Some teachers are out on the edge, condoning political violence and using students for activist ends.
On May 1, thousands of Chicago Public Schools students left class for a special field trip. You see, it was May Day, the communist holiday, and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) had them out to do something called “a day of civic action” to protest the Trump administration and attend political rallies. So rather than not learning in the classroom (just two in five Chicago Public Schools students read at grade level, and one in four have required math proficiency), they were in the streets learning to hate the president.
Maria Heavner, a first-grade teacher at Funston Elementary School, made a video to promote the May Day event for the CTU. The May Day rallies, she says, are “a really cool way for us to show students that they can take their power back.” She didn’t say who had taken power away from the six-year-olds in her charge, or what power first graders are even supposed to have (except the power to better themselves through education, which, as noted above, not many seem to be exercising).
The CTU is a hard-left organization and a political power in Chicago (the current socialist mayor was once a CTU lobbyist). Check out some of the materials it recommends members teach in the classroom. But it hardly stops with CTU. Some school districts in North Carolina and Wisconsin were forced to cancel classes after more than half of their teachers announced plans to play hooky to attend protests.
Across the nation, teachers’ unions and, increasingly, individual teachers have become radicalized. After a part-time teacher from California tried to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April, at least two other teachers were disciplined for social media posts lamenting his failure. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, teachers and school officials did some of the loudest online cheering.
Perhaps it’s because of the water they’ve been swimming in for years: Left-Wing unions, often with the blessing of radical school boards. In Los Angeles, radicals from a Hispanic group that calls itself a “revolutionary organization” are trying to gain seats on the city’s United Teachers Los Angeles. The UTLA infamously demanded conditions such as shutting down charter schools, defunding police, a statewide wealth tax, and Medicare-for-All government-run health care be met before returning to classrooms during COVID-19.
In Virginia, the Fairfax County School Board recently decided school wouldn’t honor Veterans’ Day, but would be out for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” formerly known as Columbus Day.
And the education schools from which young teachers emerge have elevated ideology over actual teaching. Training future teachers to “decolonize the curriculum” isn’t going to help reading scores, but it will create activists happy to use their students as political tools.
If you don’t think teachers and administrators bring their radicalism into the classroom, consider the mobs of students who attacked ICE agents in Los Angeles in January, encouraged by schools themselves to skip that day and go cause trouble in the streets.
Also last January, the Saint Paul Federation of Educators President, Leah VanDassor, sent a letter to union members urging a “day of action,” actually a day of inaction, since she wanted them to stay home from work. It was time union teachers “choose what side they are on,” she thundered. Of course, the parents who entrust their children to and pay the salaries of VanDassor’s union teachers wouldn’t get to choose which side they were on.
Parents and kids: they’ve been left out of teachers' and teachers’ unions' calculations since at least COVID-19, when the nation’s largest teachers’ unions were influencing Biden administration recommendations on school reopenings.
Last year, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Education.” It was well-intended, and perhaps it will gradually make a difference. In the meantime, it’s exactly the kind of thing to spur radicals to teach their students to hate him.
Michael Chamberlain is the Director of Protect the Public’s Trust. He served at the U.S. Department of Education from 2017 to 2021.