As a snow storm — which never actually materialized — zeroed in on the Big Apple last week, we all kvetched over kids losing their precious snow days to Zoom school.
But bringing the classroom home led some parents in Brooklyn to realize their kids were being schooled in radical ideology under the guise of a Black History Month lesson.
The Free Press reported that students from PS 321, a K-5 school in ultra-progressive Park Slope, were given a coloring book that extolled the 13 tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book” uses kid friendly illustrations to intellectually smuggle the kind of revolutionary ideas you’d see festering on a college campus, at a DEI conference or in the social-justice-warrior pockets of Tiktok.
Ones like “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming” and “Restorative Justice.”
It also teaches the movement’s “national demands,” which include “mandate black history & ethnic studies,” “hire more black teachers,” and “fund counselors not cops” — all important things for young kids to ponder between reading and math lessons.
The only thing missing from this initiative is a school-issued Che Guevara T-shirt and “Queers for Palestine” laptop sticker.
“This is classwork, not homework,” the parent of a fourth grader told The Free Press. “If it weren’t for the snow, we wouldn’t have known.”
It’s a throwback to Covid lockdowns, when Zoom school revealed to many parents that their children were learning critical race theory instead of critical thinking skills.
That discovered focus on indoctrination led a wave of concerned parents across the country to run for their local school boards.
Yet “What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book,” which is courtesy of the national organization Black Lives Matter At School, is still taught in 50 schools across 21 states and six countries.
In 2018, the group launched a “week of action” curriculum for Black History Month to teach “lessons on structural racism, Black history, intersectional Black identities, and anti-racist movements” — fighting the folks at “Woke Kindergarten” over the award for most idiotic initiatives in early childhood education.
Liberals have fought long and hard to keep religion out of public schools, only to have those same institutions greenlight neo-racist creed and divisive dogma for their learning plans.
The Black Lives Matter At School workbook goes on to espouse “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.” In other words, a dangerous fealty to a belief system or authority other than your parents.
And the lesson’s description of “empathy” — described as “engaging comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts” — rattled one parent whose grandparents escaped communist China.
“They are using words that I don’t think are appropriate for elementary school,” the mom told The Free Press.
The coloring book’s section on “transgender affirming” refers kids to the book “When Aidan Became a Brother,” which is about a girl who transitions to a boy. It also states: “We know that cisgender (not trans) people in our society have privilege, and we want to uplift trans people, especially black trans women who often experience violence.”
You getting all this down, kids?
Kindergarten through fifth grade are foundational years for children, when schools should be focused on the basics of math, science, reading, writing and social studies. As well as simple moral concepts that are universally valued: Be tolerant, be kind, work hard and respect others.
This BLM absurdity does not apply to a specific racial group or, really, have anything to do with Black History Month. It’s a jumble of bad ideas that should be rejected by any sane adult — not taught as gospel to impressionable children.
After all, there are enough incredible stories of accomplished black Americans to fill chapters of textbooks and months of lesson plans.
And yet, one fourth grade parent told The Free Press that, after the “week of action,” her kid still didn’t know who Rosa Parks was or why Martin Luther King was famous.
Perhaps that’s the point. The school would have to teach his famous “I have a dream” speech that says people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
And that directly opposes the message to see anything, everything and everyone through the lens of race.
Such a historical lesson would only expose the lies laid out in a so-called coloring book.
This story originally appeared on NYPost