How Black Lives Matter is taking over the public school system

Across the country, liberal teachers, administrators, and school boards have sought to replace traditional history, civics, and social studies courses with the socialist propaganda of the Black Lives Matter movement. And your child’s school could be next.

In Episode 3 of CRTV’s “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” Conservative Review Senior Editor Michelle Malkin exposes the nefarious ways in which Black Lives Matter has attempted to infiltrate American public schools and hold students captive to their cause.

In “Black Lives Matter: From the Streets to the Classroom,” Malkin speaks to educators and community members who have witnessed efforts to incorporate BLM’s anti-American, anti-law enforcement ideology into the curriculum.

One of those individuals is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who calls Black Lives Matter a “hateful ideology.”

“These kids are going to grow up … they’re going to be the foot soldiers for the progressive movement,” Clarke says.

“They’re going to grow up not thinking of people like Rosa Parks, not thinking of people like Frederick Douglass. They’re gonna be growing up thinking people like Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray are icons of the civil rights movement. I mean, this whole thing just blows my mind.”

But is it really reasonable to think that a controversial social justice group could gain enough influence to effectively rewrite history for generations to come? Yes! And it’s already happening.

“Black Lives Matter: From the Streets to the Classroom” details several BLM-related cases where clandestine attempts to hack the public school system have been made:

San Francisco, Calif.:

In December 2015, five “teacher librarians” in the San Francisco Unified School District created a Black Lives Matter online resource guide, and added it to SFUD’s online library database before Christmas break. This was done without consultation of the school board, principals, or parents.

St. Paul, Minn.:

American Studies Professor Duchess Harris co-authored a 2015 Black Lives Matter textbook for grade school students. The book literally rewrites history to present BLM icons like Trayvon Martin as civil rights martyrs.

Milwaukee, Wis.:

This past spring, Milwaukee Public Schools board members tried to sneak nearly $500,000 into the 2017 budget to fund a Black Lives Matter-inspired curriculum. The taxpayer-funded initiative was approved without consulting parents or other members of the community who will be affected by the decision.

Durham, N.C.:

In March of 2016, first grade teacher Ms. Bernal-Martinez took her young students to a Black Lives Matter protest without receiving parental consent.

“The project that my class took on in this quarter was a study of the Black Lives Matter movement,” Bernal-Martinez said in an interview after The Daily Caller brought light to the situation. “And so, we’ve been investigating and asking questions about the issues and the causes that people are fighting for, and my kids really took it on. And they were very excited to, sort of, join the movement themselves.”

“They were like, ‘Well, people in the civil rights movement and people in the Black Lives Matter movement have always changed things by marching. We need to march,'” she continued. “It was really just a celebration.”

Bernal-Martinez’s comments reveal much about Black Lives Matters’ attempt to equate their work with that of the leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement. But these people aren’t marching – and rioting – for peace.

The end goal of BLM is nothing short of universal civil unrest. And if this group has their way in our public schools, pretty soon, black historical heroes like Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King Jr., and others will be seen as the people who didn’t “get the job done” for black Americans.

This attempt to selectively edit black history through a pro-BLM filter can be seen in the case of black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was denied a spot in the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture because he has dared to challenge the radical Left’s narrow view on how all black Americans should think and behave.

But how do school children play into the goals of Black Lives Matter? Throughout history, tyrannical regimes and organizations have used children as propaganda because they are innocent and impressionable, subject to the discretion of authority. And for seven or so hours a day, the primary authority in a child’s life is his or her teacher, making schools a prime target for power-grabbing radicals.

Over the summer, The Atlantic published an article titled, “Should Students Learn About Black Lives Matter in School?” The piece featured responses from progressive educators across the country, among whom the consensus seemed to be that the study of current events should replace “dated” history textbooks, and that teachers should invite students to “participate” in the national social (liberal) conversation.

“Public school teachers should stand up against racism, should stand up against homophobia, should stand up against religious intolerance,” Chicago social studies teacher Greg Michie told The Atlantic. “To me, that's not [taking] a side. We have to advocate for, and believe in, and have high hopes for all of our students.”

Last year, Michie declared Black Lives Matter the national social studies curriculum. (But he’s not taking sides.)

And no, I'm not using the district social studies curriculum. #BlackLivesMatter is the curriculum in our country right now.

— Gregory Michie (@GregoryMichie) December 28, 2015

“No one reads a textbook as an adult,” Carmen Fariña, chancellor of New York City’s department of education, told The Atlantic. “What do you read? You read the newspapers, you read magazines, and [social studies is] basically based on news.”

By “news,” we can safely assume that Fariña means the liberal agenda-affirming mainstream media.

The Anti-Defamation League has created several high school lesson plans on topics such as the history of the Black Lives Matter movement, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., following the death of Michael Brown, and the rioting in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. All of the materials, largely based on preliminary mainstream media reports, comply with Common Core Standards. Speaking to The Atlantic, Jinnie Spiegler, director of curriculum for the ADL, explained that the civil rights organization aims to publish its lesson plans within a few days of a national event — sacrificing accuracy for speed.

The social justice nonprofit Teaching for Change also has a collection of Black Lives Matter online resources for teachers “to help middle and high school students think critically about the events in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, North Charleston, Baltimore, Hempstead, Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Baton Rouge, Charlotte, and across the U.S.” The Teaching for Change website features tips to help teachers explain the shooting of Trayvon Martin to elementary school children.

Here is a how the organization suggests explaining the event to young students:

Black Lives Matters’ attempt to push a warped historical narrative on impressionable minds has been alarmingly successful. If the group’s efforts to replace free inquiry with subjective stories is left unchecked, the radical narrative about America’s “systemic racism” and “crooked cops” will become our children’s reality. As Sheriff David Clarke says, they will become the foot soldiers of the radical Left.

“Michelle Malkin Investigates” is available now on CRTV.

Editor's note: Frederick Douglass was misspelled in an earlier version of this piece. The error has since been corrected.

Carly Hoilman is a Correspondent for Conservative Review. You can follow her on Twitter @CarlyHoilman