The Johnston High School weekly newsletter sent out this morning promotes a planned protest tonight against the 1776 Pledge signed by new school board members, who are also being sworn in at tonight’s board meeting.
“Its (sic) unrealistic for us to protest them as members on the school board,” said Waverly Zhao, a co-facilitator for the Community of Racial Equity group. “But I think it is doable to get them to denounce the pledge and move onto something else.”
An article published at the website jhsblackandwhite.com details the planned protest.
“It’s a political organization with a goal to eliminate Critical Race Theory from schools and local communities,” said Esha Bolar, president of Johnston March For Our Lives and state organizer for March For Our Lives. “Things like slavery and Japanese internment camps. Places where America kinda went wrong in the past.”
Wait. Wait. Wait…
“It’s a political organization with a goal to eliminate Critical Race Theory from schools…”
But I thought Critical Race Theory wasn’t in schools?
Bolar called the 1776 Pledge “a little ridiculous.”
Here is the language of the Pledge:
As a candidate and/or current officeholder, I believe:
- The United States of America is an exceptional nation whose people have always strived to form a more perfect union based upon our founding principles.
- Our Founding Fathers – including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – as well as leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the greatest Americans to ever live, and they deserve to be honored as heroes.
- Our children and grandchildren should be taught to take pride in their country, to respect our founding principles of liberty and equality, and to have a sense of American history that is both truthful and inspiring.
- Civics education should focus on the serious study of our founding documents and principles – not coerce students into engaging in extracurricular political action on behalf of contemporary policy positions.
- Our young people should be taught to view one another not according to race or gender, but as individuals made in the image of God.
- Teaching children to hate their country and each other is immoral and deeply harmful to our society and must be stopped.
THEREFORE, I PLEDGE to the voters of __________________ that I will take concrete steps to do the following in our K-12 public schools:
- Restore honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country.
- Promote a curriculum that teaches that all children are created equal, have equal moral value under God, our Constitution, and the law, and are members of a national community united by our founding principles.
- Prohibit any curriculum that pits students against one another on the basis of race or sex.
- Prevent schools from politicizing education by prohibiting any curriculum that requires students to protest and lobby during or after school.
It is interesting to see the school newsletter promoting such a protest and essentially defending Critical Race Theory.
