Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Now Shrier, who is basically an investigative reporter, has written a long piece for the Free Press about how secondary-school teachers throughout America are secretly propagandizing kids to favor Palestine and hate Israel (and Jews) in the Gaza War. You can read the piece by clicking on the screenshot below, or find it archived here.
The propagandizing is ubiquitous, from California to New Jersey, and is fostered by often-“progressive” teachers unions. Because it’s illegal to do this (as Shrier notes, “public school teachers have no First Amendment right to express their political views in the classroom”), teachers often do it in secret, even taking kids on field trips to anti-Israel events without broadcasting it. An example:
In August, the second largest teachers union chapter in the country—there are more than 35,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles—met at the Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. to discuss, among other things, how to turn their K-12 students against Israel. In front of a PowerPoint that read, “How to be a teacher & an organizer. . . and NOT get fired,” history teacher Ron Gochez elaborated on stealth methods for indoctrinating students.
But how to transport busloads of kids to an anti-Israel rally, during the school day, without arousing suspicion?
“A lot of us that have been to those [protest] actions have brought our students. Now I don’t take the students in my personal car,” Gochez told the crowd. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained: “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.”
Gochez was just getting warmed up. “It’s like tomorrow I go to church and some of my students are at the church. ‘Oh, wow! Hey, how you doing?’ We just happen to be at the same place at the same time, and look! We just happen to be at a pro-Palestine action, same place, same time.”
The crowd burst into approving laughter.
Isn’t that hilarious? But of course, this kind of stuff eventually produces anti-Semitism in school, leading to the taunting and bullying of Jewish students (Shrier gives examples).
Worse than these one-time incidents, however, it he constant infusion of antisemitism in to the school curricula. It particularly infects “ethnic studies” classes, required for students in states like California.There we saw a huge fracas about antisemitic materials in the ethnic studies curriculum, a fracas that’s still going on. Here’s a summary of what Shrier found in her swing across America:
Four years ago, I was among the first journalists to expose the widespread incursion of gender ideology into our schools. Once-fringe beliefs about gender swiftly took over large swaths of society partly thanks to their inclusion in school curricula and lessons.
Today, extensive interviews with parents, teachers, and non-profit organizations that monitor the radicalism and indoctrination in schools convinced me that demonization of Israel in American primary and secondary schools is no passing fad. Nor is it confined to elite private schools serving hyper-progressive families. As one Catholic parent who exposes radicalism in schools nationwide on the Substack Undercover Mother said to me: “They’ve moved on from BLM to gender unicorn to the new thing: anti-Israel activism. Anti-Israel activism is the new gender ideology in the schools.”
Parents who watched in alarm as gender theory swept through schools will recognize the sudden, almost religious conversion to this newest ideology. And very few educators are standing against it.
Much of the anti-Israel vituperation slides into classrooms through a subject called ethnic studies. In 2021, California became the first state to adopt it as a requirement for receiving a high school diploma. Legislatures of more than a dozen states have already followed suit, incorporating ethnic studies into K–12 curricula.
Here’s an image shown to students at Lowell High School as part of their Ethnic Studies class. (From The Free Press)
In principle, these laws require schools to teach the histories and cultures of African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and Native Americans. In practice, they grant teachers license to incorporate lessons that often divide civilization into “oppressed” and “oppressor.” A primary fixation of ethnic studies is demonizing Israel.
Especially in the year since the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, the anti-Israel materials have become pervasive. It’s not surprising that they are found in world history and current events lessons. But demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional learning classes.
At the teachers’ meeting described above, they pondered the question of how to teach this stuff “without getting fired”. They’re still doing it because although it’s forbidden to propagandize students in class, it’s up to the schools themselves to find out about it and control it, and they don’t seem much interested. Also, the parents have to KNOW that this stuff is going on and get involved, and parents are reluctant to do that. Further, schools, though required to release instructional material to parents, have fought such releases. Finally, states can set school curricula, and if those curricula include anti-Israel tropes, as in California, then teachers are free to teach that material.
At any rate, here are a few anecdotes and some material that Shrier got with the help of the Free Press:
A Jewish ninth grader, “Sam,” attends a Bay Area high school where, after October 7 of last year, posters declaring, “Ceasefire Now!” and “Free Palestine” began appearing on the walls. Because Sam’s family considers itself very progressive, Sam was not bothered by the posters.
Then one of Sam’s friends sent him a long diatribe that read in part (spelling from the original), “I would just like to say that u are an ignorant ass white ass privileged boy u are so privileged to not b one of those children being killed rn in Gaza…solidarity and indigenous solidarity is something you could never understand as you have grown up your whole life with no culture and money and you been brainwashed by isreali and western media the world stands with Palestine and frankly it’s embarrassing to be anything different, when mostly all people of color stand with Palestine and you stand with ISREAL, that’s how yk ur in the wrong bud oppressed people stand with oppressed people in solidarity SOMETHING YOU COULDD NEVER UNDERSTAND.” The text concluded: “FREE PALESTINE TILL ITS BACKWARDS BITCH!!!!”
I spoke to Sam’s mother, and her perception was that the message didn’t sound like her son’s friend. The jargon and gist appeared to come from adults. Only the self-righteous fury and the message’s abusive conclusion belonged to the boy.
another:
I also spoke to the mother of “Dana,” a sixth-grade girl at a Bay Area elementary school. In a social studies unit on ancient civilizations last year, the teacher encouraged students to share their “feelings” about “Israel and Palestine.” Students shouted: “Fuck Israel!” and “Israel sucks!” Dana was the only Jewish child in the class.
Please, sir, can I have some more?:
One of Danny’s teachers posted a running tally, in the front of the classroom, of the number of Palestinians allegedly killed by the IDF. She says, “So every day, when my son came into class, it would say how many people Israel has killed today.” (The Free Press has confirmed this with photographic evidence.)
Danny, who is black, said to her, “If there was an image of a noose, we would not hear the end of it. There would be protests, people would be going crazy. But it’s always okay if it’s anything anti-Jewish.”
One more bowl of porridge:
At a Fort Lee, New Jersey, high school, world history teachers confiscated students’ cell phones before giving a lesson that presented Hamas as a “resistance movement” rather than an internationally designated terrorist organization. Teachers also showed a map of Israel that falsely presented Palestinians as the sole indigenous natives of Israel. (The Free Press has obtained a copy of the presentation. Click here to see it.)
Here are two slides from that lesson dealing with Hamas (“a resistance movement”) and October 7 of last year.
I’ll finish with an excerpt that has two more audiovisuals:
Kaplan says, “In math class, they can be studying charts and are told, ‘Look at this pie chart of the number of Palestinians murdered. This slice shows the number of Israelis that were killed.’ ”
That example was actually presented to elementary school students in New Haven Unified School District, California. The chart is labeled “People Killed Since September 29, 2000” divided into Palestinians and Israelis and asks: “What information is this pie graph showing us?” The obvious answer: Far more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis.
What “noticings do you have?” (Can’t these people even write?)
Image obtained by The Free Press.
Another mother sent me an example of an assignment used in a physics class at Cupertino High School, which asked students to consider the “Effect of Israel’s Bombing of Gaza” on climate change. (Arrow is mine)
Image obtained by The Free Press.
At schools where anti-Israel propaganda is promulgated, schoolchildren are turning against their Jewish classmates. Dozens of interviews with parents, teachers, and people at nonprofits revealed that discussions of Israel quickly become personal, and American Jews—even children—are the inevitable targets.
All of this guarantees that America will become yet more antisemitic in the future as these kids grow up and assume positions of power—or become teachers themselves.
I’d like to point out one more thing: I am not aware of teachers spreading anti-Palestinian propaganda like this, so it’s not as if Shrier is just singling out “her side” (she’s Jewish) for support. This kind of brainwashing, and nearly all the riots on college campuses the past academic year, are anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. It’s not hard to understand why when you realize that Jews are now regarded as white “settler colonialists”, and Palestinians as “oppressed people of color without agency:—a trope that has been instilled in both college and secondary-school students for a long time. This trope is spread by DEI organizations.
41 thoughts on “Teachers brainwashing students against Israel”
I read Schrier’s piece and got a deep, sinking feeling in my gut—as if the spread of Israel and Jew-hate is as unstoppable as going over a cliff. It seems so hopeless because—while it is a somewhat organized movement—the specific decisions, actions, and teachings are widely disseminated across hundreds of independent school boards. How does one fight against this poison except one school board at a time? The pattern of demonization of Jews and their institutions has a certain familiarity to it.
1. I applaud the use of the word “brainwashing” here. It is in fact accurate.
IMHO “Brainwashing” is heretofore perceived as a flippant reactionary invective towards (maybe) “ideas I don’t like”. But at some point, there is no other word for the phenomenon.
One book which backs this up – which I was oblivious of ’til now – is :
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism — A Study of “Brainwashing” in China
Robert J. Lifton
W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York
1961
This book refers to :
Brain-washing in Red China
New York, Vanguard Press, 1951
Edward Hunter
IMHO if I have to get one of those it’d be Lifton’s. Astonishing stuff. A quote from chapter 1:
“[the word “brainwashing”] was first used by an American journalist, Edward Hunter, as a translation of the colloquialism hsi nao (literally, “wash brain”) which he quoted from Chinese informants who described its use following the Communist takeover. “Brainwashing” soon developed a life of its own. ”
(This excerpt had a stray apostrophe, maybe from scanning-to-text so please check the original).
Also consider :
洗腦 : xǐnǎo, hsi nao, “wash brain”
————-
2. “lessons that often divide civilization into “oppressed” and “oppressor.” ”
This originates in Paulo Freire’s The Politics of Education and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
3. “… demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional learning classes.”
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is not what it sounds like on the surface – IMHO maybe a sort of local, home grown guideline in manners. It is an expensive project run now by CASEL (Collaborative for SEL) that goes back at least to John Fetzer’s Fetzer Institute – an unapologetically New Age theosophical institute. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence is the current engine.
Forgot to add this term:
ideological remoulding
I think it is in Lifton’s book. Basically a euphemism for brainwashing/thought reform.
And transgenderism, and climate, and god knows what else.
ffs.
One of these things is not like the others…
+1
It really pisses me off, when the global issue of climate change is shoved into the bucket of leftist bullshit – just to push away the issue and make another quick buck while polluting.
Agree. It’s really noticeable here on the B.C. coast. Winters were colder and wetter 60 years ago and summers weren’t as hot.
Do you think China cares that it’s warmer on the BC coast, though, when it wants to dominate the world? Absent a supra-sovereign government that makes Paris Net Zero targets militarily binding instead of self-determined and aspirational — meet them or we’ll invade you with our supra-national army and destroy those power plants and steel mills — what is the point of teaching climate science to schoolchildren? If they grow up and use their indoctrinated knowledge to impose draconian emissions reductions on their own country — the only one they can influence — while Asia takes up the economic slack and more so, how have they done any good in the world by impoverishing themselves?
Teaching the settled climate science is fine — it sounds perfectly legitimate to me — , as long as we also teach about collective action problems like over-fishing, to inculcate the sense of futility in calling for one’s own country to take action when none of its rivals do. (That is an important life lesson. Children are acutely aware of the unfairness in having the rules of a sport flouted with impunity by their opponents when they are pledged to obey them.) But that would be too much realpolitik for their tender minds. And when Asia eventually gets climate religion, it will impose the painful emissions reductions on us through its trade dominance soon enough. No need to be hasty.
Yes this is an excuse to teach children not to whine while their parents make a quick buck to feed and clothe them while it lasts. But that is the rational individual strategy when faced with a collective-action game: withdraw from the game.
@Leslie Yes there’s a real tragedy of the commons with climate change. China and India are doing squat.
I don’t know what can do about it.
@Leslie MacMillan
I have to seriously disagree with your stance.
Life is full of collective action problems and problems with freeloaders. Yet they are solved to varying degrees. People like you, those who state that because it’s a collective action problem it will never be perfectly solved and therefore hopeless, are just as bad as those who refuse to cooperate in the first place.
The world could have moved towards creating a block that actually works towards emission reduction and uses their market power to isolate polluters and slowly draw them in as the economic incentives shift as the cost associated with pollution increases. Europe plus the US plus volunteer nations from the rest of the world might have been enough – 10 or 15 years ago. Instead Obama signed Paris after so much dithering, just for Trump to wreck it.
Climate change is a collective action problem just like debt is. In both problems, a majority of the collective isn’t even born yet. Still you, Leslie, seem to ignore that you are already starting to pay for polluting. Migrants flood the US like the did Europe before and you have to use resources for border control and policing. Climate change puts real pressure on the livelihood of billions – which puts nations on edge and exacerbates conflicts. You think Israel/Gaza/Lebanon is bad? Look to Egypt, where the government is slowly running out of money to keep bread prices low enough for over 100 million people – their own land becoming less and less productive and imported grain more and more expensive. What happens, when Egypt’s money runs out? Maybe due to piracy in the Red Sea drying up the Suez fees?
Will Americans fail to clothe and feed their children if they don’t pollute? Don’t be ridiculous. Minor reductions in wealth inequality would more than compensate. Your “rational individual strategy” is even more ridiculous. You want to withdraw from the global ecosystem? No. The US will have to pay and is paying already. I have already alluded to the indirect security costs payed in dollars and blood. There are more direct costs as well. How much does an extra cat 4 hurricane per year cost? How much does it cost to provide water to the south west after you have sucked dry the ground water? How much does the fight against tropical diseases cost, if half a dozen or more southern states are affected?
Yes, there will always be freeloaders – for any system and for any problem. Communities have found various methods to deal with those freeloaders. Claiming it’s impossible and therefore we should join the dark side feels a lot like piling on another trillion the debt.
Please understand that anthropogenic climate forcing is real. The evidence and argument is overwhelming. I’ve been following the question in the top scientific literature since 1972, scene I took a graduate-level course with he quaint title: Biophysical Ecology.
Your comments on climate seriously detract from some of your otherwise possibly thoughtful statements.
The question is how much this trend contributed to Harris’ defeat.
That is very bad. 😒
These teachers should be suspended or dismissed immediately.
IMHO the teachers are also potentially being manipulated – perhaps brainwashed – in “professional development” meetings, by higher-ups, etc..
I think that could be by design – to let teachers be perceived as the enemy, when they are being pressured from all sides.
This is a concerning reality. Recently, in Seattle on the Pacific Northwest coast, a conference was held for educators focused on teaching for social justice, with significant endorsements from various teacher unions, including those in Portland, Oregon. The conference discussed how to incorporate ideologies aligned with pro palastaian propaganda into the classroom, including the use of specific books and materials. There was even a session on how to argue that such content is not antisemitic.
For years, I have been advocating in my Oregon district for Holocaust education. Which is absent, thankfully a bill was passed that will make the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides mandatory starting in 2026. However, with teachers having the freedom to select their own reading materials, we have concerns about how this might be leveraged to introduce pro palastaian propaganda controversial or harmful content into classrooms.
Additionally, Oregon has seen a growing trend of requiring educators to integrate social justice themes into all subjects, including math, science, and physical education. This shift could provide an avenue for introducing divisive or harmful ideologies under the guise of social justice.
If we do not address these developments, we risk heading toward a dark age in antisemitism,
It all driven by the DEI apparat, as many people have pointed out before. To fight this malady, we need to uproot DEI.
I would think we need litigation. Big big bucks litigation.
Yes, Anna, by the roots and salt the earth it grew in.
spacibo for all your work in this field,
your fan,
D.A.
NYC
Home schooling fundamentalists and deeply religious private schools used to do the same thing — inject Biblical illusions or Christian morality into every single subject from math to history. This was, of course, in addition to copious amounts of specifically religious education.
What motivated this heavy-handed indoctrination wasn’t just a desire to produce good little Christians, but a conviction that these children were going to have to go out and combat Evil. A secular society managed by Satan and his minions, with wicked progressive ideas designed to sow doubt, confusion, and apostasy among the peoples of earth, required not just scholars, but warriors. The world was divided between good and evil and the battle is upon us.
And here’s the progressive secular equivalent, with the Holy. Disciples of Social Justice pulling the same crap on young students. The enemy this time isn’t just the religious fundamentalists but the moderate middle and classic humanist liberals. It’s not brain-washing if it opens the eyes to Truth.
Not to bring up the election again, but few things galvanize parents & grandparents to a sense of purpose like the growing sense that they’re losing the children to Bad Ideas and they’re not supposed to do anything about it but step aside. You go after their kids – they’re pissed off and stay pissed off. Beware.
Ugh this is depressing.
Like being in an anti-war march in 1970 and a contingent is going: “Kim, Kim, Kim IL Sung/Revolution by the young.
Oh don’t forget “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh!”
Before my time slightly but stupid is eternal.
Did those kids, later, repudiate all that? Will today’s kids repudiate woke when they’re old enough? “I”m not young enough to know everything”- Oscar Wilde.
D.A.
NYC
I keep thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do.
“Free public education” is one of the first major entitlements stood up by collectivists. Horace Mann was the progenitor, active in the first half of the 19th century. He inculcated Prussian-style rigidity and brought into existence the “whole word” method of teaching reading, an unmitigated (to this day) disaster.
His activism and legal achievements resulted in the “factory-style” education, with its aims of social efficiency rather than “mere learning.”
Most importantly, he ushered into axiomatic status the principle that the state will and must provide education. This has led to a massive orthodoxy in pedagogic philosophy and political bureaucracy.
The success of his project can be gauged by the outrage and disbelief that “separation of state and education” raises.
Yet that is the answer. Get government out of education.
Like many atheists I used to be more opposed to home schooling fearing for the socialization of children and the danger they’ll become Christ Clappers for Jesus.
Like in Madrassas in some other countries.
I’ve bent on this position having learned what they’re teaching in public schools.
Yes, the specter of thousands of private schools indoctrinating religion …. or other irrational philosophies … is powerful. I think that battle has to be won in the marketplace of ideas.
Not by giving up and saying “let the state take care of it.”
The presence of Mann’s “public education” for 200 years as a monumental default has hindered the marketplace of ideas. The most damaging aspect: it seems to be “free,” and that triggers soft (or hard) greed. But it ain’t free. It is camouflaged by the “general existence of taxation/inflation.”
Ironically it seems the problem in this case is not too much control by the state, but too little. Activist teachers, with some institutional support from their unions and at least acquiescence from individual school boards, are driving this and implementing it at a local level, not the state. If states exerted more granular control over curricula and teaching materials, not to mention teacher training, this would be much less likely to happen. Why? Because instituting such viewpoints and curricula would need to take place in public, and be subject to public debate and be ultimately reliant on public support, in a way that the under-the-counter, sleight-of-hand initiatives described by Shrier are not.
The fundamental error is state schools. I don’t mean “the state of Iowa.” etc. I mean the apparatus of statism, AKA government, any level of government.
Applying more control over toxic control (government schools) is doomed and does not get to the root. GovSchools establish an orthodoxy, just by being the coercive state.
I’m saying (and perhaps President Trump and Team will say) divorce schooling from TheState.
Sorry, but that’s just a faith-based assertion that has no connection to evidence. The evidence shows that literacy levels in purely voluntary or home-schooled environments chug along at levels between 40 and 60 per cent without ever getting higher (there are statistics in England, Scotland, the Netherlands etc. on this going back to the 16th century). It wasn’t until states began to become involved in ensuring (which means providing) free and compulsory elementary education in the late 19th century that levels of literacy reached, within a few decades, the high 90s per cent. This happened across the developed world, and has been replicated in the 20th century in the developing world. Literacy is the foundation of all other educational achievement. “Getting the state out of education”, especially in a society with such abysmally low levels of social trust as the United States, is a recipe for a return to levels of literacy that countries like Malawi and Bangladesh would now be ashamed of. How long do you think the United States would remain a world power in those circumstances?
+1
100%, yes. The government schools are great at indoctrinating fascism and marxism; after all, the government holds the purse strings, so it behooves schools to bow to the state. Are all teachers trying to indoctrinate kids? Of course not, but the ones who are do have the power to influence a lot of minds.
I was on a public school board for 8 years. I’m strongly in favor of home schooling.
“Get government out of education.”
Oh okay, so who’s going to do it then?
Homeschooling? Apart from it being ridiculously inefficient, how many parents do you think are capable of teaching their children the full range of maths, science, history, languages etc. that they could and should learn at a decent high school? Remember, this is the US you’re talking about, where people have difficulties finding Europe on a map.
If not homeschooling, who would run the schools? Churches? Political parties? Corporations? Which one of these would you expect to be better than the state to provide a high-quality, non-ideological education, and why? If you had a variety of providers with widely varying curricula, how would you make sure that high school graduates from different providers have worldviews that are compatible enough that they can even talk to each other, let alone work together in the same team? It’s not like polarization isn’t enough of a problem in the US.
Some short term improvements include vouchers, school choice, and charter schools. One major, immediate improvement would be the elimination of public school teachers’ unions. Their incentives are not aligned with those of the students and parents, plus they wield too much political power.
Perhaps it is the social scientist in me, but I can’t help wondering when anecdotes became such convincing evidence about groups at large, including among academics? These events are certainly egregious, but do they allow us to draw conclusions about the 4 million or so teachers in the USA? Isn’t that what the left has been doing with rare police killings used to condemn police at large, rare anti-female crimes leading to claims about patriarchal society and toxic maleness, and numerous other over-generalizations to support their perverse view of society? To read some of the reactions to the recent terrible anti-Semitic events in the Netherlands, you would think that we’re witnessing the return of the Holocaust rather than the barbaric actions of a few hate-filled perpetrators and other idiots caught up in the moment who just want a fight, not uncommon around football in Europe and elsewhere. And horrible though this violence against Jews is, should we not expect that the reaction by the majority will in fact be horror and the consequences harmful to communities that promote such violence? Violence is at a different level that should not and I suspect will not be tolerated, but when it does happen, one “benefit” is akin to a major benefit of free speech … it is better to know that hate exists and respond than to keep it hidden in the dark. It can also serve to drive a wedge between extremists and moderates within communities. Recent clashes between Hindus and Sikhs in Canada, for example, led one Hindu temple to suspend its priest for promoting violence.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read about “ethnic studies” in California. It’s developed a new antisemitic twist recently but the whole “settler colonialism” idea is a divisive concept.
In Canada it’s been weaponized in the unproven accusation of unmarked graves in Kamloops, BC. The natives don’t want anyone to excavate the area to establish once and for all what’s going on. There are no graves IMHO but it’s been a massive circus pushed by the Trudeau government. Trudeau doesn’t need proof, just trot out “settler colonialism.”
I’ve heard Abigail S. on this and read a bit of it – honestly it makes me too angry and these days I have to manage my rage portfolio conservatively and with calm.
I am, however, very glad PCC(E) has the asbestos suit and welding mask to approach these horrible infernos of stupidity head on.
Thx boss, kudos.
D.A.
NYC
As a New Zealander, this crap is also factually incorrect. When NZ was settled the indigenous Maori were not genocided, and are now >17% of the population and much much larger than pre-settlement.
Not to mention the decimation of wildlife there by the Maori and the huge amounts of deforestation they did using fire to clear land for agriculture or to drive animals to hunt. Not exactly living in harmony with nature.
But do remember, Nukefacts, that genocide is the word of the moment. Look how the Israelis have more or less wiped out the population of Gaza (/s), according to the fan kiddies of Hamas around the world. And, the most ridiculous example, the British cyclist bloke who decided he’d do much better in races identifying as a woman and was outraged when the cycling organisation banned that sort of thing, saying hysterically, “…you’re committing genocide on trans people.” FFS!
I’m a school teacher who has been fighting Republican accusations that we are “indoctrinating kids” against their values.
Now I have Democrats making essentially the same accusations. Almost certainly just as false.
We’ve finally reached the point that the two sides are indistinguishable.
You have to be on some crusade to save the minds and hearts of kids to be around them. Our whole education system is just waiting for some fanatic to be insidious. They work against the system and try to turn the vulnerable against anything they feel is a threat to their path.
I read Schrier’s piece and got a deep, sinking feeling in my gut—as if the spread of Israel and Jew-hate is as unstoppable as going over a cliff. It seems so hopeless because—while it is a somewhat organized movement—the specific decisions, actions, and teachings are widely disseminated across hundreds of independent school boards. How does one fight against this poison except one school board at a time? The pattern of demonization of Jews and their institutions has a certain familiarity to it.
1. I applaud the use of the word “brainwashing” here. It is in fact accurate.
IMHO “Brainwashing” is heretofore perceived as a flippant reactionary invective towards (maybe) “ideas I don’t like”. But at some point, there is no other word for the phenomenon.
One book which backs this up – which I was oblivious of ’til now – is :
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism — A Study of “Brainwashing” in China
Robert J. Lifton
W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York
1961
This book refers to :
Brain-washing in Red China
New York, Vanguard Press, 1951
Edward Hunter
IMHO if I have to get one of those it’d be Lifton’s. Astonishing stuff. A quote from chapter 1:
“[the word “brainwashing”] was first used by an American journalist, Edward Hunter, as a translation of the colloquialism hsi nao (literally, “wash brain”) which he quoted from Chinese informants who described its use following the Communist takeover. “Brainwashing” soon developed a life of its own. ”
(This excerpt had a stray apostrophe, maybe from scanning-to-text so please check the original).
Also consider :
洗腦 : xǐnǎo, hsi nao, “wash brain”
————-
2. “lessons that often divide civilization into “oppressed” and “oppressor.” ”
This originates in Paulo Freire’s The Politics of Education and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
3. “… demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional learning classes.”
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is not what it sounds like on the surface – IMHO maybe a sort of local, home grown guideline in manners. It is an expensive project run now by CASEL (Collaborative for SEL) that goes back at least to John Fetzer’s Fetzer Institute – an unapologetically New Age theosophical institute. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence is the current engine.
Forgot to add this term:
ideological remoulding
I think it is in Lifton’s book. Basically a euphemism for brainwashing/thought reform.
And transgenderism, and climate, and god knows what else.
ffs.
One of these things is not like the others…
+1
It really pisses me off, when the global issue of climate change is shoved into the bucket of leftist bullshit – just to push away the issue and make another quick buck while polluting.
Agree. It’s really noticeable here on the B.C. coast. Winters were colder and wetter 60 years ago and summers weren’t as hot.
Do you think China cares that it’s warmer on the BC coast, though, when it wants to dominate the world? Absent a supra-sovereign government that makes Paris Net Zero targets militarily binding instead of self-determined and aspirational — meet them or we’ll invade you with our supra-national army and destroy those power plants and steel mills — what is the point of teaching climate science to schoolchildren? If they grow up and use their indoctrinated knowledge to impose draconian emissions reductions on their own country — the only one they can influence — while Asia takes up the economic slack and more so, how have they done any good in the world by impoverishing themselves?
Teaching the settled climate science is fine — it sounds perfectly legitimate to me — , as long as we also teach about collective action problems like over-fishing, to inculcate the sense of futility in calling for one’s own country to take action when none of its rivals do. (That is an important life lesson. Children are acutely aware of the unfairness in having the rules of a sport flouted with impunity by their opponents when they are pledged to obey them.) But that would be too much realpolitik for their tender minds. And when Asia eventually gets climate religion, it will impose the painful emissions reductions on us through its trade dominance soon enough. No need to be hasty.
Yes this is an excuse to teach children not to whine while their parents make a quick buck to feed and clothe them while it lasts. But that is the rational individual strategy when faced with a collective-action game: withdraw from the game.
@Leslie Yes there’s a real tragedy of the commons with climate change. China and India are doing squat.
I don’t know what can do about it.
@Leslie MacMillan
I have to seriously disagree with your stance.
Life is full of collective action problems and problems with freeloaders. Yet they are solved to varying degrees. People like you, those who state that because it’s a collective action problem it will never be perfectly solved and therefore hopeless, are just as bad as those who refuse to cooperate in the first place.
The world could have moved towards creating a block that actually works towards emission reduction and uses their market power to isolate polluters and slowly draw them in as the economic incentives shift as the cost associated with pollution increases. Europe plus the US plus volunteer nations from the rest of the world might have been enough – 10 or 15 years ago. Instead Obama signed Paris after so much dithering, just for Trump to wreck it.
Climate change is a collective action problem just like debt is. In both problems, a majority of the collective isn’t even born yet. Still you, Leslie, seem to ignore that you are already starting to pay for polluting. Migrants flood the US like the did Europe before and you have to use resources for border control and policing. Climate change puts real pressure on the livelihood of billions – which puts nations on edge and exacerbates conflicts. You think Israel/Gaza/Lebanon is bad? Look to Egypt, where the government is slowly running out of money to keep bread prices low enough for over 100 million people – their own land becoming less and less productive and imported grain more and more expensive. What happens, when Egypt’s money runs out? Maybe due to piracy in the Red Sea drying up the Suez fees?
Will Americans fail to clothe and feed their children if they don’t pollute? Don’t be ridiculous. Minor reductions in wealth inequality would more than compensate. Your “rational individual strategy” is even more ridiculous. You want to withdraw from the global ecosystem? No. The US will have to pay and is paying already. I have already alluded to the indirect security costs payed in dollars and blood. There are more direct costs as well. How much does an extra cat 4 hurricane per year cost? How much does it cost to provide water to the south west after you have sucked dry the ground water? How much does the fight against tropical diseases cost, if half a dozen or more southern states are affected?
Yes, there will always be freeloaders – for any system and for any problem. Communities have found various methods to deal with those freeloaders. Claiming it’s impossible and therefore we should join the dark side feels a lot like piling on another trillion the debt.
Please understand that anthropogenic climate forcing is real. The evidence and argument is overwhelming. I’ve been following the question in the top scientific literature since 1972, scene I took a graduate-level course with he quaint title: Biophysical Ecology.
Your comments on climate seriously detract from some of your otherwise possibly thoughtful statements.
The question is how much this trend contributed to Harris’ defeat.
That is very bad. 😒
These teachers should be suspended or dismissed immediately.
IMHO the teachers are also potentially being manipulated – perhaps brainwashed – in “professional development” meetings, by higher-ups, etc..
I think that could be by design – to let teachers be perceived as the enemy, when they are being pressured from all sides.
This is a concerning reality. Recently, in Seattle on the Pacific Northwest coast, a conference was held for educators focused on teaching for social justice, with significant endorsements from various teacher unions, including those in Portland, Oregon. The conference discussed how to incorporate ideologies aligned with pro palastaian propaganda into the classroom, including the use of specific books and materials. There was even a session on how to argue that such content is not antisemitic.
For years, I have been advocating in my Oregon district for Holocaust education. Which is absent, thankfully a bill was passed that will make the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides mandatory starting in 2026. However, with teachers having the freedom to select their own reading materials, we have concerns about how this might be leveraged to introduce pro palastaian propaganda controversial or harmful content into classrooms.
Additionally, Oregon has seen a growing trend of requiring educators to integrate social justice themes into all subjects, including math, science, and physical education. This shift could provide an avenue for introducing divisive or harmful ideologies under the guise of social justice.
If we do not address these developments, we risk heading toward a dark age in antisemitism,
The whole social justice thing needs to go.
The anti-semitic indoctrination in classrooms — from K12 to universities — is a serious problem. We wrote about it on our substack:
https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-how-to-beat-campus-antisemitism
https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/history-repeats-itself
We have more examples of this from USC.
It all driven by the DEI apparat, as many people have pointed out before. To fight this malady, we need to uproot DEI.
I would think we need litigation. Big big bucks litigation.
Yes, Anna, by the roots and salt the earth it grew in.
spacibo for all your work in this field,
your fan,
D.A.
NYC
Home schooling fundamentalists and deeply religious private schools used to do the same thing — inject Biblical illusions or Christian morality into every single subject from math to history. This was, of course, in addition to copious amounts of specifically religious education.
What motivated this heavy-handed indoctrination wasn’t just a desire to produce good little Christians, but a conviction that these children were going to have to go out and combat Evil. A secular society managed by Satan and his minions, with wicked progressive ideas designed to sow doubt, confusion, and apostasy among the peoples of earth, required not just scholars, but warriors. The world was divided between good and evil and the battle is upon us.
And here’s the progressive secular equivalent, with the Holy. Disciples of Social Justice pulling the same crap on young students. The enemy this time isn’t just the religious fundamentalists but the moderate middle and classic humanist liberals. It’s not brain-washing if it opens the eyes to Truth.
Not to bring up the election again, but few things galvanize parents & grandparents to a sense of purpose like the growing sense that they’re losing the children to Bad Ideas and they’re not supposed to do anything about it but step aside. You go after their kids – they’re pissed off and stay pissed off. Beware.
Ugh this is depressing.
Like being in an anti-war march in 1970 and a contingent is going: “Kim, Kim, Kim IL Sung/Revolution by the young.
Oh don’t forget “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh!”
Before my time slightly but stupid is eternal.
Did those kids, later, repudiate all that? Will today’s kids repudiate woke when they’re old enough? “I”m not young enough to know everything”- Oscar Wilde.
D.A.
NYC
I keep thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do.
“Free public education” is one of the first major entitlements stood up by collectivists. Horace Mann was the progenitor, active in the first half of the 19th century. He inculcated Prussian-style rigidity and brought into existence the “whole word” method of teaching reading, an unmitigated (to this day) disaster.
His activism and legal achievements resulted in the “factory-style” education, with its aims of social efficiency rather than “mere learning.”
Most importantly, he ushered into axiomatic status the principle that the state will and must provide education. This has led to a massive orthodoxy in pedagogic philosophy and political bureaucracy.
The success of his project can be gauged by the outrage and disbelief that “separation of state and education” raises.
Yet that is the answer. Get government out of education.
Like many atheists I used to be more opposed to home schooling fearing for the socialization of children and the danger they’ll become Christ Clappers for Jesus.
Like in Madrassas in some other countries.
I’ve bent on this position having learned what they’re teaching in public schools.
And very happy I don’t have any children to worry about it. Dog owners don’t face these choices – just walkies or treats.
To wit:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
I can assure you he is indeed a very good boy. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Yes, the specter of thousands of private schools indoctrinating religion …. or other irrational philosophies … is powerful. I think that battle has to be won in the marketplace of ideas.
Not by giving up and saying “let the state take care of it.”
The presence of Mann’s “public education” for 200 years as a monumental default has hindered the marketplace of ideas. The most damaging aspect: it seems to be “free,” and that triggers soft (or hard) greed. But it ain’t free. It is camouflaged by the “general existence of taxation/inflation.”
Ironically it seems the problem in this case is not too much control by the state, but too little. Activist teachers, with some institutional support from their unions and at least acquiescence from individual school boards, are driving this and implementing it at a local level, not the state. If states exerted more granular control over curricula and teaching materials, not to mention teacher training, this would be much less likely to happen. Why? Because instituting such viewpoints and curricula would need to take place in public, and be subject to public debate and be ultimately reliant on public support, in a way that the under-the-counter, sleight-of-hand initiatives described by Shrier are not.
The fundamental error is state schools. I don’t mean “the state of Iowa.” etc. I mean the apparatus of statism, AKA government, any level of government.
Applying more control over toxic control (government schools) is doomed and does not get to the root. GovSchools establish an orthodoxy, just by being the coercive state.
I’m saying (and perhaps President Trump and Team will say) divorce schooling from TheState.
Sorry, but that’s just a faith-based assertion that has no connection to evidence. The evidence shows that literacy levels in purely voluntary or home-schooled environments chug along at levels between 40 and 60 per cent without ever getting higher (there are statistics in England, Scotland, the Netherlands etc. on this going back to the 16th century). It wasn’t until states began to become involved in ensuring (which means providing) free and compulsory elementary education in the late 19th century that levels of literacy reached, within a few decades, the high 90s per cent. This happened across the developed world, and has been replicated in the 20th century in the developing world. Literacy is the foundation of all other educational achievement. “Getting the state out of education”, especially in a society with such abysmally low levels of social trust as the United States, is a recipe for a return to levels of literacy that countries like Malawi and Bangladesh would now be ashamed of. How long do you think the United States would remain a world power in those circumstances?
+1
100%, yes. The government schools are great at indoctrinating fascism and marxism; after all, the government holds the purse strings, so it behooves schools to bow to the state. Are all teachers trying to indoctrinate kids? Of course not, but the ones who are do have the power to influence a lot of minds.
I was on a public school board for 8 years. I’m strongly in favor of home schooling.
“Get government out of education.”
Oh okay, so who’s going to do it then?
Homeschooling? Apart from it being ridiculously inefficient, how many parents do you think are capable of teaching their children the full range of maths, science, history, languages etc. that they could and should learn at a decent high school? Remember, this is the US you’re talking about, where people have difficulties finding Europe on a map.
If not homeschooling, who would run the schools? Churches? Political parties? Corporations? Which one of these would you expect to be better than the state to provide a high-quality, non-ideological education, and why? If you had a variety of providers with widely varying curricula, how would you make sure that high school graduates from different providers have worldviews that are compatible enough that they can even talk to each other, let alone work together in the same team? It’s not like polarization isn’t enough of a problem in the US.
There are a lot of alternatives. Some are discussed here: https://www.cato.org/policy-report/julyaugust-2019/libertarian-pioneers-school-choice
Some short term improvements include vouchers, school choice, and charter schools. One major, immediate improvement would be the elimination of public school teachers’ unions. Their incentives are not aligned with those of the students and parents, plus they wield too much political power.
Perhaps it is the social scientist in me, but I can’t help wondering when anecdotes became such convincing evidence about groups at large, including among academics? These events are certainly egregious, but do they allow us to draw conclusions about the 4 million or so teachers in the USA? Isn’t that what the left has been doing with rare police killings used to condemn police at large, rare anti-female crimes leading to claims about patriarchal society and toxic maleness, and numerous other over-generalizations to support their perverse view of society? To read some of the reactions to the recent terrible anti-Semitic events in the Netherlands, you would think that we’re witnessing the return of the Holocaust rather than the barbaric actions of a few hate-filled perpetrators and other idiots caught up in the moment who just want a fight, not uncommon around football in Europe and elsewhere. And horrible though this violence against Jews is, should we not expect that the reaction by the majority will in fact be horror and the consequences harmful to communities that promote such violence? Violence is at a different level that should not and I suspect will not be tolerated, but when it does happen, one “benefit” is akin to a major benefit of free speech … it is better to know that hate exists and respond than to keep it hidden in the dark. It can also serve to drive a wedge between extremists and moderates within communities. Recent clashes between Hindus and Sikhs in Canada, for example, led one Hindu temple to suspend its priest for promoting violence.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read about “ethnic studies” in California. It’s developed a new antisemitic twist recently but the whole “settler colonialism” idea is a divisive concept.
In Canada it’s been weaponized in the unproven accusation of unmarked graves in Kamloops, BC. The natives don’t want anyone to excavate the area to establish once and for all what’s going on. There are no graves IMHO but it’s been a massive circus pushed by the Trudeau government. Trudeau doesn’t need proof, just trot out “settler colonialism.”
I’ve heard Abigail S. on this and read a bit of it – honestly it makes me too angry and these days I have to manage my rage portfolio conservatively and with calm.
I am, however, very glad PCC(E) has the asbestos suit and welding mask to approach these horrible infernos of stupidity head on.
Thx boss, kudos.
D.A.
NYC
As a New Zealander, this crap is also factually incorrect. When NZ was settled the indigenous Maori were not genocided, and are now >17% of the population and much much larger than pre-settlement.
Not to mention the decimation of wildlife there by the Maori and the huge amounts of deforestation they did using fire to clear land for agriculture or to drive animals to hunt. Not exactly living in harmony with nature.
But do remember, Nukefacts, that genocide is the word of the moment. Look how the Israelis have more or less wiped out the population of Gaza (/s), according to the fan kiddies of Hamas around the world. And, the most ridiculous example, the British cyclist bloke who decided he’d do much better in races identifying as a woman and was outraged when the cycling organisation banned that sort of thing, saying hysterically, “…you’re committing genocide on trans people.” FFS!
I’m a school teacher who has been fighting Republican accusations that we are “indoctrinating kids” against their values.
Now I have Democrats making essentially the same accusations. Almost certainly just as false.
We’ve finally reached the point that the two sides are indistinguishable.
You have to be on some crusade to save the minds and hearts of kids to be around them. Our whole education system is just waiting for some fanatic to be insidious. They work against the system and try to turn the vulnerable against anything they feel is a threat to their path.
Thanks for the exposeè