Kids Get Schooled on Radical Politics (by Francesca Block)
Students at a public elementary school
in Brooklyn are learning revolutionary theory from a Black Lives Matter
coloring book.
Children at a Brooklyn public
elementary school are being taught revolutionary politics and communist terms
from a Black Lives Matter coloring book, The Free Press has
learned.
Last week, teachers at PS 321—the
kindergarten through fifth grade school in Park Slope—supplied students with
the coloring book, What We
Believe, as part of a lesson for Black History Month. The book uses
drawings and worksheets to promote the 13 tenets of the Black Lives Matter
movement, under titles like “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming,” and
“Restorative Justice.” Principle number 2, “Empathy,” is described as “engaging comrades
with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.”
The coloring book also lists Black
Lives Matter’s “national demands,” including “mandate black history &
ethnic studies,” “hire more black teachers,” and “fund counselors not cops.”
One parent of a PS 321 fourth grader,
whose grandparents fled Communist China before moving to the U.S., said she and
her husband were “shocked” that the book used the word comrade—and
that it appeared to promote political propaganda.
“Using the word comrades comes
from Communist times,” said the parent, whose 10-year-old daughter attends the
school, also known as William Penn. “They are using words that I don’t think
are appropriate for elementary school.”
She said she first discovered the
coloring book on Tuesday, February 13, when a snow day forced her daughter to
learn from home.
“This is classwork, not homework,” the
parent said. “If it weren’t for the snow, we wouldn’t have known.”
Lessons in the coloring book tell
children to reflect on Black Lives Matter’s 13 principles. Some of the exercises, parents said, appear
innocuous; a page about “Restorative Justice,” for example, asks students: “Why
is it important to offer to forgive someone?” But another, entitled
“Transgender Affirming,” instructs students to read the book When Aidan Became a Brother about a girl who
transitions to a boy, and then answer questions on a worksheet like, “How do
you feel when someone tells you what you can or can’t do based on your gender?”
Another principle, “Black Villages,” is
described as “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure
requirement.” Another, called “Intergenerational,” encourages a “communal
network free from ageism.”
The coloring book encourages kids to learn the 13 principles of Black
Lives Matter, including “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming,” and
“Restorative Justice.”
Another public school parent whose
family left the Soviet Union when she was a teenager said the language in the
book reminds her “of the songs we were made to sing as elementary school
children. ‘Dismantling’ and ‘comrade’ and everything—it really reminds me of
the word salad that was a part of those songs.”
She compared the Black Lives Matter
movement to communism, saying: “same salad, different dressing.”
Brandy Shufutinksy, the director of
education at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, who is black and holds a
doctorate in international multicultural education, said she was “offended”
that the curriculum “demonizes the nuclear family.”
“They frame it as some form of white
supremacy,” Shufutinksy said. “There are a number of people beside myself who
are deeply offended by the idea that black Americans should not strive for
something that was denied to our ancestors for so long.”
The educational materials used by PS
321 are created by Black Lives Matter at School, an organization founded in
2016 by a group of Seattle teachers to educate students from pre-K to 12th
grade about BLM’s ideology. In 2018, Black Lives Matter at School launched a
national Week of Action in February to teach “lessons
on structural racism, Black history, intersectional Black identities, and
anti-racist movements.” According to the group’s website, the curriculum is now taught at a total of 50
schools across 21 states and six countries.
When asked for comment from The
Free Press, the NYC Department of Education said, “Anytime parents have a
concern about resources used in school, we encourage them to share their
concerns to the school principal or district superintendent.” The principal at
PS 321 did not reply to an email seeking comment. Black Lives Matter at School
did not respond to multiple emails asking for comment.
PS 321, also known as William Penn, educates children from kindergarten
through fifth grade in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Photo by David Grossman via Alamy
Stock)
Several parents who spoke to The
Free Press said they were upset that the coloring book failed to teach
their children about black history.
One mother with two children at PS 321
said the coloring book doesn’t go “into enough detail and there is no mention
of specific people. It just feels very vague.”
The fourth-grade mother said her
daughter’s teacher told her the coloring book was the only lesson planned for
Black History Month, other than a schoolwide project to make a quilt honoring
famous black figures. She added that, after the Week of Action, her daughter
still had never heard of civil rights hero Rosa Parks and didn’t know what
Martin Luther King Jr. had achieved to make him famous.
Furthermore, she said, the coloring
book presents controversial ideas “as fact.” But, “it’s not necessarily true.
It’s not like every black person believes in these principles.”
Shufutinsky agrees: “There is nothing
in these principles that talks about honoring greats in black American history.
There is nothing in here that is actual scholarship. It doesn’t speak to
education. It speaks to ideology.”
Kids
Get Schooled on Radical Politics | The Free Press (thefp.com)
