As schools across the country plan lessons for Black History Month, one public school district in Iowa is taking things beyond history and straight to leftist indoctrination. The Ames Community School District has announced a Black Lives Matter “week of action” February 1st to 5th. According to the public school district’s website, students from preschool to high school “will engage in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, a 5-day guide to expand student understanding of the Black Lives Matter at School Principles.”
While the Ames school district claims this BLM week of action “is not formally affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network,” the lessons and resources provided to educators are pulled directly from the BLM organization’s mission and values. These resources are not just for high school students—lesson plans, guided readings, and classroom activities are tailored to secondary as well as elementary and even early childhood education. Among the ideas forced on students—aged four to eighteen—are “queer affirming,” “transgender affirming,” “globalism,” and “disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics.”
Why is the marxism-embracing Left starting so young? According to one “week of action” resource produced by The Children’s Community School in Philadelphia, “at three months, babies prefer to look at faces of their own race,” “by 30 months, most children use race to choose playmates,” and by kindergarten “children show many of the same racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold.” To the Left, your infant is a raging racist and by kindergarten they are already doomed to a life of social injustice.
The “Early Childhood Guide: Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action” curriculum spells out exactly what students as young as four will be taught in Ames public schools through “lessons about structural racism, intersectional black identities, Black history, and anti-racism.”
For each day of the “week of action,” the lesson plan prescribes different topics, readings, and activities:
-On Monday, students will learn about “restorative justice, empathy, and loving engagement.”
-Tuesday’s lesson will be on “diversity & globalism,” with students urged to read “Afro-Latinx” books and then audit their classroom library to judge diversity and learn how they are “impacted or privileged within the Black global family.”
-On Wednesday, the lesson will focus on “transgender, queer affirming, & collective value,” with suggested readings from Red: A Crayon’s Story and Julian is a Mermaid.
-Thursday’s topics are “Intergenerational” spaces “free from ageism,” “black families” “free from patriarchal practices,” plus “black villages” and “the disruption of the Western nuclear family.”
-To cap it all off, Friday’s lesson is on “centering black women and femmes,” complete with an “I Love Myself Affirmation chant.”
In addition, some lessons link to coloring pages designed for each day’s focus, such as a “transgender affirming” graphic that states “everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind… Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one gets to choose for them.”
All of this with the goal, per the sample weekly lesson plan, to “tie to Teaching Tolerance social justice standards” from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC’s “teaching tolerance guide” is titled “Let’s Talk!” Along with tips for teaching social justice, it links to other student-facing resources such as the “Toolkit for ‘Gender Spectrum,'” which is available for grades K-2 and 3-5. There’s also a lesson on “The First Amendment and Freedom of Religion” that has “students discuss whether religious freedom is absolute and if religious freedom requires respect for other religions.”
Slightly older students in middle and high school receive a more in-depth list of the 13 guiding principles for Black Lives Matter, including definitions for additional terms. These include: heterosexism, illustrated as “asking a woman, ‘Do you have a boyfriend or husband?’ when you don’t know her sexuality;” and gender, explained with “there are many different genders.”
Other recommended activities include “taking pictures for our classroom feelings book” and hosting a “guest speaker from local Black Lives Matter chapter.”
The intersectional and blatantly-marxist aims of the BLM organization and this BLM week of action seek to indoctrinate the rising generation from their first days in government schools to graduation. As YAF knows, and has repeatedly highlighted, the indoctrination doesn’t stop in college. The Left’s stranglehold on education at all levels—and exclusion of any counterpoints—does a disservice to America’s young people. Where are the lessons about other renowned black Americans and their uniquely American success stories? Where is the acknowledgement of the innate value of all people?
This situation has little to do with race, and is instead about the Left exploiting race to push a radical worldview and values on students.
The Ames Community School District should take a serious look at the curriculum it embraces and the damaging impact it will have on the students entrusted to their care. Concerned citizens may contact the superintendent running the Ames school district via [email protected] or 515-268-6660.
For additional information or to request an interview contact YAF Spokesman Spencer Brown via [email protected] or 800-872-1776.
