It’s difficult, in this day and age, to find a public school that doesn’t have some sort of leftist propaganda in it. The problem, in the case of one Nashville, Tennessee father, is how far the propaganda is going these days — particularly in the name of “anti-racism.”
Grant Benson is the founder of Breaking 911, better known as a Twitter account but which also has a website. According to a report Benson wrote on his Twitter account and his website, his daughter’s second-grade syllabus includes several disturbing new books, including one titled “Separate Is Never Equal” about a young Latina who integrated schools in Southern California.
First, though, he lambasted the distance learning program in Nashville, Tennessee.
And then there was another book, “Martin Luther King Jr. & The March on Washington,” something you might think was fairly unobjectionable, given the place Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington hold in American history.
You’d be wrong.
This was one of the pages that Benson captured of the book:
According to the piece on Breaking 911, this was the most problematic of the books — “Separate Is Never Equal” by Duncan Tonatiuh.
“Mendez bravely fought to end segregation in education in California. She was the child at the center of the landmark 1947 case, Mendez vs. Westminster, in which her parents and neighbors fought against segregated education for children of Mexican descent in southern California, a case that banned segregation in California public schools and paved the way for the national ban on segregated schools in Brown vs. Board of Education seven years later,” Benson wrote in the Aug. 16 piece.
“What an inspiring and little-known piece of history.
“Yet, when I read the children’s book by Tonatiuh, I did not find it appropriate for my 7-year-old daughter to read. Why? My wife and I have raised our children to believe that all people are equal. We have also taught them about racism and that there was a dark time in America when people were not equal.
“This book struck me as teaching my child that all white people are racist. More troubling than that, the book seems to insinuate to children of color that all white people are racist or against them in some way.”
He would include a bit from the book, which makes it clear just how problematic it is.
“Sylvia had on her black shoes. They were shiny-new. Her hair was perfectly parted in two long trenzas. It was her first day at Westminster school. The halls were crowded with students. She was looking for her locker when a young white boy pointed at her and yelled, ‘Go back to the Mexican school! You don’t belong here!’” it read.
“Now, this may have actually happened to Ms. Mendez. I do not know,” Benson wrote. “But what is this teaching my child, who has known nothing but love and tolerance toward others her entire life?”
Benson did a bit more research on Tonatiuh and found information about him from an article about from the University of Pittsburgh’s PittWire: “How a Facebook Post Sparked an Anti-racist Book Drive.”
The article concerned a researcher named Jennifer Iriti trying to compile a list of “anti-racist” children’s books.
Iriti described a conversation she had with a woman named Celina Farabaugh, a resident of South Fayette, Pennsylvania.
“’I had been reading quite a bit about ways to be an anti-racist, and one of the suggestions I read was to donate an anti-racist book to a teacher,’ said Farabaugh. ‘So, when Jen posted a list of suggested books, I felt called to take this small step.’
“Her first donation: ‘Separate is Never Equal,’ by Duncan Tonatiuh, to a teacher in the Keystone Oaks School District, located about 10 miles from downtown Pittsburgh.”
This isn’t the kind of thing that builds up confidence of any parents in their children’s education.
How another school district in Tennessee is handling online learning isn’t helping. An Aug. 15 report from the Tennessee Star, an online newspaper in the Volunteer State, stated that Rutherford County Schools, southeast of Nashville, wanted parents to agree not to observe their child’s instruction.
“RCS strives to present these opportunities in a secure format that protects student privacy to the greatest extent possible, however because these meetings will occur virtually RCS is limited in its ability to fully control certain factors such as non-student observers that may be present in the home of a student participating in the virtual meeting,” a form sent to parents stated.
“RCS strongly discourages non student observation of online meetings due to the potential of confidential information about a student being revealed.”
Parents were are warned a “violation of this agreement may result in RCS removing my child from the virtual meeting.”
The school district eventually backed down from the demand that parents not monitor their children’s lessons, as Fox News reported Saturday, but still insisted that there be no recording of online classes.
“We are aware of the concern that has been raised about this distance-learning letter that was sent to parents. The intent was not to prevent parents from being involved with their children during distance learning, but it was intended to protect the academic privacy of other students in the classroom who are visible during certain virtual class sessions,” RCS spokesman James Evans said in a statement to the Tennessee Star.
“We have issued new guidance to principals that parents can assist their children during virtual group lessons with permission of the instructor but should refrain from sharing or recording any information about other students in the classroom.”
This is just a report, mind you, from this father. We could not confirm on Sunday that these books are being used or exactly how widespread the use might be, but there’s clearly plenty for parents to be concerned about when it comes to instruction that claims to be geared toward “anti-racism” teachings but appears to be simply fostering a kind of racism liberals approve of — the kind that implicates all whites currently alive in the sins of the past.
This father just pulled his daughter out of the program. He won’t be the last.
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