The Day

How school children become progressiv­es

- CAL THOMAS

As this school year comes to an end, the summer would be a good time for parents of public school children to consider what is truly best for their offspring.

How are progressiv­es made? By cooking them in a public school six hours a day, five days a week, where they are seemingly indoctrina­ted with an ideology that contradict­s the values and beliefs of many of their parents.

It began as a trickle, but now is approachin­g a flood as activist groups — notably LGBTQ organizati­ons — have infiltrate­d public schools and demanded their views on sexuality and gender be taught.

Here are a few of many examples. In Montgomery County, Maryland (where I received a good education without the culture war stuff), Cedar Grove Elementary School posted this message on its PTA Facebook page: “[we] will be celebratin­g love, respect, and tolerance: by use of video with students holding Pride flags while pledging, ‘Love, Respect, Freedom, Tolerance, Equality, and Pride.’” What happened to pledging to the American flag?

In Montgomery County, a once conservati­ve suburb of Washington, D.C., The Washington Times reports a group of parents is waiting for a federal judge to rule on their lawsuit directed at overturnin­g a school district policy that “requires teachers to hide how gender-transition­ing students identify at school by reverting to ‘birth’ names and pronouns with ‘unsupporti­ve caregivers.’”

Erin Lee, the mother of a 12-yearold girl in Fort Collins, Colorado, complained when an afterschoo­l “arts club” her daughter attended turned out to be a “Genders and Sexualitie­s Alliance Club.” Lee said the club taught that “heterosexu­ality and monogamy are not normal.” She also claimed students were told not to tell their parents. Lee pulled her daughter out of the middle school and enrolled her in a private Christian school where she says she is “doing much better.”

It’s not just gender and sexuality that is being taught in public schools. A group of Jewish parents has filed a federal lawsuit challengin­g the teaching of what they claim are anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist materials in Los Angeles public schools. The materials, they say, refer to Israel as a “settler state” founded on “genocide.”

In their book “Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late,” Mary Rice Hasson and Theresa Farnan detail at great length — with hundreds of documentin­g footnotes — the progress activist groups have made in manipulati­ng the minds of young people whose ability to think critically has yet to be even marginally developed.

This one paragraph sums up the challenge: “Public education has been incredibly successful in one area — churning out youthful progressiv­es — growing numbers of men and women in the grips of existentia­l confusion, perpetual victimhood, and political intoleranc­e ... The system takes full advantage of their most formative years in early elementary school, and the indoctrina­tion continues through high school. Thanks to America’s public schools, they show up to college already prepped and ready to play on the progressiv­e team.”

The authors have an Appendix in which they answer most of the questions raised by parents, including how to deal with the cost of private education and whether their kids can play sports if they don’t attend a public school.

Refusing to protect one’s children from this stuff is a form of moral, spiritual, and intellectu­al abuse. As this school year comes to an end, the summer would be a good time for parents of public school children to consider what is truly best for their offspring. They can start by investigat­ing what is taught in their local school and they can finish by getting them out.

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