CounterCurrent: Week of 12/16/24
Some ideas should be entertained and then shown the door. Not every idea that is entertained as a guest should stay for dinner, let alone become a roommate. When it comes to Marxism and its various aliases in education, the idea has not only overstayed its welcome but has gone on to become a landlord of intellectual life in American education. This past week, the House of Representatives passed the Communism in Teaching Act, a first step to evict Marxism from the schoolhouse. By eliminating less-than-neutral teaching of Communism from American schools, we re-establish educational sovereignty and begin to repair the country’s moral compass.
Communism is one of those “big ideas” that confronts the core philosophy of the American founding and remains incompatible with it. Since 1776, America’s ideas of individual liberty, limited government, and natural rights have defended against entire worldviews just as the country has faced military threats from abroad and within. For the nation to succeed, the original thirteen colonies had to overcome the centuries-old notions of the Divine Right of Kings. The idea of natural liberty had to overcome the Confederacy’s justifications for slavery, just as foreign policy interests aligned with the founding’s assertions to justify America’s entrance into World War II. Alongside the religious fundamentalism of Islamism, Communism has remained a most formidable and threatening idea to America both at home and abroad. Unfortunately, Communism’s historical horrors are whitewashed in American schools, where Marxism remains an underpinning philosophy.
Just as Communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe in 1989, the New York Times published an article titled “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges.” The article documented the strength of Marxism in higher education and its adaptation—especially in light of the ideology’s economic failures in Europe. At the time, UCLA history professor Johnathan Weiner nicely foreshadowed what was to come in education when he declared, “Marxism and feminism, Marxism and deconstruction, Marxism and race—this is where the exciting debates are.” Back in 1989, the New York Times called Marxism’s shift from economics to social issues a mutation. What began in colleges and universities ultimately reached the K-12 system.
In higher education, the success of the Marxist mutation is remarkable. This month, after the CEO of a health insurance company, United Healthcare, was shot by a gunman with an animus toward “corporate America,” professors lauded the violence. Julia Alekseyeva, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania and self-avowed “socialist and ardent antifascist,” praised the killing on social media. Marxist professors have influenced leftwing movements, education professionals, and high politics. Bill Ayers, the University of Illinois education professor who helped found the Weather Underground, helped raise the future progressive San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. The college campus chaos that has animated universities since 2020 is evidence of the left’s ideological success. Little surprise then that many of our K-12 teachers walk the path for a Marxist-Leninist future with professors like these!
Who teaches your kids matters. Primary and secondary school students spend roughly 1,000 hours a year in class. Maya Phillips, a survivor of Soviet Communism and now a school board member of the San Deigo County Unified School District, described her dismay at the prevalence of rebranded Soviet-style propaganda in California’s new “Ethnic Studies” curriculum. Phillips notes that new “liberated” ethnic studies curricula that place students into matrices of “oppressor and oppressed,” demonize capitalism, portray Zionism as racist, and discuss apocalyptic “class struggle” as if teaching from an old Soviet education playbook.
The fact that this kind of teaching is prevalent in America’s largest state is bad enough. However, Marxist teaching is not confined to California—it’s nationwide. In Colorado, the Colorado Education Association (CEA), which includes 39,000 teachers, voted to condemn “capitalism” and called for economic “equity.” The language of the CEA’s resolution is familiar, as it stated that the group:
Believes that capitalism inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.
This is a problem. How can public schools be entrusted with educating our students when supposed educators see oppression everywhere, generally view half of America as “fascist” for being Republican or questioning Marxist ideas, and ignore the horrors of Communism’s past and present?
Again, Marxism isn’t just for the teachers in blue states, but red ones such as Utah and Nebraska. The Chinese Communist Party has jumped into the fray through “Confucius Classrooms” programs that have reached over 170,000 American students in 34 states. Stepping back and surveying America’s education landscape, it is apparent that policymakers and society alike have abandoned America’s classrooms. Thankfully, a small change is on the way.
Strong citizens who cherish liberty start out as strong children learning liberty in the classroom. Empowering strong citizens requires learning about the evil Communism represents. This new bill, sponsored by Maria Salazar (R-FL) and modeled after the Never Again Act addressing Holocaust education, passed with wide bipartisan support. The curriculum would form around materials produced by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and outline Communism’s incompatibility with American ideals.
Policymakers may be waking up to the fact that America’s biggest threats are not just abroad but within our classrooms.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Maximilian Scheffler on Unsplash
