Despite echoing right-wing fears about “indoctrination” in public schools, the Media Research Center doesn’t mind when that indoctrination comes from right-wing sources — and gets mad what that right-wing indoctrination is pointed out. Jorge Bonilla complained in a Dec. 20 post:
NBC News went in on PragerU, depicting the conservative educational nonprofit as scary disinformers threatening to upend our nation’s noble and besieged public education system. But in order to do so, NBC News engaged in active disinformation by depicting a family of entrenched public school advocates as a regular family.
“Critics say the videos are a tool to push a political agenda”, is how anchor Lester Holt introduced the report before going to Antonia Hylton. Hylton, of course, is a known commodity when it comes to education reporting. Meaning, she’s known to take the side of entrenched public school interests against parents.
After opening with boilerplate criticism of PragerU, infinitesimally small quotes of both CEO Marissa Streit and founder Dennis Prager, and a brief chat with a teacher while displaying a deceptive edit of a Candace Owens video on the history of slavery, Hylton turns to a racially diverse family who “say that the broader cultural war playing out in schools is hurting teachers”:
Bonilla did not explain what was supposedly “deceptive” about the Owens clip in question, which according to his transcript was her saying that “After centuries of human slavery, white men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice.” (And, of course, he was silent about Owens’ anti-Semitic leanings.) Instead, he attacked the family quoted in the report as “woke” because they don’t virulently hate public education the way he does:
Mr. and Mrs. Reyes are depicted simply, as “father” and “mother”, as if their professional backgrounds were not germane to the story. I’m certain that Mr. Reyes did not fail to disclose that he is a current member of the Union, Oklahoma public school board and that, likewise, Mrs. Reyes disclosed her past presidency of the Union Schools Education Foundation- organizations that are equally committed to the fundamental tenets of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. A commitment that, perhaps, is evidently reflected in their child’s critique of the racial makeup of the Union Army. And as I wrote this, I imagined General William Tecumseh Sherman being told that the March to the Sea had to be compliant with DEI benchmarks.
These omissions matter because the Reyeses are more than just concerned woke parents protesting “culture war”, but a firmly entrenched part of the local public education machine with the power to impose actual culture war on the students they purport to serve.
Um, isn’t Bonilla pushing a culture war in public schools by endorsing right-wing indoctrination?
Cutis Houck defended a different group of right-wing indoctrinators in a Jan. 23 post:
Last week on MSNBC, The 11th Hour with the not-so-bright host Stephanie Ruhle tag-teamed with leftist Twitter snob, raging hypocrite, and Hack Madness mainstay Judd Legum to throw a hysterical hissy fit over conservatives launching a charter school in South Carolina and Hillsdale College writing grade-school curriculums teaching students to — wait for it — love America.
“And Moms for Liberty pushing their agenda in the classroom. All at the expense of taxpayers. We’ll get into the impact this could have an education,” Ruhle whined in the first of three teases.
While the second tease huffed about the dangers of conservatives polluting young minds by “teaching from the book of MAGA” (even though the 1619 Project is probably fine with her), the third was comical as she demanded viewers not make a late-night drink or go to bed because she would be talking about “[h]ow the far-right…is getting their own MAGA agenda in the classrooms.”
When Ruhle noted that the right-wing Moms for Liberty has infiltrated the school, Houck huffed: “Pants on fire, Stephanie. The school isn’t a Moms for Liberty petri dish. While three Ashley River Classical Academy board members are, to varying degrees, involved with Moms for Liberty, they don’t constitute a majority and none of them are the board chair.” The MRC is unsurprisingly a vocal defender of Moms for Liberty even as voters reject the group’s right-wing extremism. From there, it was whataboutism time:
Worse yet for this clown was that “they’re planning on using…this curriculum called the 1776 Curriculum” from Hillsdale College and “flows directly out of the Trump administration, who had a — a 1776 Commission to establish more patriotic education.”
Nevermind that, for example, New York City Public Schools had a map without Israel, New Jersey was promoting far-left activism in kindergarten, Nebraska’s education department colluded with a Planned Parenthood official on sex ed, and Fairfax County, Virginia schools shelled out thousands for a leftist commentator. Ruhle was almost certainly fine with those acts of politicization in public schools.
But a private school wanting to expose students to a Judeo-Christian education? MSNBC is acting like this is a school that’ll teach, say, Holocaust denialism or use a swastika for its logo (which they aren’t)[.]
In fact, nobody is accusing the Hillsdale curriculum of teaching “Holocaust denialism”; Houck made that up. He then went into full defense mode of Hillsdale and the curriculum:
Legum pigeon-holed Hillsdale in the way you’d expect, blasting President Larry Arnn for having taken the work from President Trump’s 1776 Commission and made it palatable for schools so it “downplays the role of slavery in the United States, downplays discrimination against women, does all sorts of things that, you know, you might — be looked well upon by — by the MAGA crowd”.
[…]They contended the curriculum is based on some pollyannaish commission from the Trump administration that — horrors! — spoke positively of the Founders (since Legum views them and their Founding documents as evil).
If that’s the case, then why did the 45-page report not only call for an education that focuses on how “the American story has its share of missteps, errors, contradictions, and wrongs”, but “have always met resistance from the clear principles of the nation, and therefore our history is far more one of selfsacrifice, courage, and nobility.”
In its section on Jim Crow, the Commission wrote this about America’s backslide[.] […]
On women, the Commission wrote that “women’s suffrage” was one of many “great reforms…that improve[d] our dedication fo the principles of the Declaration of Independence under the Constitution” and that not only men, but also “women…have changed America for the better.”
None of that sounded sexist and segregationist to us! And, Judd, if you’re reading this, we have a question for you: What is a woman?
Pivoting to the school itself, Legum and Ruhle should know classical education isn’t political, as students will not only study history, but other basic subjects like math, reading, science, and even physical education.
Houck censored the fact that Arnn was a key member of Trump’s 1776 Commission, and he didn’t mention that part of the report was largely copied from one member’s attack on public school teachers — meaning that this “classical education” he’s touting is very much political. (Also note Houck’s biased framing of the issue being between “leftist” activists and those who seek a “Judeo-Christian” education.) And one review of the report shows it has a much more pronounced right-wing bias than Houck wants you to believe, particularly on civil rights issues:
The document defends the Founding Fathers against accusations of hypocrisy for tolerating slavery by arguing that it was necessary to allow the practice to continue to build a “principle of consent as the ground of all political legitimacy,” ignoring the rights of enslaved people in the country’s new form of government.
The report laments that “Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil,” arguing that chattel slavery must “be seen in a much broader perspective.”
In an instance of circular reasoning, the authors excuse several of the Founding Fathers’ ownership of slaves by citing their installation of universalist principles into the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as planting “the seeds of the death of slavery in America,” despite this being the same observation from critics who call the Founders hypocrites.
[…]The report equates the enslavement and racist policies advocated for by notable 19th-century white supremacist Sen. John C. Calhoun with modern “identity politics,” arguing that the civil rights movement led to a “system of explicit group privilege” based on race.
The report contends that “identity politics” ultimately “teaches that America itself is to blame for oppression.”
Houck concluded with a personal attack on Legum:
This former Think Progress tool should have a basic understanding of how students need time and space to learn and improve throughout the year as the graduate of the ultra-wealthy Ponoma College and Georgetown Law. He’s supposed to be smarter than all of us, right?
But most importantly, Legum should know because his mother has spent over four decades at the selective Key School, a private school in Annapolis where the cost for pre-K starts over $16,000 and high school (“upper school”) can run north of $33,000.
Houck didn’t explain his own educational background or how it supposed makes him a better human being than Legum.