Protect

When it comes to educating children, I am all for exposing them to different ideas and points of view. I want my children to learn to look at the world from different angles, evaluate, and determine for themselves what they believe is true.

What I'm not okay with is using education as a vehicle for forcing an agenda on kids.

Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters isn't okay with this either, and has been working intensively to keep textbooks with woke content out of his state's public schools. 

Some believe that Walters' actions are inhibiting students' right to learn and explore. Oklahoma State Representative John Waldron comments, “In the marketplace of ideas, we’re gonna have access to fewer ideas in the forms of textbooks for our students. He is shutting down this marketplace and narrowing it down to only the choices he approves of. That kind of political oversight over free ideas does not belong in a democratic society.”

But where Waldron sees narrowness and tyrannical oversight, I see a person who is out to protect children. 

These children are sitting down to learn math, not Critical Race Theory. They don't need to be taking in these controversial ideas as they work on multiplication or learn how to read graphs. This is a curriculum that neither they nor their parents signed up for.

You want to teach Critical Race Theory, fine . . . but say outright that that's what you're going to do and frame it as one way of looking at things, not as the absolute truth. Present it to children who are old enough to understand something about the idea and debate its merits — not by sneaking it into their math books, but through an honest, open conversation.

But we're dealing with something quite different here — with, as Walters said, people who are “on a spiritual warpath for our kids.” They don't play by the rules, they don't want to have a reasonable conversation about it. They want our kids to fall in line with their warped view of the world and are waging an unbridled multi-front campaign to make it happen.

That's why the only option for educators and parents who truly care is to protect — to circle the wagons around our children and push these harmful agendas away, as Walters is striving to do, “Don't allow the left to capture these kids.” It's not undemocratic — it's looking out for the most vulnerable among us.

Someday our kids will be old enough to think critically about things like Critical Race Theory, if they want. For now, focus on protecting them from those who want to take control of their minds. 

Let them learn math.