Gov.
Glenn Youngkin
(R-VA) and state Attorney General Jason Miyares should examine how James Madison’s Montpelier and the radical, discredited
Southern Poverty Law Center
may be indoctrinating Albemarle County students with tenets akin to critical race theory.
In a
stunning report
this week, the Heritage Foundation’s Brenda Hafera explains that the county’s contentious and misnamed “anti-racist” curriculum, which already is the subject of two lawsuits describing it (in one parent’s words) as “incubating a culture rooted in grievance, discord, and victimhood,” appears to have been foisted on the schools via a joint effort of Montpelier and the SPLC.
Instead of battling racism, the curriculum appears to be obsessively racialist. Meanwhile, various school officials have fulminated
against “whiteness”
and (reportedly) berated an employee for acting “like a typical defensive white person.” The whole situation sounds toxic.
As Hafera explains, Montpelier actually contracted with the state back in 2018 to partner with the schools in an “anti-racism” curriculum. It sounded oh so reasonable to most people, as this was before much of the nation had taken note of how so many such efforts are pushing the exact opposite of colorblindness. Instead of teaching that people should subsume any perceived racial differences, these ideologically charged “trainings” instruct students repeatedly that racial distinctions and group “identity” must be emphasized so that past grievances can be counteracted.
In the Albemarle County program, Montpelier used state funding to develop the curriculum, which in numerous respects seems taken directly from SPLC’s left-wing initiative to teach what it calls “hard history.” Heritage’s Hafera cited SPLC guidelines saying its goal is to “help teachers construct a coherent narrative about how slavery and white supremacy are inescapably and intricately woven into the American story.”
It gets worse.
“The SPLC’s radical curriculum is not simply about teaching slavery,” Hafera wrote. “It’s also about forming students into activists. For example, the curriculum recommends that
students in grades K through two
‘examine how power is gained, used and explained. They should describe what it means to have power and identify ways that people use power to harm and influence situations’ and be able to ‘contrast equity and equality, identifying current problems where there is a need to fight for equity.’”
How in tarnation is that sort of power politics appropriate for kindergartners?
The
whole article by Hafera
is eye-opening and disturbing. She concludes that “Montpelier, the home of one of Virginia’s most exceptional Americans, is engaging in efforts that distort American history and undermine Virginia citizens. This, along with Montpelier’s exhibits, is a disservice to Madison’s legacy.”
As soon as Youngkin took office in 2022, he famously
issued an executive order
banning “inherently divisive concepts, like Critical Race Theory, and its progeny.” Grant or no grant, it appears as if the Montpelier-SPLC-Albemarle County curriculum probably runs afoul of that order.
Either way, pushing such controversial theories on young children surely runs afoul of Montpelier’s founding mission, which was to honor Madison and the Constitution he did so much to craft — not to teach angry, racially charged lessons to schoolchildren that would encourage them to hate.
The entire situation is a travesty and an insult to people of good will. Local, state, and
even national officials
should explore every option to get offensive materials out of Virginia schools and to make the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier, intervene to bring James Madison’s foundation back to its original, noble calling.
