The Essex Westford School District has a page online titled “Resources for Teachers/Professional Staff.” One resource offered to teachers is from the political organization “Zinn Education Project.” The Zinn Education Project is an organization known for attempting to overhaul America’s education system to incorporate identity politics such as racial equity and gender ideology into the curricula taught to students.
Resources offered by the organization include “Rethinking Ethnic Studies” and “Repair: Students Design a Reparations Bill.” The organization states for the reparations resource: “In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people.” The organization also has an initiative to “abolish Columbus Day.” The Zinn Education Project states: “When the school curriculum celebrates Columbus, children are taught that it’s OK for white people to rule over peoples of color and that militarily powerful nations can bully weaker nations.”
The school district provides the following description of the Zinn Education Project resource: “The Zinn Education Project site includes downloadable lesson plans and articles organized by theme, time period and reading level for middle and high school instructors. The materials are based on the history that is explored in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States.”
The school district promotes the Zinn Education Project for teachers.
Categories: Education, Society & Culture
OMG!!!! How can we stop this massacre of our historical American values. Such topics can be pursued post elementary education if a student so chooses. Let’s get back to basics!!
This has been going on at the EWSD for years and most school systems across the state. Like BLM, Howard Zinn is a Marxist (historian). Education in America now serves the purpose of providing a political education. One that serves the interest of international entities such as UNESCO and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The NEAF worked in partnership with UNESCO and Harvard to creat a workbook to socialize children into fulfilling the goals the United Nations, which are inherently centered on global socialism and the retribution of all wealth and resources to create more equal outcomes within and among their member states. One NEA website even pushes the concept of global citizenship, with the UN being the global leader. This is why Social, Emotional Learning and school equity programs were incorporated so aggressively. They are the tool being used to turn students into Marxist activists in service of the UN agenda. Global equity is a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal.
Parents are so overwhelmed and tired, they don’t have the moral fortitude to fight this. We are headed into another Dark Times unless others speak truth, just as forcefully.
Essex parents fought valiantly for a while, that’s true. But then they seemed to just fade away and succumbed to the extremists who have more power & more dirty money to steamroll over everyone. It’s sad. Nearly 250 years of freedom & we’re going down just like every other “empire” before us. Alas, as the founding fathers predicted…we were never any different than those who came before us.
Enjoy your subservience to your totalitarian government, woke morons. You had a good thing going and were all far too stupid to realize it. And if you think for a second the likes of the vast majority of you foolish foot soldiers are eventually going to be calling the shots in this? Lol! You will NOT be. Keep on taking those orders. You’ll need the practice.
Indoctrinate, inoculate, mutilate: sounds like a plan.
There are alternatives, such as the small private Catholic school in my parish, St. Paul’s. Enrollment is up this year. I wonder why?
https://stpaulscatholicschool.org
https://holytrinitry.vermontcatholic.org
Yes, they are not your children, the liberal left has a stake in the indoctrination
parents beware, your kids are not getting an education, Wake up people !!
School choice would fix this in a hurry. Many suspect most parents do not agree with all this silly stuff that has replaced what should really be focused on in education.
However the NEA and VEA will fight against true school choice until the last soldier
is standing. Real school choice means that the parent selects the best school environment for the needs of their child and family… this would surely change the dynamics from what we are witnessing today. Remember, it all starts with the kids.
Had similar goings on in our High School. Wasn’t in the curriculum but the teacher was illegally photocopying Zinn’s book. Garage into student minds.
Why did Columbus come here? Was he the first one here? They won’t teach that either. When the freaks of misery educators come out of their MK Ultra, corporate eugenist, deception over Truth, university training; they too will need re-education and trained how to do research without using Google. By then, they will all be replaced by AI robots. Carry on!
“Why did Columbus come here? Was he the first one here?” Actually that is taught in Early Modern America in 8th and 11th grade. I know because I teach it. The curriculum is approved by the state of Texas, not exactly a bastion of liberalism. Can you explain how I am a brainwashed teacher when I am following a curriculum approved by the Texas State Board of Education?
This article specifically pertains to a school district in the State of Vermont. And whilst Texas has thus far maintained its status as a “red” state, one of the points of bombarding Texas with ILLEGAL immigrants by the millions is to change that.
Also, what city or county do you teach in there? I ask as both Austin and Houston (major population centers) are indeed bastions of liberalism.
Me thinks you’ve been outed. That’s proper grammar, correct?
The Texas State School Board isn’t exactly a conservative stronghold either.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/texas-state-board-of-education-prageru-curriculum
So… why did Columbus come here? Was he the first?
Would you agree to let parents choose the education programs they believe best benefits their kids?
Wouldn’t having that choice take politics out of the education equation once and for all? …regardless of where you stand as a teacher?
Are you required to attend so called anti-racism trainings?
Kathleen, I teach in Vermont and would never give a piece of personal information to someone as terminally online as you. I can read the article just fine, what you don’t understand is that textbooks and curriculums are made by like five companies. They don’t make a New England book for liberals and a Southern book for conservatives, they make one book. If that book doesn’t meet the approval of school boards across the country, then it doesn’t get printed. So yes, the McGraw-Hill book that I use was approved in Texas. The rest of your nonsensical diatribe is only taking place in your imagination. I was wondering if you were going to say something like, “Texas is actually blue, because your example didn’t fit my narrative” and you didn’t disappoint. If you read that history book, you would find that its not conservatives vs liberals, its about Americans, warts and all.
Chris, please address my diatribe while you’re at it.
Would you agree to let parents choose the education programs they believe best benefits their kids?
Wouldn’t having that choice take politics out of the education equation once and for all? …regardless of where you stand as a teacher?
H. Jay Eshelman, I read your posts and will say that we are in the same corner on most topics. However, the IS still school choice in Vermont and it was made a whole lot easier this year. Parents can choose to home-school their children and remove them from the politically driven public school systems. Basically, all parents need to do is let the AOE know they intend to home school their children. No more Minimum Course of Study requirements from year-to-year. No more Home Study Year End Assessments required.
All that is required is that the parents are willing to make sacrifices for the good of their children. Yes, it may mean giving up a second income but what’s more important, second vehicles, multiple TVs and devices, extra disposable income . . .to the well being of your children and some control over what their heads get filled with? We sacrificed those things to home school our children and now our grandchildren. It takes sacrifice and commitment. Sadly, although the numbers are slowly growing it seems that majority of parents just aren’t willing . . . it’s just easier to “send them to school.”
In all likeliness, Vermont is going to continue move further from school choice that closer to it as long as the Vermont-NEA (15,000 members of the teachers union) have their way in influencing the legislature. The bottom line is that parents in Vermont do have a choice, albeit not an easy one. I am reminded of ne of John F. Kennedy’s favorite quotations, which he attributed to Dante, was that “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” Our public schools are in moral crisis, so don’t remain numeral and not expect to suffer the consequences.
Bill in the NEK: I’ve been discussing (a euphemism, to be sure) school choice and school governance for years on this forum. As a former public school board director and liaison between businesses and schools (Workforce Investment Board) I understand the various education governance relationships in front of us as well as anyone.
The Vermont legislature, lobbied by various special interest groups (VTNEA included), is surely moving away from school choice. In fact, the odds of a political change of direction are slim to none, because the majority of the Vermont electorate is employed by the very same special interest groups seeking to perpetuate the system. It’s all about the money.
Yes, home-schooling is gaining ground. But precious little because parents can’t afford to subsidize the public-school monopoly through taxes AND make the investment necessary to afford the alternatives.
Our public schools long ago passed the moral crisis phase. The public schools are today as totalitarian and dangerous as any banana republic you can imagine. And because voters (including parents) now represent the third and fourth generation of those indoctrinated by public school dogma, they are either ignorant, or indifferent, or both, to what is happening to them and their children.
My comment to Chris – the Vermont teacher – was simply meant to illicit a response for public consumption. And, because I expected silence (crickets as we like to say), I wanted to take the opportunity to, yet again, expose that silence. But that, in no way, should indicate my neutrality (which is what I suspect you meant by ‘numeral’).
Public schools cannot be rehabilitated. It is the communal system in which they operate that is dystopian. Parents should do whatever it takes to get their children out of the public school system. And the sooner the better.
In education, there used to be a requirement called “basic competencies.” Have you ever seen a curriculum test from the early 1900’s? In the work place, I was frequently floored by young coworkers who lacked common knowledge and common sense. Over decades, the lack of skills and basic knowledge continues to plummet in the United States. All by design. The owners of this country only want obedient, compliant, woefully ignorant serfs to control from youth to death. Do not question fake authority – in fact, don’t question anything that doesn’t fit the approved controlling narrative. It is all fabricated deceptive lies to distort reality and keep people ignorant and programmed. All thanks to the multi-layers of bureaucratic controllers and programmers. Texas? It is not the bastion of freedom anymore and many who live there say it’s going to Hell, much to their chagrin.
Ms. Casey: There are ‘basic competencies’ in Vermont today. And despite the fact that we pay as much to educate Vermont’s K-12 students as it costs to send those students to college WITH room and board, more than half of Vermont’s public-school graduates don’t meet them. Why?
Because the education system has become a monolithic pit of greed and dysfunction, controlled by a self-appointed centralized authority insisting that equity (equal outcome) is more important than equality (merit based equal access). Meritocracies are being replaced by ideocracies forced upon us by ‘those who torment us for our own good and do so with the approval of their own conscience’.
But “who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?” ― O.W. Kenobi
H. Jay Eshelman, as I stated, I have been following your comments in these forums for a couple of years, now, and I agree with your positions. That being said, I certainly was not directing my closing comments on neutrality (apologies for spellcheck running wild) toward you. Rather my comment was directed at the very group of people you mentioned those that “are either ignorant, or indifferent, or both, to what is happening to them and their children.”
I also agree that our public school system is beyond rehabilitation for the reasons you listed. There is some hope in the NEK as long as the administrations of Lyndon Institute and St.Johnsbury Academy continue to retain their independence, although that is now an uphill battle.
Thanks for your input here, it is always appreciated!
Please take a look at http://www.speakvt.org. We’re a new group of parents and citizens trying to organize the effort to reform our schools and to support home schooling. Don’t give up! These are our kids!
So according to the Zinn Project, “… militarily powerful nations can bully weaker nations.” This is exactly what the Comanche did to the Apache and other Naive Americans to establish the Comanche nation.
This needs to be stopped in our educational establishments !
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
I prefer to say that the “public Servants”, have become the “Public Tyrants”.
If parents could choose the teachers they want and the curriculum they want taught this problem would go away. Taking way peoples freedom has consequences.
I know that I was not a very good student, but if the teachers that I had were teaching me that “When the school curriculum celebrates Columbus, children are taught that it’s OK for white people to rule over peoples of color and that militarily powerful nations can bully weaker nations.” that must have gone over my head, because all I got out of our lessons on Columbus was that he was the first European to set foot on North America, that he was a Spaniard sailing under an Italian commission, and it was a harrowing crossing, oh and his ships were the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. I did always wonder though if the indigenous North Americans had developed trans oceanic travel before the Europeans, and conquered Europe, would the people of Europe celebrate Crazy Horse Day ? 🙂