Asian-American parents experienced woke and left-wing indoctrination in America’s schools in Cupertino, California, a wealthy Silicon Valley community in northern California. At R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School, a third-grade teacher began a math class with a lesson on so-called “social identities,” according to the City Journal.
The lesson then devolved into students forced to create an “identity map,” which listed their race, gender, class, religion, and other societal characteristics. The teacher then told the students that they lived in an unfair and “dominant culture” of “white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker[s]” who hold power and do their best to “stay in power.”
However, the lesson did not end with those allegations. The teacher used the ‘This Book is Antiracist” book to teach students about social identities and white privilege. One particular reading claimed, “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.”
Afterwards, the teacher told the students to dissect and deconstruct their “intersectional identities” and map out their identities according to the hierarchy of privilege and power. The students had to write short essays about how their identities held power and privilege, enough to fill “at least one page of writing.” There was an example shared about transgenderism and nonbinary sexuality, according to the report.
Does that lesson sound inappropriate for an elementary school classroom?
Yes, it was extremely inappropriate because education should be non-partisan, should focus on the basics such as writing, reading, and arithmetic, and should avoid indoctrination from any political ideology.
But parents did not take this intrusion into education lightly. Several parents banded together, met with the principal, and the “intersectionality” curriculum was suspended. Jenn Lashier, the principal, said that the curriculum was not a formal part of the education curriculum, but a “process of daily learning facilitated by a certified teacher,” jargon for indoctrination program from left-wing radicals hell-bent on social engineering.
The irony was that Meyerholz Elementary School is 94 percent nonwhite, with the majority of families from Asian-American backgrounds. The school serves a wealthy city and where the majority of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher. It is an example of the American Dream, but not white privilege, intersectionality, and other left-wing buzzwords.
One parent said that this tragic attempt at critical race theory in an elementary school math class was eerily similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The rhetoric divided society between “the oppressor and the oppressed, and since these identities are inborn characteristics people cannot change, the only way to change it is via violent revolution.” The parent remarked, “The outcome is the family will be ripped apart; husband hates wife, children hate parents. I think it is already happening here.”
Will critical race theory and other left-wing indoctrination efforts meet a stiff resistance among other Asian-American parents?
Time will tell, but Asian-American families have mobilized in recent years to stop boneheaded policy decisions, halting an affirmative action initiative in Washington state in 2019 and another in California in 2020.
