Michelle Malkin
It's back-to-school season across the country. But in an increasing number of districts, "back to school" doesn't mean back to learning. Under the reign of social justice indoctrinators, academics are secondary to political agitation. Activism trumps achievement.

In Massachusetts, the John J. Duggan Middle School will open on August 25 with a new name and mission. It is now a "social justice magnet school." As a hiring advertisement for teachers explained earlier this year, the emphasis will be on "helping students develop the necessary skills to analyze and synthesize information and to generate empathy by looking at multiple sides of important issues facing the world, be that hunger, water quality, racial barriers, child labor or imbalance of power."

Concise writing, as you can see, is not on the social justice pedagogues' agenda.

Oh, and forget about memorizing times tables or mastering the scientific method. The new principal says the school's primary job is teaching "fairness." Duggan Middle School's junior lobbying factory is "serious about creating 21st century global citizens, and it begins with understanding who we are as members of each of those communities."


At the Crescent Heights Social Justice Magnet School in Los Angeles, children will work on "action projects" tied to the "United Nations Millennium Development Goals." Students will spend the academic year transforming into "agents of change." Yes, they will learn language arts. But basic reading and writing are only a focus of the magnet school, the founders explain, because "we want our students to recognize injustice in their world or the world at large and be able to fully express their outrage, their plan of attack, their progress in this endeavor."

In Chicago, Ground Zero for social justice brainwashing, the Social Justice High School (SOJO), follows a similar mission. Activist teachers openly foster identity politics and systematically undermine individualism. Their specialties: "struggle and sacrifice." SOJO's mission statement sounds like a pot-addled Oberlin College freshman's -- er, freshperson's -- Sociology 101 term paper:


At the Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School, also in Massachusetts, students won't learn math. They'll be taught "social justice math." (Freire was a Brazilian leftist who wrote a social justice teacher's Bible called "Pedagogy of the Oppressed.")

Michelle Malkin


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