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Trenton NJ, Senator Ed Durr responded to an advertisement from the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) that labels parents extremists for expressing concerns about new curriculum and sex education mandates from Trenton.
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“Despite what the NJEA says, parents are not extremists for expressing concerns about curriculum mandates or wanting to have a voice in their children’s education,” said Durr (R-3). “It’s another example of the NJEA being out of touch with parents and totally tone deaf to their concerns that sensitive topics such as sex education and gender identity are not appropriate for young kids. Frankly, the NJEA is taking an extreme position by attacking parents instead of listening to them.”
Parents across New Jersey have expressed concerns about new learning standards for sex education imposed by the State Board of Education that school districts must incorporate into their curricula this fall. It’s not clear what penalties the Murphy administration might impose on districts for noncompliance.
In mid-July, the NJEA conducted a two-session 2022 Summer Collaborative called “Teaching is Political” in Newark, hosted by the appropriately-named Radical Pedagogy Institute. According to their website, RPI seeks to implement woke, “anti-racist” initiatives and tear down institutions that maintain so-called “white supremacy.” Their methods, of course, include the radical indoctrination of students. During the sessions, groups of teachers formulated plans to defend the New Jersey student learning standards against “the current attacks on critical race theory, ethnic studies, and LGBTQ+ inclusive education.”
RPI is training NJEA members to become activists for far-left education policies pertaining to the teaching of woke curricula and ideologies to students in Pre-K all the way through the 12th grade. As the Sunlight Policy Center explains in their report, “The explicit purpose of these sessions is to train teachers to politically organize fellow teachers, find allies in the local community and help effect radical education policy change in their local school districts.”
Some of the more jarring examples of RPI’s proposed curriculum for young kids are “Drag Pedagogy: The Playful Practice of Queer Imagination in Early Childhood” and “Reading, Writing and Racism: Disrupting Whiteness in Teacher Education and in the Classroom.” That is the kind of curriculum RPI has recommended for small children, including those between grades 1 and 3.
The new NJEA video ad labels those parents “extremists” who are “attacking our schools.” Black and white imagery shows angry crowds, presumably meant to represent parents at school board meetings.
The ad ends with a voiceover saying, “People who only want to fight to score political points should take that somewhere else.”
“Apparently the NJEA doesn’t see the irony of telling concerned parents to ‘take that somewhere else’ when they vehemently oppose school choice that would give parents that option,” added Durr. “They seem to have forgotten that our public schools exist to serve parents and their children, not the far-left politics of the union’s leadership. They shouldn’t be shocked that parents who feel ignored and marginalized are finally pushing back to right the ship.”
Durr sponsors legislation in the Senate Republican “Three Rs” plan to empower parents and give them a greater voice in their children’s education.
He also sponsors a bill (S-585) that would give public school parents vouchers to enroll their children in nonpublic schools if they object to learning material or activity that they consider harmful. Despite telling concerned parents to “take that somewhere else,” the NJEA has a long history of opposing vouchers and parental choice.
