This article was originally published on Daily Kos.
By Alan Singer
In the name of “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the Trump administration will use federal funding to impose its MAGA ideology on American children. In an Executive Order issued by the White House, Trump and his surrogates are accusing public schools of indoctrinating “children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” forcing students to “accept these ideologies without question or critical examination” and compelling them to adopt “identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.” Worse, “young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed.” Without any evidence that this is taking place, the MAGA ideology declares that “These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.”
Public schools and teachers do not do any of these things. As a university-based social studies teacher educator, my colleagues and I stress with prospective teachers that our responsibility is to prepare students to become active citizens in a democratic society. This requires them to become critical thinkers who can evaluate ideas from different perspectives and formulate their own opinions supported by evidence. Goals Trump, MAGA, and Project 2025 want to block.
According to MAGA indoctrination parents trust American schools “to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand,” but they are witnessing schools “Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children” such as “demanding acquiescence to ‘White Privilege’ or ‘unconscious bias” that promote “racial discrimination and undermines national unity,” practices that violate “longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law” and usurp “basic parental authority.” Schools are supposedly “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females.”
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Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.