K-12 Indoctrination: Every Accusation is a Confession

An ambitious project began with a moral panic, stoked early in the pandemic, about the nation’s schoolchildren. A “woke” army of radical leftist teachers was allegedly indoctrinating America’s youth.

The well-funded astroturf push demonized educators and created hysteria about Critical Race Theory before expanding to other bogeymen. It has been shockingly successful at producing educator intimidation, book bans, and K-12 censorship.

Though ongoing, the panic can now be filed under the label, Every Accusation is a Confession — because the project’s next phase is underway, instituting far-right indoctrination in schools.

It’s a conspiracy!

Calling critical race theorists conspiracists, MAGA insisted that, despite educators’ denials, CRT was secretly being taught in K-12. In an explainer, Heritage instructed parents how to find the CRT snuck into kids’ backpacks.

Now, red states are weaving MAGA conspiracies into Social Studies curriculum. In May, Oklahoma approved standards requiring teaching the conspiracy, led by Donald Trump, that the 2020 election was stolen and treating the Covid lab leak theory as fact. Florida’s new curriculum has students (in grades, 6, 7, 8, and 9-12!) learning “The History of Communism” in ways that PEN America describes as “a dangerous recasting of McCarthyism as patriotism and dissent as ‘un-American.’”

It’s indoctrination!

A Trump executive order in January summarized MAGA messaging on K-12 over these past few years:

parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies… Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.

The EO calls for schools to “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation” and goes on to clarify that the education they seek depicts the U.S. and its history in entirely glowing terms:

Now they’ve built an echo chamber to make this happen: the America 250 Civics Coalition, led by Education Secretary Linda McMahon. From American First Policy Institute to Hillsdale College to Heritage, Turning PointUSA, Moms4Liberty, and more, the initiative’s 40 partners are a diverse set of organizations from the far-right to farther-right to cheek-against-the-wall. They’re collaborating on propaganda for K-12 packaged as civics.

It’s extreme!

The right has been using the term “gender ideology” to smear as extremist inclusive policies and teaching about women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. This has involved flinging bizarre fictions about cat litter in classrooms and teachers performing transgender operations. A recurring theme: schools aligning themselves with extreme ideologies and working to turn children’s loyalty. Trump 2.0 has been pulling funds for programs they paint with this or the “DEI” brush.

Now America 250 is tapping ideologues such as pro-authoritarian Dennis Prager. His fake university’s videos include counter-factual material on slavery, gender, climate, and more, sometimes presented by high-profile extremists. In these videos, which various states have been adopted, “Extreme ideas are presented as common beliefs.” Dennis Prager makes no bones about his agenda, admitting, “‘We bring doctrines to children. That is a very fair statement. I said, “But what is the bad of our indoctrination?”’”

Separately, red states are lining up to pledge allegiance to the Heritage Foundation’s education “vision.” Gov. Ron DeSantis got there first, signing the think tank’s Phoenix Declaration, a document carefully worded to appear not as out of the mainstream as its authors — or as its prime source, Project 2025. Yet the call for schools to “cultivate gratitude for and attachment to our country and all who serve its central institutions” is just one hint that to sign is to pledge allegiance to the MAGA pols in control of many of those institutions.

It’s pervasive!

The panic about left-wing indoctrination has stretched beyond academic curriculum and instruction. School counselors and psychologists have been accused of treachery. Trump’s EO claimed these professionals push “gender ideology” and transitions on students. Research-driven Social-Emotional Learning programs (SEL) have, in recent years, been thrown into MAGA’s pot of poison acronyms.

Even extracurricular activities, often started and usually run by students, became suspect, with affinity and identity groups and clubs such as the Black Student Union targeted, with MAGA claiming they are divisive and indoctrinating because “school-sponsored.”

Now a growing number of red states are approving the installation of chaplains in public schools to advise students in lieu of expert, certified professionals, which is okay, one Iowa Republican said, because they are “trained in spiritual and emotional care.” Florida’s first of these chaplains is an extremist pastor who “twice ran for Congress, wrote an ode to Charlie Kirk, and preached the need to ‘battle alongside Trump.’”

And the death of Kirk has provided the occasion for Texas to “partner” with the dark-money political-affinity organization he founded, Turning Point USA, to start chapters on “every high school campus in the state.”

“Every accusation is a confession” is a line, this deep into the Trump era, that’s well-worn. It is much more than yet another unsurprising hypocrisy that MAGA’s primary education objective is far-right indoctrination. Inconsistency is a hallmark of MAGA propaganda, but when it comes to their plans for schools and children, what’s consistent is this: whenever we think it’s bad, it gets worse.