There’s been a culture war brewing in New Jersey for years, with the education system on the frontlines.
This conflict concerns the ongoing discussions and actions being brought to light during New Jersey school board meetings. These started out as grassroots blogging by parents on social media forums and have quickly escalated into raucous verbal confrontations over “gender policies and protections, sex education and parental rights.”
As a Feb. 2 article in NJ Monthly notes, policy changes related to LGBTQ+ acronyms, definitions and gender-segregated classes or activities have sparked outrage across the board. Parents are infuriated at the injection of political agendas into the school system, while leftwing advocates continue to say efforts to protect “the safety and well-being of young people across the state” are still not enough.
Among those standing in opposition is Andrew Mulvihill, a conservative member of the state school board who is outspoken about the absurdity of new policies being proposed in the state’s schools. In the same article Mulvihill said, “Our students can’t pass a standardized test. And this is our priority?”
Mulvihill isn’t alone in his frustration. Greg Quinlan, a 65-year-old retired nurse who now serves as president and founder of the Center for Garden State Families, asserted, “Parents have been blackmailed and actually terrorized that if they don’t (allow their child to transition), their child will commit suicide. The point is that mutilating your body to change genders doesn’t fix anything.”
Time and again, examples of the detrimental leftist agenda come to the surface, and it’s clear how little these people care about a student’s ability to thrive academically. But perhaps the most damning evidence to this cause is New Jersey Education Association’s (NJEA) support for hiring teachers who are themselves barely able to read or write.
As outlined in this Feb. 5 article from The Federalist, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an act into law on the first day of the year that ripped down basic literacy requirements for would-be teachers. Act 1669 went into effect with “huge support from the New Jersey Education Association” whose leaders are no doubt thrilled at the prospect of new members and utterly apathetic about the steep drop-off in education quality that will follow.
NJEA, it seems, is a fan of the illiterate leading the illiterate.
While this particular culture war is especially explosive and unsettling, it’s far from the only point of contention. Nor is the Garden State the only jurisdiction being confronted with the effect that focusing on social justice teachings inevitably takes. Another example of this comes from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).
In the “Windy City,” the union has been pushing for even more curricula featuring “antiracist and social justice-focused materials” during a multi-month negotiation with the city, from a Feb. 5 article from Real Clear Investigations.
CTU continues to make outrageous demands for more money to fund its radical goals, even though as of this year a review of scores shows that, “fewer than a third of students in grades three through eight are proficient in reading” in the entire school system.
While these debates are no doubt tiresome to participate in and frustrating to read about, the increasingly vocal opposition demonstrates a wave of sensibility is sweeping from coast to coast. No longer do social justice, virtue signaling, critical race theory or gender theory belong in the classroom.
The nation is growing to comprehend that America’s children deserve better, and that is always something to fight for.
