DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: California Elementary Schools Teach ‘Cisheteropatriarchy’ and ‘Decolonization,’ House Probe Finds.
In some instances teachers and National Education Association union leaders discouraged colleagues from sharing certain controversial lessons “directly with families.” One such lesson aimed to teach Berkeley students about Israel and Palestine. Lesson plans obtained by the committee claimed that “from the river to the sea” — a popular activist slogan that calls for the elimination of the state of Israel — can be “a call for freedom and peace.” The same lesson avoided describing Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Berkeley’s ethnic studies curriculum offers several examples of how these political themes enter the classroom.
In fourth-grade ethnic studies, Berkeley Unified School District teachers asked nine-year-olds to define “covert resistance” and “overt resistance.” Teachers also introduced the terms of “colonization,” “decolonization,” and “settler.” With these new definitions in mind, the curriculum explained that history “is often presented from a colonizer’s perspective” and expressed the importance of “decolonizing historical narratives.”
The district’s fifth-grade ethnic studies curriculum takes a similar approach to civics. A unit titled “defining democracy” sought to “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”
Tomorrow’s Outer Party bureaucrats today!
