Pete Hegseth explores how the left's agenda is a 'deadly virus' infecting kids in new Fox Nation special
Fox Nation's 'The Miseducation of America,' hosted by Pete Hegseth, is available to stream beginning Tuesday, Jan 18
Due to COVID-19, for the past few years, many of America’s children were forced into virtual classrooms. Parents, looking over their shoulder, came to a stark conclusion: American education is off the rails. To the chagrin of many educators, parents have been in the classroom in ways they were never previously allowed. Lesson plans were posted online, classes recorded, discussions in the open, and textbooks lying on the kitchen table—instead of remaining in classrooms.
The most evident revelation was the theory our kids are being taught about race in the American classroom. Seemingly out of nowhere—accelerated after the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020—concepts like "white privilege" and "systemic racism" and even a new founding date for America, the year 1619, were splashed across computer screens across America.
Critical Race Theory had fully arrived (often masked as "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"), along with a full-on attempt to redefine gender, infuse climate fatalism, and turn our children into activists. These types of revelations were powerful because they were not the result of media exposure, but instead a bottom up, and often apolitical, recognition by parents that the very foundation of American education had taken a radical turn.
It was the "woke" versus the newly awake. You might call it the COVID-(16)19 effect.
Fairfax County parents protest outside a school board meeting. Photo credit Tyler O'Neil/Fox News Digital. (Tyler O’Neil/Fox News Digital)
A virus descended on our country at seemingly lightning speed, and with it, a slow-rolling educational takeover was revealed. The tip of the iceberg, you might say. Then, with parents finally questioning what was happening in their kids’ classrooms, certain quarters of the news media, like FOX News, took notice in a substantial way. It wasn’t just one parent's experience—it was everywhere. Not just in Portland and New York, but in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Local and national parents’ organizations were formed, and state legislatures readied bills to ban critical race theory.
The question is—what happens next? How can parents and patriots reassert control over curriculums and classrooms full of poisonous indoctrination?
MICHIGAN DEMOCRATS CRITICIZED AFTER DISMISSING PARENTS' ROLE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
The key to answering these questions is getting to the bottom of how progressives—and now cultural Marxists—targeted and then transformed our schools over the past 100 years. What we see today in our classrooms is not an aberration born of the 1960s; but instead, the end state of a progressive project to control what every American student learns.
You see, before there was "Critical Race Theory" there was "Critical Theory" – a Marxist philosophy that landed at our shores in the 1940s, and quickly took root in our most prominent teachers’ colleges.
Before there was a formal high school system in the United States, there was the "Gary Plan." A planned school system, started in Gary, Indiana, devoted specifically to removing God from the classroom and training kids only for a vocation – instead of critical thinking.
Parents and community members attend a Loudoun County School Board meeting, just 40 minutes from Fairfax. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
Before our current pledge of allegiance, which proudly states "under God," there was another pledge of allegiance – written by an avowed Socialist – that was created to remove God from school and create a different allegiance that progressives could exploit (and later, discard).
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Before there were leftist teachers’ unions – who today control every aspect of government schools and are an appendage of the Democrat Party – the National Education Association was a conservative teachers association that, get this, circulated Bible verses and classic literature.
Before there were "social studies" and "political science" – all inventions of the progressives – American students learned Latin, read the Bible, studied the Great Books, and received a real liberal arts education – "liberating" their minds to be free thinkers.
The public school system (better known as "government schools") we have in America – in nearly every way – has been crafted over 100 years ago to be fully progressive. I got a progressive education, and so did you. We didn’t know better, and most Americans still don’t. Today’s cultural Marxists like it that way—and are using this control to push theories like anti-racism, gender fluidity, and climate obsession on our youngest kids.
No wonder the COVID-(16)19 moment was so jarring for patriotic parents; most never saw it coming. But the progressives did because they know the power of the classroom. They understand what Abraham Lincoln once said, that "the philosophy of the school room in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next." Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., used to be the exception, now Marxist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is the rule.
If we hope to save America, it starts first with God, then with the family, and finally—in the classroom. We need to abandon government schools all together – they are a lost cause – and fight for full educational choice for parents, especially toward schools – like classical Christian schools – that proactively advance a REAL liberal arts education.
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This problem and the solution are outlined in a brand new 5-part FOX Nation series entitled "The MisEducation of America." We especially focus on the solution in episode 5.
The series will shock you, outrage you, and hopefully motivate you – to take back our classrooms, and save our freedoms before the minds of our kids are completely stolen from us. The only way to save the future, is to understand the past. I hope you’ll watch.
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