Fighting Indoctrination in Public Schools

Welcome to Family Policy Matters, an engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, this is John Rustin, President of NC Family, and we're grateful to have you with us for this week's program. It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged, and inspired by what you hear on Family Policy Matters, and that you will feel better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now, here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy Devitt Griggs.

Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Many parents have had an almost daily up-close view of their children's school curriculum over the last year and a half, thanks to COVID. And many of us have become uneasy and even horrified at some of what has become commonplace teaching.

Standard public school curriculum is less likely to be focused on the basics of reading, writing, and math, and more focused on promoting divisive ideologies to our children. Well, in an effort to empower parents in their fundamental role as the primary teachers of their children, the Family Research Council has published a new guide entitled, A Concerned Citizen's Guide to Engaging with Public Schools. Well, the guide's author, Meg Kilgannon, joins us today. She is a Senior Fellow for Education Studies at FRC. Previously, she served at the U.S. Department of Education as Director of the Office of Faith and Opportunity Initiatives. Her efforts to spearhead dynamic change in her own local school board earned her the Virginia Family Foundation's Citizen of the Year Award in 2019. Well, Meg Kilgannon, welcome to Family Policy Matters.

Thank you so much for having me on. Talk first about what are the primary concerns you're hearing from parents about America's public schools. Most parents are concerned about politics being included in school curriculum, regardless of whether you're conservative or liberal.

Most parents believe that children's education should be free of political bias. And so when you are in the system, our educational system is dominated by progressive thinking. So this means that in a subject like government class, you're going to have a bias towards one kind of thinking or one set of ideas. This means that in history, you're going to have revisionist history instead of an accurate teaching of America's history, warts and all. Even in English class, you'll have issues with the choice of literature selections. They may be from a progressive political bent.

They may include sexually explicit material that's unnecessary for children of the age. There are just all kinds of things that parents discover when they look very closely at their children's curricula. Why do you suppose public schools have been, especially recently, so aggressively progressive in their ideology?

What's happening here? The whole educational infrastructure has been dominated by progressives and leftists. In the early part of the 20th century, right after the communist revolution in the Soviet Union, there was a concerted effort to make that a worldwide movement. And it didn't have success. The workers of the world did not unite and rise up against the powers that be because that's just not how things work. So as we progressed through that time and entered into the 40s, 50s and 60s, the intellectual movement of that time decided that instead of having a workers revolution, we would have an intellectual revolution. Instead of economic Marxism leading the path to Marxism, we would have instead cultural Marxism that would pave the way toward economic Marxism. And that meant taking over institutions of higher learning, and they did that very successfully, sadly.

The radicals of the 60s are now retiring from their service in academia, and they are leaving in their wake the people that they've trained to be incredibly progressive radical ideologues who are taking over those institutions as professors, college presidents, and even presidents of corporations. My children have had a variety of educational experiences. I homeschooled my kids for a while. I had a child who had learning needs that I couldn't address, and so she needed to go to public school for those services. We had some of our kids in Catholic school, and over time we were pleased with our public school system. That situation, I think, is now very different. In the last 10 years, the situation in public schools has really changed. It's become very much more progressive.

I'm not sure if it's because of technology, just a coarsening of the culture, exactly what the reason for this rapid decline is. But I think for parents who have children starting out in school now, you need to think very carefully about what your choices are. It's not possible for everyone to pull their kids out of public school, and if you're in a situation where you simply cannot do that, you're going to need to be very involved in what your children are doing. You're going to need to make sure you know what's happening on the computers or devices that they're issued from school.

Know what their textbooks are, know what their assignments are, know their teachers, be as engaged with their teachers and the principal of the school as you can be in the most positive way possible, and be really engaged in the process. Even if we pull our children out, or for those of us who do not have children at all in the public schools right now, that doesn't let us off the hook, though, does it? We still need to be concerned about what's happening in the public schools, and you outline some good reasons, don't you? One of the things that I think we need to keep in mind is if public schools aren't good enough for our children, they're really not good enough for anybody's children, and to that end, if children are being harmed by the school system that they're in, that harm is occurring at the expense, the literal financial expense of the public. They're ruining kids with our tax dollars, you might say, and so to the degree that that's the case, we need to be engaged in the system. Part of the reason that schools are struggling so much, the biggest part of that, of course, is the breakdown of the family.

We know that families in America are in crisis. We know that many children come from single-family parent homes, which isn't always the choice of the parent, right? Sometimes this is unavoidable, but you have children in economically disadvantaged situations, children in rank poverty, who suffer hunger, who are all at the schoolhouse door awaiting to be educated, right? And so we need to make sure that those children's needs are served, that those children are not harmed by ideologies or worldviews that will prohibit their flourishing in the future. If we're going to make sure that our children are well taken care of and have a firm footing for their launch into life so that they can be successful and productive citizens as a society, and as Christians, of course, we want that for all children.

If there's a system of education that doesn't make that possible, then it's incumbent upon us to engage with that system and make it the best that it can possibly be. For more information about NC Family and how you can help us to achieve this incredible vision for our state and nation, visit our website at ncfamily.org. Again, that's ncfamily.org. And be sure to sign up to receive our email updates, action alerts, and, of course, our flagship publication, Family North Carolina Magazine.

We'd also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. So you mentioned outsourcing education, and any time that we do this, there are risks. And, of course, this includes private schools as well. So people who are sending their kids to Christian or Catholic schools, they're not off the hook here either, are they?

No, certainly not. We've seen in the private schools in New York have gotten a lot of coverage, because, of course, there's a lot of media in New York, too. And we've seen that this radical march through the institutions has impacted public schools, and it has also impacted private schools. Many of the very most expensive and desirable private schools in New York City are churning out little Marxists, just like your neighborhood public school could be. They're being taught incredibly progressive sexual ethics, and, you know, just all kinds of things that once the parents are aware of them, they're truly shocked by them. And they have the ability to push back on that and to say, No, I'm not going to spend $50,000 a year to have this taught to my children. They can pull their kids out and send them somewhere else. But a private school is not immune from ideological forces that are hostile to Christian values.

We must be engaged everywhere. Right. And I think the same goes for a Christian or a Catholic school as well, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

It absolutely does. One of the reasons that my husband and I send our kids to public school is that we want to be the people who teach our children the faith. And if there are things that need correcting that they pick up at school, we'd rather them not come from church, from someone affiliated with the church. It's much easier to correct an error that's coming from outside the church. Now, of course, there are many, many Christian and Catholic schools that are faithful to their doctrines and their faith statements and do a wonderful job forming beautiful souls for Christ.

And that's mostly the case. But we all know that there are those examples of progressive, private and Catholic and Christian schools that are sometimes surprising to parents when they see just exactly how progressive the values of those schools are. So you gave us some advice, very good advice for parents as they seek to engage with their child's local school. Do you have some words of caution for those parents, some things that they should avoid doing?

I would avoid setting up a scenario that's us versus them. Avoid removing yourself entirely from the conversation by your actions. Even if you're pulling your kids out of school, don't remove yourself entirely from the school system. Continue to go to school board meetings. Know who your school board representative is.

Try to understand the local issues that are impacting your schools and see if there's any way that you can engage in that space. When we remove ourselves from public schools, the voice that we bring to those debates is sadly lacking. Our system of government is made up largely of, you know, checks and balances, right? And we have three branches of government, and one checks the other, we have two parties, one is supposed to check the other. They check each other, they bring different ideas to the table, and then we're supposed to work together to come up with something that we can all agree on is to the benefit of society. And if we can't practice those values in schools and at the local government level, then we're not going to be able to practice those values and higher levels of government as they become more distant from the person. Your local government is the government closest to you.

And then you have your state government, then the federal government. So we really need to model this good citizenship for our leaders in our schools, especially. And if we're not there, then we can't be engaged in that conversation. Good advice.

Well, we're just about out of time for this week. Before we go, Meg Kilgannon, where can our listeners go to get a copy of FRC's helpful resource, A Concerned Citizen's Guide to Engaging with Public Schools, and follow your work? This guide is on our website at www.frc.org slash education. And there is more material there. We have materials on gender identity, on sex education, and there'll be something new coming up on the Southern Poverty Law Center's Learning for Justice program.

But I know it's something that schools in North Carolina have struggled with those ideologies being imposed on students there. I cite an example from Wake County in the paper itself, and that'll be coming out very soon. But just keep checking back for more materials and sign up to subscribe to our newsletter list. We'd love to send you the information. Meg Kilgannon, thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.

You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. To listen to this show online and to learn more about NC Family's work to inform, encourage, and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family. .