Stanley Kurtz: ‘Action Civics’ Curriculum Is ‘Alinskyite Community Organizing’ with Critical Race Theory

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Dr. Susan Berry

One of the nation’s key researchers of the Common Core standards and the revised Advanced Placement U.S. History framework warns the proposed “action civics” curriculum will teach America’s students how to community organize for leftist causes with a woke education program based on Critical Race Theory.

Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explained to Breitbart News the new “education threat” is “a one-two punch that combines Alinskyite community organizing with woke education based on Critical Race Theory.”

He observed that, in this new “action civics” framework, “teachers organize their students for demonstrations and lobbying on behalf of leftist causes.”

“Action civics also lets students volunteer with leftist community organizations and participate in their advocacy for course credit,” Kurtz noted. “If you layer ‘culturally responsive’ woke education on top of that, teachers are forced to indoctrinate students with ideas like ‘systemic racism,’ ‘white privilege,’ and ‘gender fluidity.’ Teachers also have to go through training sessions to cure them of their ‘whiteness.’”

In 2018, for example, former President Barack Obama, a longstanding community organizer, championed student anti-gun activists, Black Lives Matter Critical Race Theory proponents, and illegal aliens for pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that would promote the left’s desire to overturn traditional American culture.

“This generation — of Parkland, of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter — embraces that duty,” Obama wrote at Time magazine. “If they make their elders uncomfortable, that’s how it should be.”

As Breitbart News reported:

Obama praised the young liberal students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for tackling the NRA after their school was attacked by a deranged gunman and for successfully persuading retailers and businesses to stop selling some types of guns.

Kurtz explained that, six years ago, a new civics law in Obama’s home state of Illinois mandated teachers “organize student protests and lobbying expeditions for political causes.”

He elaborated on how such legislation forces a marked shift in what and how students learn:

It also mandated “service learning,” where students work for political advocacy groups for course credit. Then, just this year, Illinois imposed something called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.” These are a set of woke requirements that force teachers to indoctrinate their students with ideas like “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “gender fluidity.” Teachers are also encouraged to undergo training to remove their “white fragility.” If you combine these two new mandates, then teachers will be forced to organize protests against America’s supposed “systemic racism.” Between the two mandates, one for action civics and one for “culturally responsive teaching,” students will be forcibly indoctrinated and trained to become radical leftist activists for woke causes.

Kurtz observed the current “Educating for American Democracy” initiative, a “bipartisan” effort reminiscent of the disastrous Common Core standards, is being led by “the very same people who see Illinois as the model of how to teach civics.”

“These people want to see ‘action civics’ and ‘culturally responsive teaching’ in every state,” he warned. “The public needs to see the trick and stop their state legislatures from passing woke action civics mandates under the guise of restoring traditional civics.”

The plan hearkens back to the Obama administration’s joint venture with Common Core financier Bill Gates, one pushed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The scheme successfully lured 45 states – with the enticing “carrot” of federal competitive grant funding – into signing on to the set of academic standards that was billed as “rigorous” and able to shrink the achievement gap between white students and those of color.

However, once parents rebelled as they saw they could no longer help their children with the strange “Common Core math,” Republicans saw the issue had grown “toxic,” and only served to separate the establishment politicians from the constitutionalists who pushed for the federal government to get out of the education business altogether.

Kurtz said the same dynamics are afoot with “action civics.”

“This is a ruse, a plan to get conservatives to buy into woke action civics just because they’ve slapped the appealing label of ‘civics’ on what really isn’t civics at all,” he asserted.

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