The Federalist reports that Michigan State University’s elementary education program, ranked, who knows how or by what criteria, as the top elementary teacher’s program in the nation, mandates its aspiring teachers to attend a “Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education” class. The class teaches that free market principles, meritocracy, and American values are toxic, and that understanding this must be conveyed to elementary school students. The indoctrination class is described on MSU’s website as “understanding self, schools, and society; emphasizing racial justice, equity, and social identity markers.”
Course materials show that one of the class units is an interview with radical, terrorist and Communist Party member, former Berkeley professor Angela Davis, who was an active collaborator with the violent Black Panther Party. “Racism is integrally linked to capitalism,” Davis says in the video, “and I think it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place….This is a period during which we need to begin that process of popular education which will allow people to understand the interconnections of racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism,” the video concludes. Another required video claims that “America can never be a meritocracy” until it provides “an equal starting point and equal resources.”
Which, if you think about it for a second or two, is bonkers.
Other required classes in MSU’s elementary education curriculum promote leftist ideology such as “Pedagogy and Politics of Justice and Equity in Education,” three one-credit seminar classes titled “Justice and Equity,” and “Engaging Elementary Learners in Science: Culture and Equity.” A warning in the required readings states that teachers “who cling to their Whiteness cannot participate in abolitionist teaching because they are a distraction, are unproductive, and will undermine freedom at every step, sometimes in the name of social justice.”
There is much that this explains, such as why teachers are overwhelmingly Democrat party supporters, why Gen Z is now so unsupportive of free speech and so easily gulled into communism and socialism, and why so many college students are anti-Semitic. It also explains why a human wrecking ball like President Trump may be the only hope the United States currently has to reverse the dangerous effect of decades of indoctrination in anti-American values within our schools.
What it doesn’t explain is how conservatives, moderates, responsible citizens and parents allowed this to happen. The only answers I can come up with are laziness, apathy, complacency, misplaced trust and stupidity. My wife and I saw the signs 20 years ago, when we had to pull our son out of two private schools, a Catholic school and Alexandria public schools and resort to home schooling.
Prof. Turley, again in one of his periodic weenie moods, writes, “MSU should address these concerns and show how, if such material is included in required reading, there is also material that offers real balance and counterpoints to these radical views.” Right. Fat chance. The real question to be addressed is why such topics belong in elementary school teacher training at all.
The Federalist asked MSU how it defended promoting a narrative of systemic racism and asked whether the school supports using materials from a self-professed communist and former Black Panther Party collaborator to teach its students. It also asked whether the school agrees with the Federalist’s assessment that its program is so dependent on radical concepts like DEI and critical race theory that students with opposing viewpoints would have a hard time succeeding.
It did not receive any response.
Ethics Alarms 
WE WERE ALL WARNED!!!
At the tail end of the 20th century, Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt told us this would happen and she was publicly tarred as a lunatic conspiracy theorist. Very few people listened and walked directly into what Iserbyt called
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
Here’s a few Iserbyt quotes…
There are far too many psychological snowflakes, socialists and literal morons controlling far too many important institutions in the United States. Where do we go from here? My guess is in a intellect sucking black hole.
The political indoctrination in K-12 education and the student loan crisis have their roots in the same problem: the establishment of universities as gatekeepers to jobs. As they have proven themselves faithless gatekeepers, it is long past time to dismiss them from that role.
Repost of a repost, but this opinion is a strong persuader.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/11/an-alternative-point-of-view-concerning.html
Good read, James; thanks!
PWS
I took a few education classes in the middle ’70s while I was teaching and progressing toward obtaining a teaching license, not that I needed one to teach in Catholic schools. I don’t remember ever encountering anything other than basic pedagogical topics involving how to run a classroom.
I got my degree in Education in the 1970s and I don’t recall these kinds of classes being offered. We did study different philosophies of education, but primarily this gave us some context for how educational methods differed in different cultures and times. It seemed difficult enough to engage students in the regular class subjects without trying to include politics into everything.