California Schools Might Be Better off Remaining Closed | Eastern NC Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Mitch Kokai.

    John Fund of National Review Online explains why reopening schools might not be the best option in one left-coast state.

• California's state Board of Education is set to make a decision this Wednesday on a new semester-long "ethnic studies" course that will be required for high-school graduation.
• There have been four major rewrites, but critics say the final curriculum force-feeds students notions of how systemic racism, predatory capitalism, and "heteropatriarchy" (that's a new one!) dominate their lives.
• The curriculum calls for the "decolonization" of American society and focuses on cultures that have been "shortchanged." The course description says these include "African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies."
• A part of the model curriculum will have students taught chants to the ancient Aztec gods in order to make them better "warriors" for social justice. One of the gods mentioned in the chants is Huitzilopochtli, the god of human sacrifice.
• "It's a totalitarian worldview that is every bit as much a faith community as any religion," says Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, an anti-Semitism watchdog group in Santa Cruz. "In a public school, it really is the imposition of a state religion."
• It is also a frontal assault against free inquiry and common sense, and it's soon coming to a school near you.

    Fund isn't the only one noticing this issue. Check out this "Locker Room" entry from earlier in the week.

• The California Department of Education (CDE) is set to vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum that reportedly calls for the "decolonization" of society in America and encourages students to chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice.
• The curriculum will focus on "social consciousness" and cultures that have allegedly not gotten enough attention in textbooks. That would include "African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies," according to the CDE.