This week, the state Board of Regents continued its assault on New York education by pushing the teaching of revisionist DEI history ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebration — at a time when so many public schools fail at any teaching.
In this case, the panel approved the rollout of 40 videos to be shown in “Revisit the Revolution” kiosks at state parks starting in February.
The videos, along with other narrative material, discuss Indigenous and enslaved people who fought alongside the American colonists only be betrayed at the Revolutionary War’s end.
One video on the treatment of Native Americans ends with the beyond-dubious epitaph: “Since its founding, the United States has never upheld a treaty made with an Indigenous Nation.”
Far worse, next year the Regents want a similarly-slanted new curriculum guide for teaching about the nation’s founding distributed to schools statewide.
Although the videos will be available online, SED officials plan to request more funding to cover the cost of student field trips to the state parks-based kiosks.
Utter madness.
After approving the revisionist videos, several Regents fretted about suffering another round of criticism similar to what happened when they mandated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies.
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In pushing the DEI curriculum, Chancellor Lester Young Jr. reportedly said, “it’s important we maintain the courage to do what’s right.”
That’s rich coming from the leader of a panel that has retreated from maintaining higher graduation standards and tougher state assessment tests.
Courage would be standing up to the teachers unions and demanding accountability, not hiding test results that show ever-more schools are failing.
Courage would be confronting the plague of chronic absenteeism and pandemic-related learning loss, not deciding to quit tracking it.
What the Regents offer instead is self-indulgent arrogance: Pushing ideology on kids and schools while betraying their fundamental mission of ensuring New York’s children have access to an excellent education.
It’s not the lunatics running the asylum, it’s the criminals running the courts.