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California District Pays Nearly $170k For Curricula Teaching Children To Become Leftist ‘Co-Conspirators’

This California school district isn’t just indoctrinating children, it’s teaching them how to be leftwing revolutionaries.

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California’s Jefferson Elementary School District will be the first district in the United States to implement ethnic studies courses in all of their elementary and middle schools, and their new curriculum for this includes teaching children to become leftwing “co-conspirators.” The district’s curriculum that brings new state requirements for high school into the earliest grade levels was created by Community Responsive Education, a leftwing organization run by critical race theorists at San Francisco State University.

The district, which is located in Daly City, California, and serves roughly 6,000 students across ten elementary schools and four middle schools, has agreed to pay the organization nearly $170k in taxpayer money.

Public Dollars to Make Leftist ‘Co-Conspirators’

District documents note that the radical curriculum will be piloted in the 2021-2022 school year. It was presented by Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, a professor at San Francisco State University and the co-director of Community Responsive Education. The presentation was given during a school board meeting in July 2021 and began with a land acknowledgment that described the Ohlone people, not the United States, as the rightful stewards of the land that JESD is on. 

Tintiangco-Cubales, who uses the pronouns “she/her” in addition to “siya,” a Filipino word that means both male and female, explained that she is “a settler, an uninvited visitor” on Ohlone land before going on to note that JESD is America’s first district that “is committed to rolling out Ethnic Studies in all of their middle and elementary schools.” In late 2021, California passed a state mandate that “ethnic studies” be taught in all public high schools.

The presentation explains that the curriculum is designed to “eliminate racism and other forms of oppression” by “creating, learning, listening, uncovering, and sharing of the his/herstories, experiences, and current conditions of those who have been racially marginalized, underrepresented, and/or silenced.”

The curriculum is divided into four different units, labeled “self,” “systems,” “social movements,” and “solidarity.” Each unit is accompanied by a corresponding set of “essential questions” and “enduring understandings.”

One such “enduring understanding” under the “self” unit reads: “Learning about our own identities and those of others allows us to become more empathetic and builds our capacity to go from being allies to co-conspirators/accomplices in the elimination of oppression.”

Teaching Kids America Is Inherently Evil

The second unit condemns America as institutionally racist and teaches children that white supremacy is entrenched in American systems such as education. The unit also indicts white people as the beneficiaries of racism, claiming that they use the system of white supremacy to maintain their “wealth, power, and privilege.” Additionally, students learn that “institutional racism is the way in which white supremacy continues to oppress non-white people.”

Children are then turned into ambassadors for critical race theory at the end of the unit when they are tasked with creating a public service announcement that “denounces systems that are oppressive,” which could, according to the curriculum, include American education systems if not America itself. 

Directly after accusing America’s systems of being fundamentally racist and condemning white people as beneficiaries of racism who maintain white supremacy, teachers tell children how to mobilize and engage in “transformational resistance” in the third unit.

The unit focuses on social movements and blatantly aims to turn students into racially motivated leftist revolutionaries. Tintiangco-Cubales notes that special emphasis is placed on “the notion of transformational resistance.” Students are asked “How do we build social movements to create change and impact society?” 

The final unit teaches children how they can “pursue true liberation” through an understanding of “solidarity, liberation, collective action, intersectionality, and dismantling systemic oppression.” Children are also taught that “To achieve true liberation, we must actively and collectively work together to dismantle various systems of oppression (ie: institutional racism, white supremacy, etc.).”

Making Children Into Political Agitators

Students’ transformations into leftist activists are completed with their “solidarity praxis project,” where students create a campaign to address a problem in their community. Even the presentation’s imagery leaves no doubt regarding the curriculum’s intent. Each unit is introduced by a cartoon-esque flat art character holding a protest sign.

District Pays Nearly $170k For CRT Courses

Tintiangco-Cubales presented the curriculum on behalf of Community Responsive Education, an organization that offers “professional and curriculum development services for community organizations and educational institutions to begin or sustain the journey of becoming community responsive.”

At a meeting in February 2020, the district agreed to pay Community Responsive Education $40,000 in taxpayer dollars to facilitate the development of Ethnic Studies units and lessons to be piloted in Jefferson Elementary School District,” according to the meeting’s public records.

Then in August 2020, Jefferson Elementary School District unanimously approved a motion to pay the organization $28,502 for “services during the 2020-21 school year to facilitate the development of Ethnic Studies units and lessons to be piloted in Jefferson Elementary School District,” according to the school board meeting’s minutes. 

The district also voted to pay Community Responsive Education an additional $100,000 “for Ethnic Studies Curriculum and Teacher Development for both Middle and Elementary school teachers beginning on July 1, 2021 until June 30, 2023” for a total of $168,502.

The concept of “community-responsive education” from which the organization draws its name, just like “culturally responsive education,” is effectively a rebranding of critical race theory. The curriculum from Community Responsive Education is predicated on a belief that U.S. institutions are defined by racism and that collective action must be taken to dismantle them, a core tenet of critical race theory. 

Furthermore, CRE, just like CRT, takes the traditional Marxist dichotomy that pits the oppressed proletariat against the oppressive middle class and reapplies it to race, thereby designating moral value, victimhood, and collective guilt on people as a result of immutable characteristics. 

A Dangerous Model for Extremists In Education

As America’s first school district to implement ethnic studies curriculum in all of its elementary and middle schools, Jefferson Elementary School District could have significant influence on other ethnic studies curricula across California and America. 

Without sacrificing any of the usual extremism inherent to CRT, this curriculum may mark a shift towards a more strategically oriented method of instruction. Rather than simply indoctrinating children with the beliefs of systemic racism, privilege, and oppression, this course is blatantly designed to create the next generation of extreme leftwing activists operating from these false premises. 

This model will not be specific to Jefferson Elementary School District. In fact, a report from Parents Defending Education found that Community Responsive Education has a foothold in a variety of other school districts, including six others in California and one each in New York, Texas, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. 

A number of other California districts have also taken steps to indoctrinate children with CRT. One Bay Area school district promoted materials that told children to use witchcraft against people who say “all lives matter.” The Los Angeles Unified School District lied in claiming that CRT is not taught in its K-12 institutions despite hosting a critical race theorist who taught staff to “challenge whiteness” and inviting the director of UCLA’s Center for Critical Race Studies to give input on their ethnic studies curriculum.

This overt leftwing takeover of government schools has led some California parents to support a bipartisan campaign that would enshrine school choice and tether taxpayer dollars to students. Should it receive the required number of signatures and pass a vote, the initiative would allow parents to take their children — and their money — out of schools that prioritize indoctrination over education.

Neither school board President Clayton Koo nor Tintiangco-Cubales responded to requests for comment.