America’s public education system has drifted dangerously far from its core mission.
Schools exist to educate children — to teach them how to read, write, think critically and understand the world around them. But across the country, many classrooms are increasingly focused on something else entirely. They are bent on turning students into political activists.
Schoolchildren participating in anti-ICE drills and protests are the latest example of political propaganda forced on kids during the school day. In New York, footage shows a preschool teacher encouraging children to talk about how they feel about ICE and President Trump — obviously based on the so-called education they have received from their teacher.
In Boston, a teacher posted a video online showing her elementary students marching around the classroom while holding signs and chanting, “No Donald Trump, No Donald Trump.”
It’s full-on activist training with taxpayer dollars during the school day.
Instead of prioritizing academic excellence, too many teachers, with the support of their principals, are pushing political agendas.
Students are taught to organize demonstrations, participate in protests and adopt ideological positions on complex public issues — things they don’t have the facts or context for, and often before they have even mastered basic academic skills.
School time should be spent learning reading, math, science and history.
Alternatively, it is increasingly replaced with lessons centered on activism, grievance and political identity. This isn’t preparing students for success. It’s distracting them from the very education they desperately need.
National test scores continue to show horrific results, with millions of students across the country not reading or performing math at grade level.
Yet the education establishment seems far more comfortable encouraging students to challenge “systems” than ensuring they can write a coherent paragraph or solve an algebra problem. Activism has become a substitute for achievement.
In some schools, students are asked to develop “social justice action plans” or participate in advocacy projects tied to political causes. Others utilize class time for students to create political posters and support them walking out of class to take to school street corners to protest. In Colorado, multiple school districts canceled classes at all schools based on rumors that teachers and students would be protesting President Trump and ICE, causing them to be short-staffed and unable to hold school. All of this wasted learning time is occurring on taxpayer money intended for true academic instruction.
But it doesn’t end there. The largest teachers union, the National Education Association, is training teachers in “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy” rather than in how to teach reading, writing and math.
The problem isn’t that students are learning about civic engagement.
A healthy democracy requires informed citizens who understand their rights and responsibilities. However, the problem is that a single political party and an anti-American agenda are indoctrinating students without allowing them to gain the knowledge necessary to evaluate issues thoughtfully and independently.
For example, economic policy can’t be debated if basic economics aren’t first understood. Similarly, without understanding history and knowing the Constitution, informed conclusions about government can’t be made.
In other words, students aren’t able to challenge ideas if they have not first been taught the knowledge necessary to analyze them accurately.
Rather than developing the ability to weigh evidence and reach their own conclusions, students are taught to adopt predetermined viewpoints as fact without context or questioning.
That approach weakens democracy, failing to educate and equip students. Alternatively, real civic engagement requires intellectual independence, pushing students to understand competing ideas and evaluate arguments critically. Strong academics, such as reading challenging texts, studying history, mastering math and learning to construct logical arguments, arm students with these skills.
Parents across the country, who expect schools to focus on academics, are increasingly alarmed by this activist agenda. The great parent awakening that took place during the COVID pandemic, when schools were closed to in-person instruction and parents had a front row seat in their child’s remote school session, continues today.
The education establishment, teachers unions and woke activists masquerading as teachers continue to fuel the growing demand for transparency, accountability and greater parental authority in education.
Much to their dismay, they are helping advance education freedom across America because parents and the American public don’t want children captive to far-left political propaganda during the school day, while American education slips further behind on the world stage.
The public education exodus is continuing as parents are voting with their feet, searching for environments where knowledge, rather than activism, remains the central mission of the school day.
America’s schools, funded by American taxpayers, should be producing citizens who can think for themselves — not students trained to echo political talking points. Students need classrooms focused on core knowledge, strong academic learning and gaining a solid understanding of the ideas that built this great nation — not activism.
Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, director of the American Center for Transforming Education and a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
