. Black and white children, Hispanic children, you know why they get along? Because they don't look at each other's color, so you're the racist. Not them, not us. Who wants to be a drag queen when they grow up? The transgender student at some point during class also changed clothes and was revealed as her true gender. The system's set up to where if you're teaching anything about gender identity that you don't even have to notify parents when it's being taught. Parents have no idea and they don't know how radically the sex ed has changed. Here in America, our kids are taught divisive racial ideologies, skewed history, and a new kind of sex education that robs them of their innocence. This is the miseducation of our children. As parents, we worry about our kids. As a mom, I worry about my kids, what they're watching on TV, who they're friends with, what they do when I'm not around. Our children's health and safety is always on our minds. We think they're in good hands at school, but now, instead of teaching them basic math, science, and history, schools are becoming training grounds for political activism. I'm Jill Simonian. I have two young children and I've experienced firsthand how our school system is being hijacked to indoctrinate young students. Racism, white privilege, gender identity. Words like these have been thrown around a lot in the media lately. And in an effort to fight what some see as privilege and disparity, many school districts are imposing new curriculum and policies that actually divide our kids rather than unite them. How do they do this? I wanted to find out. In Cupertino, California, they were forcing first grade students to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to their power and privilege. Separating five and six-year-old kids into oppressor and oppressed based on their inborn identity categories. Fifth graders in Philadelphia, they were forced to celebrate black communism and then they were forced to march into the auditorium and simulate a black power rally in Buffalo, New York. They were teaching that, quote, all white people perpetuate systemic racism. They were teaching students that white people derive their wealth from slavery, that white people are, quote, unfairly rich. They were even showing kindergartners a dramatization video of dead black children warning these kindergartners that they could be murdered by, quote, racist police at any time. This is explicit political indoctrination. Most of these practices are propelled by what's known as DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI claims to guarantee fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all. It is often presented as a new curriculum, new school policy, or mandated school activities aiming to teach children to be accepting and tolerant of all people. Sounds nice, right? Well, come to find out, DEI is rooted in critical race theory. At its core, critical race theory teaches kids at an early age that if you are a minority, then the so-called system is rigged against you. And if you are white, you have privilege as an oppressor and you must acknowledge and apologize for it. In schools, critical race theory infuses race into every lesson plan, regardless of the subject. The activists play this really clever game. All the materials that they're presenting to parents, all the materials that they're presenting on their website, all the materials that they're sending home with students, they're all couched and camouflaged in this very nice rhetoric. It's about culturally responsive teaching. It's about social-emotional learning. It's about diversity, inclusion, and belonging. All things that, as neutral nouns, are good. But once it becomes fully institutionalized in K-12 schools, you have now a generation of tens of millions of American kids that are going to be growing up in a world that is filled with ideology. They'll start not to think of themselves as individual human beings, but as a collection of group identity traits. I think that our country has entered a period of racial retrogression. We're actually in some ways going backwards. You see those old pictures of water fountains that are separated by race. And now you're seeing new pictures of public libraries being separated by race. And there is no way that we are going to be making progress as a country by renormalizing racial segregation. Critical race theory is only the beginning. Many school curriculums are now embracing a new kind of sex education. Now, while age-appropriate sex education is important, many schools are introducing radical curriculum to kids as young as five. For example, kindergartners are being pressured to question their gender and are exposed to ideas that are beyond their maturity level. In many cases, by the time they reach age 10, their sex education is less about health and more about learning adult sexual practices. In 2012, the National Sex Education Standards were established by an organization called SECES. When you examine the national standards for K-2 grades, the lessons start with defining gender identity and stereotypes. By 3rd through 5th grade, children are expected to discuss sexual feelings and learn about hormone blockers for transgender kids. And by the time they reach grades 6 through 8, children are expected to define sexual acts and know how to access an abortion. Since the inception of these national standards, over 40% of school districts have adopted these directives. That's almost half of all schools in the country. And that number continues to grow year after year. SECES is the organization that is used to bring in a lot of the standards and the type of things we should be teaching in our K-12 schools. If you go onto their website, it's very shocking what you may find because they endorse and help sell a lot of types of sex toys. And this is the organization advocating the types of sex education to be used in our schools? Correct, yes. These organizations are partnering with our school district, but first of all, the parents don't know who these organizations are. And who are these supposed trusted adults that are giving advice to their kids? And what do they represent? This book was in the Health Framework for California in May of 2019, but parents found out what was in the book because there's training on how to have sadomasochism, bondage, restraint, blood play, sex sting, anal sex, using ropes, cords, cuffs. And we just couldn't believe that they were recommending this to be a statewide read for 9th through 12th graders. What do you say to people across the country that say, oh, that's not happening in my neck of the woods. That doesn't happen here. There is a lot going on behind parents' backs nationally because of these different agencies that are now partnering with school districts. These outside agencies are reaching out to kids on many virtual platforms. And we have AMAZE videos, cartoons. So it's on YouTube. AMAZE is telling kids that you can be both genders, neither gender, anything in between, very similar to this book. And it also goes into other videos about puberty blockers, that if you're unsure of your gender, don't worry. You can stall and give yourself more time to decide. And it's a choice. Now, it's important to see that they're talking about this as a choice. So we have all these new pronouns that can be created and made up by a kid who's three years old. And according to our laws and policies, we have to affirm whatever that kid says that they are. And when they're getting teachings like this, starting even in preschool, you can understand and see that kids want to be different, creative, special. And they're going to start identifying, especially when we're using the word choice. So kids are being encouraged to question their gender. How, if any way, is this tied to social justice and critical race theory? Well, in critical race theory, the nonconforming genders are aligned with different minority groups. So when you look at nonconforming genders as being the victim, the marginalized, then who would want to be a biological gender that's considered the privileged mean oppressor? OK, so this is incentivizing kids to identify as a nonconforming gender so that they can play the role of the victim. These extreme ideas have infiltrated our schools, and even the way our children learn history has been politicized. Curriculums are now designed to emphasize the failures of our American history while downplaying its many successes. You may have heard of the 1619 Project, which claimed that America's founding was not for independence in 1776, but rather when the first slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619, putting race at the forefront rather than our liberty and freedom. Rewriting the narrative of our nation's history drives home the idea that America was never great, never something to be proud of. History is about narratives and which narratives you choose and how in which you want to amplify or minimize certain things. And so the language that I like to use is that the headlines of American history are oftentimes being placed in the footnotes, and the footnotes of American history are now being placed in the headlines. A lot of times the district leaders will say, hey, here's a program where there was a Hispanic hero or a Black hero, and will blow it up into a big lesson when it might be a really colorful story, but there's only so many hours in the day. And the way that the curriculum is set up is it will come like at the expense of something massive in American history, like something that has to do with the founding fathers. And so as almost like a PR stunt, it'll be like, oh, look at how multicultural we are. All of this is happening in the schools. It happened with you. You left. Yep. Do you regret it? I don't regret not being in teaching right now because it's not an environment that is healthy for teachers, students, or for learning. I was told that behaviorally I needed to have different expectations for children based upon their race. I was told that expecting my students to show up on time and to turn in assignments on time, that was a sign of my white privilege. I was told these things that have nothing to do with academics, that if I can teach my students, not history, but to be activists, then they'll have a shot at life. What are they seeking to accomplish? Why are they pushing this so hard? Political and religious leaders have known for centuries, really since the beginning of civilization, that forming children between the ages of zero and six is really essential. Critical race theorists based in academia, what they did quite ingeniously is fairly simple. They took Marx's old dichotomy between the oppressor and oppressed, and they took that basic same framework, the same idea based in Marx's conflict theory, but they replaced it with racial categories. They say, no, no, the new oppressor is not an economic oppressor, it's a racial oppressor. Would you say that the majority of parents are not aware that their students are being taught leftist ideologies? Someone who is confident that their school district was apolitical 10 years ago shouldn't be confident today. It's not just Berkeley and Brooklyn and Seattle. Critical race theory is now in schools in North Carolina and Missouri and Texas and Florida, states that are nominally controlled by conservative politicians, but those specific institutions are controlled by, in many cases, dedicated ideological activists. Sending our children off to school is not as simple as it used to be. We want our children to be educated, not indoctrinated. Schools should celebrate traditional values like hard work and service to one another and pride in our country, not progressive ideologies. So what can we do about it? Fortunately, many states are banning critical race theory in schools, thanks to parents standing up. Critical race theory is teaching that white people are bad. That's not true. That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil. And who are you to educate my children, or any of our children, in life issues? That's our job. You're going to deliberately teach kids, this white kid right here got it better than you because he's white? You're going to purposely tell a white kid, oh, the black people are all down and suppressed. How do I have two medical degrees if I'm sitting here oppressed? This isn't a political indoctrination camp, okay? It's public education. We want to teach education, not left-wing ideas that aren't backed up by facts or science. You are not the moral authority over our children. We, the parents, are. This is emotionally abusive to our kids, and I don't care how much grant money you are being offered. Grow some integrity and deny this hateful agenda. And why are they teaching me about sexuality and how to identify? I don't want to hear about sexuality during class, in front of other students, because that should be a private thing. You know and I know I'm not the only parent fighting this all across America right now. Schools are trying to poison our children's minds. And as long as I'm standing here on this good ground earth of God, I will fight. As parents, we have a right and a responsibility to be involved in our children's education. It's up to us to attend local school board meetings, review the materials being taught in classes, talk with and question teachers and principals why certain perspectives are included in pillar subjects. Be brave. Speak out. Our children and our country are depending on us to protect and preserve the ideals that make us who we are as Americans. We can no longer allow this kind of miseducation. It is the most important battle we must fight for our children. Daddy teaches you can be anything in this world that you want to be, right? Don't daddy teach you that? Yeah, and it doesn't matter if you're black or white or any color. Doesn't matter if you're black, white, brown, yellow, right? And how we treat people is based on who they are and not what color they are. And if they're nice and smart. See, this is how children think right here. Critical race theory wants to end that. Not with my children. It's not gonna happen. My baby's gonna know that no matter what she wants to be in life, all she has to do is work hard and she can become that.