Progressives keep bringing their ideological upheaval to our children. The last line of defense is right here

Is the pendulum finally swinging on the woke virus that seemed unstoppable just last year? A year ago, "Stolen Youth," the book I co-authored with Bethany Mandel was released. The book chronicled how ever-younger kids were being brainwashed by the adults in their sphere of influence. The book tracked the indoctrination process and described where it was happening and how. 

We shorthand the problem to the pushing of "woke" ideas, which we described as the latest attempt by the left of forcing a cultural revolution, this time through the children. It wasn’t just happening at school but also at the doctor’s office, the library and so on. We provided strategies to fight back.

The book was a national bestseller but not without some hiccups. Our launch party in New York was crashed by crazies throwing drinks and screaming "Black lives matter!" Even getting the book to print was touch and go, as we chronicled in these pages.

A year later, the woke virus is still with us but tempered a bit by parents who woke up and fought back. 

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I had the chance to meet these parents, while on the book tour, all across the country. Many had gotten involved in their kids’ schools after seeing what their kids were learning over their shoulder during COVID Zoom school. They were motivated to get their schools back to basics and away from politicized propaganda. Others were fighting back against gender ideology pushed by their pediatricians. The battles were tough but worth it.

In the book, we wrote "The woke have targeted rigor and destroyed merit. They pretend that 2 + 2 does not always equal 4 and  claim that this is somehow related to equity." We charted the way California wanted to "decolonize" math with a new curriculum "using  a manual called "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling  Racism in Mathematics Instruction.""

In June, candidates who support merit based admissions in NYC schools won a slew of races and now make up 40% of the seats on the Citywide & Community Education Councils. Just this week, San Francisco has maybe realized that math isn’t, in fact, racist. Voters in the far left city approved several sane ballot proposals last Tuesday including one that reinstates the teaching of algebra in 8th grade. Like merit-based admission in New York, algebra in San Francisco had previously been scrapped in the name of "equity."

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In Virginia Beach, the school board voted to adopt policies that would prohibit teachers keeping gender secrets from parents. Last week, Illinois backed off legislation that would criminalize parents for not allowing their child access to gender transition. These wins seem like they would be obvious but a year ago they were not.

Too often on tour I heard the sad stories from parents of older kids who did not know to fight back in time. So many had the same story of family disarray after their child went to college. The kids returned angry, full of rage at their parents for voting wrong or holding the wrong positions. "It’s like they were programmed and we were the bad guys," one mom told me. 

In the book we detailed how the home is the last line of defense against bad ideas and I would ask the parents if they had spent any real time explaining their own values to their kids. They very often had not. The kids had gone to college, or sometimes just to high school, without being able to articulate their own family’s values and so were easily convinced to adopt bad ideas from those who were forceful about it. I saw this happen most often in "red" towns, cities and states. The parents had just assumed that they were safe from the indoctrination of New York or San Francisco only to find out the rot had come to their hometown too.

While things have gotten better in the year since the book was released, there is still a long way to go.

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The war in Israel has opened another frontier in indoctrination. In January, PS 261 in Boerum Hill was found to be teaching a curriculum, paid for by Qatar Foundation International, that included a map without Israel.  A few weeks earlier, teachers in Oakland, California, held a "teach-in" to push Hamas propaganda to the kids.

The point is to turn kids into little activists. A few days ago, the Free Press broke the story of teenagers at the Long Beach Unified School District being paid to be in a club funded by Californians for Justice where the students were taught to be activists. 

Four teachers "interviewed by The Free Press see the payments to students and their families as a "horrible propaganda strategy." One told me, "I am shocked and horrified at such a fact.""

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Actually paying kids to become activists is a new frontier and one parents should monitor closely. 

The left continues to focus on bringing their ideological upheaval to our children but parents remain the biggest influence in their kid’s lives. It starts with talking to your kids about what you believe and why but it doesn’t end there. 

The last word in "Stolen Youth" is "fight." Parents will have to do just that to protect their children.

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