June 2023 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

The month of June was first designated “Pride Month” in 1999 by President Bill Clinton. When Barack Obama became president, he modified it to be officially recognized as LGBT Pride Month. When Joe Biden took office, he proclaimed June as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, which leads many to wonder if all letters of the alphabet will eventually be included in the title of this month-long celebration of aberrant sexual behavior.

While allegedly established to honor the right of LGBT persons to live a “dignified life,” a right they already had under existing laws, this recognition has helped foster an ever more extreme agenda. LGBT indoctrination has spread from the colleges and universities throughout K-12 education, and the ideology has co-opted the business sector, politics, the military services, churches, and virtually all other American institutions. Along with this mainstreaming of their narrative, some observers charge that the LGBT lobby has been given special rights.

Pride Month activities

As the month of June 2023 began, parents of students at Saticoy Elementary School in Los Angeles protested a planned Pride Month event, arguing that LGBT issues should be left to parents, not the schools. At issue was a scheduled pride assembly at the school, where, among other pro-LGBT activities, a book about “families” with two moms or two dads was to be read. Many parents objected to the assembly.

MSN.com reported that protestors carried signs reading “parental choice matters,” “stop grooming our kids,” and “leave our kids alone.” Counter protestors waved various iterations of the pride flag. While the protest was reportedly “peaceful” overall, a few heated clashes broke out between the opposing groups.

One parent told a local news station that “the school should not be teaching children about any sexual topics.” Another said he did not bring his children into the world “for a teacher to explain [to them] what is gay — or what two men or two women do. Certain things should be left to the parents to decide whether they want their kids to be exposed to it or not — at least at a certain age.”

In response to the protest, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) issued a statement skirting the issue and tacitly approving of the assembly, which was allegedly “optional” for students:

• As part of our engagement with school communities, our schools regularly discuss the diversity of the families that we serve and the importance of inclusion. This remains an active discussion with our school communities and we remain committed to continuing to engage with families about this important topic. Families are always encouraged to discuss important topics with their children and families may also contact their schools for more information about any school programs or activities.

The statement effectively brushed off parental concerns and intimated that pride events would proceed. But parents and some elected officials are not giving in to the LGBT juggernaut.

At Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, a planned drag show for kids in honor of Pride Month was cancelled by the Pentagon after Florida Representative Matt Gaetz grilled Pentagon officials about the show as well as the drag queen story hours taking place on U.S. military bases around the world.

Breitbart News obtained a screenshot of a post on the Nellis Facebook page announcing the event’s cancellation, which read: “The Nellis LGBTQ+ Pride Council is saddened to inform you that we are no longer able to host our annual Pride Month Drag Show on Nellis AFB. We have received notification that the DoD has directed Commanders not to host Drag events on military installations.”

The base listed other Pride Month events that were not drag shows, including a “Paint with Pride event, a color run at the base gym, a mixer, and a commemoration walk.”

In response to Gaetz’s questioning of military leaders in March, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley claimed they were unaware of any drag queen activities happening on military bases. Gaetz presented news articles proving that such events were indeed taking place, but Austin and Milley said these were “not something that the Department funds.” NBC News.com reported, however, that the drag show “was approved by Air Force leaders,” but that “consistent with Secretary Austin’s congressional testimony,” Air Force commanders “have been directed to either cancel or relocate these events to an off-base location.”

On Twitter, Gaetz and his supporters declared the event’s cancellation a “huge victory” for parents and taxpayers. He tweeted: “Drag shows should not be taking place on military installations with taxpayer dollars PERIOD!”

The fruits of transgenderism

On May 31, an Oklahoma mother filed suit against the Edmond Public Schools after her daughter was attacked by a biological male in the girls’ restroom. Claiming to be a girl, the male student “regularly used the girls’ bathroom” according to the lawsuit.

The mother, Theresa Gooden, states in her suit that her 15-year-old daughter was severely beaten last fall by the 17-year-old male student, and that the school district was aware of him and his claim of being a transgender girl. According to Gooden’s complaint, her daughter suffered “severe physical and mental injuries, severe physical and mental pain, and severe emotional distress.” Reports by other students who witnessed the attack — one of whom tried to intervene — say it was “unprovoked” and that the injured girl was “knocked out clean on the floor” when the male student then began kicking and punching her repeatedly in the head.

The attack happened despite a year-old Oklahoma law requiring that students who claim to be transgender, but who don’t want to use the restroom matching the sex listed on their birth certificates, must use a single-occupancy bathroom or other separate facility provided by the school. While LGBT advocates groused about the unfairness of the law, claiming that it “could cause transgender children to question whether they are safe using the restroom at school,” the incident with Gooden’s daughter shows that the law should be followed. It includes a “cause of action provision” to be used in the event a school does not comply.

According to a report by Conservative America Today, Gooden’s lawsuit “also asserts that the male student had a history of violence — including an October 21, 2022 incident in which Edmond Police were called to remove the boy from the girls’ bathroom and search him for a weapon, as he had allegedly threatened a female student.” The complaint charges that the school district knew of this issue yet continued to allow the student to use the girls’ bathroom.

Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Angela Grunewald admitted that the attack’s occurrence was “hard to explain, but if a parent comes in and enrolls their child as a certain gender, and when you look at that child by all social norms they look and present themselves as that gender, it’s not something that you would question.” She also claimed that birth certificates “are not required” for students to start high school in the district so the school wouldn’t have known about the student’s birth sex. She added that he “is no longer enrolled,” and that one of the school policies broken that day was “for fighting,” as though the incident involved a two-way confrontation.

Twitter users reacted strongly to reports of the attack. One person stated: “The kid needs to be tried for felony assault as an adult.” Another posted: “I’m tired of others getting blamed for what the transgender community is cultivating. They are the aggressors! Transgenders are complaining about violence against them when it is the transgender doing the violence. The transgender women prove daily they are VIOLENT MEN.”

This isn’t the first time such an attack has occurred. Education Reporter described two sexual assaults on female students in 2021 at two different high schools in Virginia “by a male student wearing a skirt.” When the father of one of the girls became emotional at a school board meeting while testifying about his daughter’s attack, he was arrested. It was the catalyst for parents to be labeled “terrorists” by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Rejecting Pride Month

Reports of backlash against Pride Month have been trickling in this June. For example, the city of Hamtramck, Michigan near Detroit, which has a large Muslim population, is reportedly among the first in the country to bar pride flag displays on city property. One city council member contended that “all are welcome,” but questioned why LGBT individuals “have to have a flag shown on government property to be represented.”

The city allows the display of five flags on its property: the American flag, the Michigan state flag, the city flag, the Prisoner of War flag, and one flag representing the nations of origin of the city’s residents. The decision to bar the pride flag does not prevent people from displaying it on their private property.

Even major league baseball has been forced to step back from its enthusiastic support of Pride Month. The Washington Stand reports that the league “quietly ordered teams to ditch their Pride uniforms entirely.”

Controversy has simmered in the MLB for a year over this issue. According to the Stand: “The plans for June [2023] were scrapped at an owners meeting in February, shortly after hockey’s New York Rangers and New York Islanders signaled a massive sea change in the fight over Pride jerseys. Both Big Apple teams announced that they’d be forgoing the tradition in one of the bluest cities in America, shocking owners everywhere. Suddenly, the handful of skaters who’d taken a stand were on the verge of upending the sports’ status quo.”

In an opinion piece posted by The Daily Caller on msn.com, author Grayson Quay described and commended recent efforts by the Right to push back on the radical Left’s agenda.

Quay opined that the “silent majority” must continue to speak up and “contest leftist control of the public square. You can’t win by passively appealing to normalcy when your adversaries control the very definition of ‘normal,’” he wrote. “There’s no ‘silent majority’ coming to save us. It’s time to become the noisy minority. If we ever want to retake power from leftist lunatics, that’s the only way to do it.”

Every day it seems that yet another parents’ group defending children comes to light, whether they are fighting CRT, opposing transgender indoctrination, or attempting to shield kids from pornographic library books. Recently, Education Reporter learned of the Contend Projects, a nonprofit group founded in 2016 to counteract misinformation about when human life begins.

Northern Virginia author, mom, and science buff Brooke Stanton started Contend Projects, along with fellow parent and friend Christiane West. The two define their group as “a secular, nonpartisan, science education nonprofit with the mission to spread accurate information and awareness about the biological science of human embryology and when a human being begins to exist.” Contend’s main goal is to educate people by helping to make “essential scientific facts easily accessible in a simple and positive way, as a matter of basic education and to empower informed decisions.”

In 2020, Stanton and West co-authored a book for children of all ages called When You Became You, which they describe as “a scientifically accurate celebration of human beings.” The book details “one of the most complex and amazing biological phenomena in science” — human development. They explain that they wrote the book because “most people don’t know when a human life starts,” nor do they understand that “a human being is the same human being throughout all stages of [his or her] development.”

When You Became You is a resource that allows parents to teach scientific truth even to young children. An article in Celebrate Life Magazine observed that the book is beautifully illustrated, “inspired by the Carnegie States of Human Embryonic Development and by actual images of preborn human beings at various states.” (The Carnegie Stages can be found by clicking on this link. — Ed.)

While neither woman is a scientist—Stanton graduated from the University of Virginia and holds an MBA in finance from Johns Hopkins University, while West graduated from McGill University and holds an MA in international affairs from Johns Hopkins—both became immersed in the scientific origins of human life when they realized that while people rely on science to guide their actions on many issues, they often fail to do so when it comes to “protecting human lives.”

Celebrate Life reported that a 2008 quote from then-Senator Barack Obama was the catalyst for Stanton and West to deep-dive into the study of embryology. Obama was interviewed at the Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum by a pastor named Rick Warren, who asked: “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” Obama responded: “Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

For five years, Stanton and West studied “human embryonic development and the continuum of human life” under the tutelage of Dr. Dianne Irving, a former career-appointed bench research biochemist and biologist at the National Institutes of Health. According to Celebrate Life, “Irving wrote a doctoral dissertation on human embryo research entitled ‘Philosophical and Scientific Analysis of the Nature of the Early Human Embryo.’”

The women have continued to collaborate with scientists “to ensure that the content produced by Contend Projects is scientifically accurate.” But their experience and study has shown them that “a science background is not necessary to understand their work: ‘Children can learn when a human being begins to exist. You don’t need to be an embryologist to know about the start of our species!’”

The Contend Projects website points out that inaccurate information about the science of human sexual reproduction and embryology “is widespread, and has contaminated public opinion and perception,” with nearly half of all young men and women unable to answer the question: “When does a human life begin?” They cite recent polls showing that 22 percent of 18-29-year-olds believe human life begins at birth, and 17 percent aren’t sure. Yet, say Stanton and West, “decisions about sexual reproduction are serious and have serious consequences,” including decisions made about abortion that are based on “misconceptions and misinformation.”

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade, Stanton penned an op-ed that appeared on Fox News.com. She wrote that “acknowledging the humanity of the unborn is a prerequisite to perceiving the inequities and injustices against them, as well as how these disparities directly set the stage for and advance discrimination during subsequent stages of human development…. Roe anchors and energizes the lie that human development is arbitrary and subjective, that a human embryo or a human fetus is not an ‘individual’ human being.”

While scientists are aware of the real facts, they have been politicized, and all that matters is the manufactured “right to privacy,” even in the post-Roe era. Real science on this topic remains “off limits,” but Content Projects aims to change that by bringing scientific facts into the public square. In addition to their book, the group’s website offers a number of resources, including a Science Quiz that visitors can take to assess their knowledge, and two downloadable Science Guides containing solid information.

Parents battle schools in North Dakota

On the other side of the country, North Dakota mom Cassie Schmidt and her Facebook group Let Parents Decide That are throwing down the gauntlet to public schools in Fargo. Schmidt’s group is locked in a battle with the Fargo school district, which has openly vowed to defy the state’s new law barring them from hiding students’ gender identities from parents.

Signed by Republican Governor Doug Burgum on May 8, HB1522 explicitly prohibits public school boards, districts, and teachers from creating plans or adopting policies concerning “a particular student’s transgender status” or to “conceal information about a student’s transgender status” without first informing parents or obtaining parental approval.

Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Rupak Gandhi defiantly told Fox News: “We will not openly out any student because of one law if we know that that’s going to cause harm to that child.” He added that the district “should continue to advocate for students who identify as transgender.”

For Schmidt, this is the crux of the matter; that schools believe they have a right to take the place of parents, and that school boards and officials know better than parents. She spoke at a recent school board meeting, asking rhetorically, “Whose kids are these? Do they belong to you as a school board? Do they belong to Fargo Public Schools or is each parent’s child ultimately the decision-maker in their family over what is allowed and what is safe for that child?”

Another parent, concerned dad Brad Shaffer, also spoke at the school board meeting. He later told Fox & Friends First TV viewers that the school district “sends kids a bad message that some laws are made to be broken…. It’s ludicrous to think they know our children better than we do.”

As for Cassie Schmidt, who founded her Facebook group in 2021 in response to the mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic and which now includes more than 2,100 members, she will continue “to strive for the overall wellbeing of children while offering a voice to parents who feel they have none.”

Along with CRT and LGBT indoctrination, children are being taught in both public and private school classrooms to hate America, by teachers who were themselves indoctrinated in university schools of education. Parents have long expressed concerns about anti-American propaganda, with virtual learning during the pandemic proving to have been especially eye-opening.

A recent example of biased instruction is the widely publicized incidence of Austin, Texas Independent School District (ISD) teacher Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy, who claimed in a viral TikTok video that she was punished by her school district for teaching third-graders “about the Constitution and their constitutional rights.” A view of her video tells a different story.

School administrators expressed concern about Chudy’s third-grade students because she asserted that the children questioned the Pledge of Allegiance during a lesson about the Holocaust and Adolph Hitler, and decided “on their own” to protest by sitting during the Pledge. (Texas law requires schools to teach about the Holocaust during Remembrance Week in January.)

In the video, Chudy says she told her students that “during the Civil War, the country was divided about” — sarcastic giggle — “slavery; and so during the 1870s, they created the Pledge to, you know, bring the country together because it was fraught over the issue of, you know, owning black people, and they added the ‘under God’ prayer in the 1970s because Republicans were afraid of Communism.” Here she pauses briefly, muttering under her breath, “classic,” then adds with another giggle “and [afraid of] atheism.” She continues: “And so, my kids, my students, decided amongst themselves that they wanted to protest the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Chudy claims she convinced the kids not to be disruptive, “which is what they wanted to do,” and that she told them that “silent protesting was often more powerful…. And then I told them about Colin Kapernick.” The students then allegedly decided that going forward they would sit during the Pledge.

Actual history of the Pledge

Aside from her blatant attempt to indoctrinate her students, Chudy apparently failed to realize her ignorance of U.S. history. A simple internet search would have told her that the Pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a 37-year-old minister.

According to ThoughtCo.com, “The first recorded organized recital of the original Pledge of Allegiance took place on Oct. 12, 1892, when some 12 million American schoolchildren recited it to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus.” It apparently had nothing to do with the Civil War or the division in the country over slavery, which by 1892 had been abolished for nearly 30 years.

A number of modifications to the Pledge have been made. In 1923, the words “my flag” were changed to “the flag of the United States of America,” in order to make it clearer to immigrants that they were pledging allegiance to the American flag rather than to the flag of the country from which they came.

In 1954 (NOT the 1970s), President Dwight Eisenhower pushed for Congress to add the words “under God” to the Pledge. Rather than simply for “fear of Communism,” as Chudy told her students (while subtly communicating in the video that such fear was laughable), Eisenhower believed the addition “would ‘reaffirm the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future’ and ‘strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.’”

The phrase, “under God,” also appears much earlier in President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettsburg Address. In the final sentence of his rhetorical masterpiece, Lincoln states:… “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom …”

On June 14, 1954, Congress approved amending the “Flag Code” to certify the Pledge as it remains today, despite legal challenges to its constitutionality by atheists over the decades.

Conservatives point out that, for Chudy and others like her, these facts are unimportant to their agenda, which is to mold the minds of young children to believe that their country is based on evil institutions like slavery, and that honorable traditions like pledging allegiance to the flag are merely coverups for wrongdoing and therefore worthy of protest.

In her video, Chudy admits that her administrator didn’t believe third-grade students could fully understand and articulate what she claimed they did in protesting the Pledge, and suggested, as most parents might assume, that Chudy was “indoctrinating her students.” She ends with exaggeratedly heartfelt self-congratulations on finally being noticed for “all her hard work this past school year.”

When the TikTok video went viral, a number of news outlets picked up the story. There was much handwringing among some Twitter users and liberal media like Buzzfeed, who simply couldn’t fathom anyone doubting that eight-year-olds could decide to protest the Pledge of Allegiance of their own volition, and they defended Chudy for teaching about the Holocaust. The Houston Chronicle.com reported that she said her students “drew similarities between the Pledge of Allegiance and the usage of nationalist propaganda during the Holocaust.”

But others who commented on the Chronicle’s story were skeptical. One responder wrote: “Third graders taking a stand on an issue and organizing a protest during the Pledge? I’m not buying it. There was definitely some staging/adult involvement here…” Another stated: “LOL – these are third-graders, they have no idea what the term ‘nationalistic propaganda’ means. They were obviously put up to this by the teacher. Sad…” Yet another wrote: “I’m more aghast that she thinks ‘under God’ was added to the Pledge ‘in the 1970s.’ Is that what she taught her class? I mean, a one-second online search would tell her that was added in 1954.”

In a second video, after Chudy’s probationary contract was terminated by school administrators, she smugly grins into the camera and asks why they are concerned about her telling students about their “legal and constitutional rights.” She repeatedly asks “why is that a concern? Why is that a concern? Why are you concerned?”

Indoctrinated by leftist ideology

But many parents are concerned about precisely the type of lessons Chudy and her ilk are teaching.

In a June 2022 commentary appearing on The Heritage Foundation’s website and originally published by The Daily Signal, former teacher, news producer, and podcast host, Douglas Blair, gives a firsthand account of the type of indoctrination he personally witnessed. Blair says the education system originally designed to teach kids how to think critically “has been weaponized by the radical left to push an anti-American agenda.”

He describes the process as starting with propaganda, with teachers giving assignments to instill “the idea that the pillars of Western civilization were evil, and their memories deserve to be thrown in the trash.” He cited the following as a first-person example:

• I was helping one of my elementary school students with a homework assignment about listing famous Britons throughout history. She already had some of the more obvious ones: Shakespeare, Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth. “Well, how about Winston Churchill?” I recommended. “Oh no, not him,” she replied. “He was a racist and didn’t think women should have rights. He wasn’t a good guy.”
• I was floored. It clearly wasn’t something she came up with on her own. She was just regurgitating propaganda her teacher had taught her. All sense of nuance and critical thinking about the man who saved Europe from the Nazis was gone. Churchill committed “wrongthink,” so in the bin he goes.

Blair says a second tactic of the left is to normalize “its views and positions as nonpolitical.” He gives as an example the Black Lives Matter organization which, given all the leftist propaganda, his colleagues believed was exempt from being considered political because BLM is “a matter of human rights.”

Finally, says Blair, “suppression of ‘wrongthink’ is equally as important to the brainwashing process.” He relates as an example a lesson he was preparing for Thanksgiving that involved an activity “centered on making paper teepees for arts and crafts.” His fellow teachers “became incensed that a non-Indian was ‘appropriating’ Native American culture for an activity.” He concluded the anecdote by writing:

• The whole thing culminated in a hilarious incident where my colleagues tracked down the one teacher on staff who was one sixty-fourth Native American and asked her if this [proposed activity] was cultural appropriation. In her esteemed authority, it most certainly was. The school administrators pulled me aside and promptly nixed the project.

Bias in private schools

But not only public-school teachers like DeLoretto-Chudy are brainwashing students. Some private schools have made news in recent years for demonstrating woke bias.

Last year, the New York Post.com published an article about elite New York City private schools “teaching kids that American society must be destroyed.” Wealthy parents pay upwards of $60,000 per year to have their children taught that “the system is broken, unable to be reformed, rotten to the core, and deserving of demolition.”

As a graduating senior at the tony Horace Mann School in June 2022, student Ryan Finlay “published a pointed but measured essay describing the aggressive political bias that dominated his education on [the school’s] Bronx campus.”

The Post article noted that “Finlay’s essay breaks the self-imposed conspiracy of silence that has largely shielded top private schools from criticism from within,” which is part of the problem nationwide in both public and private schools. Teachers toe the mark and students are fed lessons that not only poison their view of their country, but foster the belief that they can change their gender, their pronouns, and attend assemblies featuring drag shows, all without parental knowledge or consent.

Ultimately, parents and citizens who value our constitutional freedoms and Republican form of government must continue to demand transparency in education. As Blair wrote: “The young adults who today gleefully tear down statues of the Founding Fathers were incubated in our very own schools, groomed to burst from the education system and burn America down … Conservatives must demand an end to the indoctrination of our youth or face a new American public taught since childhood that the country shouldn’t exist.”

Last month, Education Reporter introduced the topic of worldviews, or the ways people “view” the world in terms of their belief systems, ideology, understanding, and actions. We described the first episode in the St. Louis Teen Eagles’ (TE) series of exclusive videos on this topic, called Worldviews Explained: the Biblical Christian Worldview, and promised to alert readers when the next video was released.

We are pleased to announce that the second installment, Worldviews Explained: Marxism-Leninism, is now available on the group’s YouTube channel. Like the first presentation, this video describes five aspects of the worldview in question, including theology, biology, politics, economics, and history.

From a theological perspective, for example, Marxism/Leninism is based on atheism, the belief that God, whether known as “Creator, Supreme Being, or Divine Ruler, does not, cannot, and must not exist.” The Biblical God is an enemy of Marxism’s radical and impossible notion of a utopia ruled by man’s basest passions and presided over by a cabal of global governmental elites.

Biologically, evolution could not be more perfectly suited to the Marxist/Leninist worldview because it provides a perfect excuse for the rejection of natural law and the Creator God from Whom all human rights come. Thus, Marxists view rights as privileges given by the state.

The TE video explains that Karl Marx embraced Darwinism by stating: “Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle….” The presentation notes that Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” is almost never referred to by its full title: “On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

Darwinism opened the door for the Marxist interpretation of evolution that denies the supernatural and supports its dialectic that man’s reason is evolving. The TE video reveals that “Marx used Darwin’s philosophy as scientific grounds for racism and classism to reshape society believing that some races are more equal, favored, or superior to others.”

Politically, the Marxism/Leninism worldview espouses statism and world government. Marx admitted that “political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” National sovereignty, energy policy, medicine, and virtually all other aspects of human life would be determined on a global scale through such entities as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO). “In the Marxist view of politics, all forms of government are ugly reflections of the fact that class antagonism exists.” The ultimate goal is global communism, where “class distinctions will no longer exist, private property will be abolished, and globalism formally enacted….”

Finally, the Marxist political agenda includes “the eradication of Judeo-Christian values, institutions, and individuals,” as well as the stripping away of individual rights and state sovereignty.

In the Marxism/Leninism worldview, economics is based on the abolition of private property and the natural rights of citizens. Marx’s chief gripe against capitalism was that “it breeds exploitation of the workers.” In other words, as the video shows, Marxists blame “the sins of individuals on the capitalist system rather than the true perpetrators, [which are] people’s sinful hearts that abuse good systems.”

While classic Marxism thrived on class struggle and economic division, their tactics have since changed. Today, activists focus on transforming our culture “to implement the same dialectic materialism through race, gender, and business.” Today, cultural Marxists use CRT (critical race theory), DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) rather than economics to change the culture.

The Marxism/Leninism worldview embraces “historical materialism,” wherein “only matter exists” so only an evolutionary perspective of history is permitted. “Humanity, as well as other living things are constantly improving and will continue to do so; the development of life constantly progresses.”

Ultimately, this worldview embraces the continued march of Marxist/Leninist Communism, until the end goal of totalitarian global control is achieved.

Education Reporter will update readers when the Teen Eagles’ third and final video on worldviews becomes available.

Longtime children’s program Sesame Street is “shoving Pride Month down kids’ throats” with a prideful Elmo. An article by The Western Journal, reposted by The Gateway Pundit, reveals the beloved children’s character celebrating Pride Month in a video aimed at tots ages two through five. Elmo kicked off the month on June 1 with actress Ariana DeBose, who allegedly identifies as “queer.” DeBose says in the video: “Elmo and I wanted to share that everyone is always welcome on ‘Sesame Street.’ This month and every month, we want to uplift and celebrate our LGBTQIA+ family, friends and communities.” Elmo then chimes in: “From our ‘Sesame Street’ family to yours, happy pride. Elmo loves you.” The Journal observed that “sexual activities should not even be part of a discussion with such young children. But here is the most iconic kids’ TV show pushing ‘pride month’ on little ones, anyway.” The show also saluted Pride Month on Twitter. The first tweet read: “Everyone is always welcome on Sesame Street. Let’s celebrate LGBTQIA+ people in our communities this Pride Month and every day! Happy Pride Month!” A second tweet on June 2 read: “This Pride Month, let’s celebrate diversity and unity and spread love and acceptance. Together, we can make the world a kinder place for all.” While some Twitter users supported Sesame Street’s stance, one objector asked producers: “Isn’t this a show created specifically for preschoolers and very young children? Why isn’t the show sticking to being kind to all while omitting all talk of sexuality, gender, and other topics suited solely for mature minds? Why not allow tiny ones to be innocent & carefree?” Another user agreed, tweeting: “Please explain to all of us why a show geared towards very small children would ever need to recognize or mention someone’s sexuality.” As The Western Journal noted: “Sesame Street has a wholesome reputation, but it hasn’t lived up to that level for a long time. Parents beware.”

A Twitter user known as Underlord posted a compelling thread on June 1st titled “ESG and Pride Month: The Coercive Rainbow Agenda.” The post charges that ESG’s (Environmental, Social, and Governance) “virtue signaling and manipulation reach new heights during June and that it is a “rainbow-colored façade” for ESG’s “social engineering agenda.” Underlord states: “ESG’s involvement in Pride Month may appear to be a celebration of diversity and inclusivity to some. However, under the surface, it is a mechanism for social engineering and ideological conformity. ESG dictates which messages are acceptable, effectively silencing dissenting voices and imposing a rigid set of beliefs. The colorful rainbow is turned into a symbol of control, where deviation from the approved narrative is met with shaming and corporate penalties.” Interspersed with colorful graphics, the thread contends that “ESG’s presence during Pride Month reeks of tokenism, with corporations exploiting the social currency of the LGBTQ+ agenda for their own gain. The focus on identity categories erodes the importance of individual experiences and merit.” Underlord calls Pride Month “a platform where one’s worth is reduced to sexual orientation or gender identity” rather than an acknowledgement of the complexity of each individual. “ESG’s influence enforces an ideological orthodoxy, demanding everyone fall in line with its predetermined agenda. Dissenting views or nuanced discussions are dismissed as intolerant or ignorant, leaving little room for dialogue or open-mindedness.” Therefore, says Underlord, “it becomes more about enforcing a cult-like definition of what it means to be inclusive.” The thread points out that ESG’s involvement in Pride Month “transforms ‘progressive’ movements into marketing strategies, where corporations use the rainbow flag to boost their profits and corporate equality index scores (or CEI). Finally, Underlord writes: “[W]e must remain vigilant and steadfast in resisting the manipulation and coercion that seeks to undermine the foundations and values that maintain stable societies.” While this thread focuses on ESG’s impact on corporations, the same may be said for education and America’s institutions across the board.

Yet another parent is pleading with Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) to remove obscene books containing illustrations of “deviant sex acts” from school libraries. Mom of six, Stacy Langton, demanded answers from school board members about their lack of action and accountability after she called attention to a “particularly egregious” book she found in the Fairfax County Public School Library. Langton is not the only parent who has taken the FCPS to task in recent years for various reasons, but she has spoken before the school board several times during public comment periods over the past 18 months about objectionable books she calls “porn book story hour.” While no board member has previously reached out to her, she says she did get a response following her testimony about the sexually explicit book Queer: A Graphic History.” After speaking out about the book at the school board meeting on May 11, “they sent me an email the next day and that has never happened before… maybe for them, this book was a bridge too far.” She says she doesn’t want to get overly optimistic “because they’ve never done anything about these books.” In addition to the pornographic illustrations, Langton explained that Queer “teaches that there is no good or bad kind of sex and that there [is] only a diverse range of practices and attractions.” She laments that she cannot get answers as to “who is bringing these pornographic books into the school district,” and she believes offering this level of pornography to children is illegal. “You cannot put sexually explicit imagery in front of minors. It’s against the law.” One thing is certain, the FCPS libraries are not the only ones stocking pornographic books and serving them up to kids. But with parental awareness growing and their willingness to fight back increasing, parents’ rights activists believe efforts like Langton’s will soon bear fruit.