Penna Dexter

As we entered 2021 many communities, in an effort to expedite the reopening of schools, began to prioritize K-12 educators to receive the coronavirus vaccine. Yet teachers’ unions in some of the nation’s most populous cities still argued for keeping schools closed. Many schools capitulated, promising instead to reopen for in-person instruction in the fall. Parents, doing their best to coach their kids through — in some cases — an entire year of remote learning, learned what their children were being exposed to. What many parents saw online were lessons in something called anti-racism that seemed to encourage more racism — against white people. History classes described a society founded on slavery, white supremacy, and bias against people of color. Students themselves were held responsible and were labeled either oppressors or oppressed. Gender fluidity was presented as scientific fact that must be catered to. Parents began to learn that this indoctrination is something called Critical Race Theory. In districts across the nation, they began to get educated and to oppose it. With parents descending on school board meetings and getting CRT bans passed at the state level, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, took notice and began to wonder: ‘Where did these parents get their information?’ In a recent column at Townhall.com, attorney, researcher, and writer Jane Robbins reports on a prominent item of business on the agenda of the NEA’s “Representative Assembly” which met last week. “NEA,” she writes, “has vowed to go after organizations that it believes are instigating the uprising.” Representatives “adopted a business item pledging the union ‘to research the organizations attacking the educators doing anti-racist work.” Ms. Robbins says the NEA plans to “fight fire with fire.” That NEA would target organizations like Heritage Foundation shows it’s either dismissive of or clueless about the real concerns American parents have. It’s parents across the political spectrum, awake to CRT, who have the power to save their kids, and the country.