Lindsey M. Burke

In the 1984 horror film “The Children of the Corn,” a mysterious entity lures children to turn against their parents to guarantee an abundant corn harvest. Fast-forward 40 years, and a mysterious entity in Montgomery County, Maryland, is enticing children to turn against the Western world.

Nestled just north of Washington, D.C., Montgomery County is among the nation’s wealthiest. Parents tend to earn a living as lawyers and lobbyists, as doctors and defense analysts. They are think-tankers and journalists, and of course, many are bureaucrats entrenched in high places in federal agencies. It’s as “inside the beltway” as you can get.

Their progeny are the Children of the Swamp.

It matters what this next generation is taught. It matters what children from anywhere in America are taught, of course, but what this next potential crop of federal workers and business and industry leaders learns in school could have an outsized effect on our nation’s future.

That may help explain why Montgomery County Public Schools went out of its way to caveat its promotion of the toxic ideology of critical race theory. The district – the 14th largest in the country with more than 160,000 students – put out a statement on CRT in which, as the kids would say, the words “established legal theoretical framework” are doing all the work.

The statement reads in part: “While Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) does not teach students the established legal theoretical framework known as Critical Race Theory, our school system does not shy away from its longstanding commitment to providing students with the tools to explore the evolution of our nation…”

Clever. Because while the district may not offer a pre-law class on CRT or critical legal studies, the destructive ideology of CRT has made its way into core subjects in the district’s catalog.

Take the honors English course at one MCPS school. While the course description reads like a standard English honors class – students read drama and epic poetry, historical literature, imaginative literature, etc. – class assignments seem to have gone off the critical theory rails.

In a lesson on “Literary Theory and Criticism” we obtained, students are provided with six lenses through which to examine books they’ve read: Marxist; gender studies & queer theory; critical race theory; psychoanalytical; feminist; and historical/biographical.

Other frameworks like formalism, structuralism and reader-response are de-emphasized in favor of the more radical flavors of literary criticism.

Why are 10th-graders being encouraged to analyze “Catcher in the Rye” through a Marxist lens? Andy why are honors English students learning Marx rather than Milton?

The Montgomery County example is but one in the entrenched CRT infrastructure built into many K-12 schools today. Whether it’s CRT itself or newer vintages like California’s ethnic studies graduation requirement, critical theory has permeated the ivy walls of academia and firmly cemented itself in elementary and secondary education.

Colleges of education have played a huge role in its dissemination. Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is among the most assigned texts in colleges of education. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess and I found, up to one-third of education school faculty who study race do so through a critical theory lens.

In colleges today, there are, on average, 3.4 diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) employees for every 100 tenured faculty. And K-12 districts nationwide are replicating this bureaucracy. Nearly 80% of the country’s largest K-12 school districts employ chief diversity officers, mirroring the trend in higher education, according to research by my Heritage Foundation colleague Jay Greene.

Parents should feel confident voicing their opinions about the content being taught in their children’s school. When they have concerns that an honors English class, for example, is emphasizing critical theory and Marxist analysis, they should not hesitate to speak up to their school principal or at school board meetings.

Public schools are taxpayer-funded entities, and as such, parents should not shy away from expressing their opinions about what these institutions are teaching the next generation of Americans.

Are they teaching that America is a force for good in the world, or that it is systemically racist and must be dismantled? Are they teaching that all men are created equal, or that children are born as either an oppressor or oppressed? Are schools teaching that truth is relative or that it is knowable and worth pursuing?

Look at schools’ websites, their trainings, mission statements, textbooks, curricula, and yes, even your child’s homework assignments.

Corporate America is beginning to turn away from institutional DEI. It’s time schools got back to basics, too.

Lindsey M. Burke is the Mark A. Kolokotrones in fellow in education and Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.