Partisan divisions in Connecticut have sparked controversy over a new law that offers public schools a curriculum focused on Islamic and Arab studies. Proponents say the initiative rounds out multicultural education and does not conflict with the separation of church and state. Opponents object that the law will favor a particular theological perspective.
The New Connecticut Law
The outcome of Connecticut’s disputed perspectives will likely depend on how it is implemented. Advocates claim that Arab and Islamic studies are not mandatory, but that would not cure a constitutional defect in educational materials. They also claim the intention and impact will be cultural, including Arabic language teaching. Yet “Islamic” studies do not refer to a culture but to a specific Abrahamic faith. As Democrat lawmaker and co-chair of the Education Committee Jennifer Leeper observed: “Adding another religion helps our children understand the world around them, their classmates, and their neighbors, which is critical for preparing our students to succeed in the most diverse country on earth….”
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If Connecticut schools offered courses on comparative religion, the First Amendment would not be transgressed. Confusion surrounds the new statute’s implementation because left-leaning lawmakers have been vague and even conflicting in their representations about the law. Are Islamic religious studies to be offered, while the Ten Commandments or Christian theology are prohibited?
In pursuit of the social justice ideology of multiculturalism, American culture is being denigrated, and Christianity is vilified. Slavery is laid at the feet of Christianity, while the Abolitionists who ended slavery (and secured the vote for women – not a big priority for Sharia Law) are ignored. America’s heritage has been unfairly tarnished by dubious if not blatantly false public-school teachings about patriarchy, never-proven systemic racism, and a plethora of similar slurs. The Democrats who invoke the tradition of America being “the most diverse nation on earth” are often the voices that decry the nation as colonizing, oppressive, intolerant, and misogynistic. How will they present Islam?
Cultural Marxism and the Indoctrination of Schoolchildren
The cultural Marxism that has saturated American universities and public schools for decades has been dismissed as conservative paranoia. That gaslighting is dimming down now that the Democratic Socialists of America are coming out in full force. Hating America is a trend, often fueled by far-left public school teachers.
Teaching children that they can switch genders at will (and hiding this indoctrination from parents) is designed to destroy young minds and separate children from their families and communities, as James Lindsay explains in his book “The Marxification of Education.” Dividing Americans into artificial, tribalized, “marginalized” groups is destroying the melting pot, as is opening borders to criminal gangs and America-hating cultures here to steal, defraud, and divide with no interest in assimilation.
Under such circumstances, conservative Christian distrust of the motives for the new law and its implementation is certainly understandable. Few sociological groups are less likely to assimilate into the US than Muslims, any more than they seek to assimilate into European societies.
Will this be taught to Connecticut students, that Judaism and Christianity embrace separation of church and state, but that Islam embraces theocracy only, and strives in every society to implement a one-world compelled religion? This is basic theology, yet it is the precise opposite of what many uneducated leftists preach.
Gaslighting the Melting Pot
Predictably, Connecticut’s social justice bureaucrats express bewilderment that anyone would question the new law. Senator Gary Winfield, vice chair of the Education Committee, expressed typical clueless arrogance toward the bill’s detractors, stating:
“I just don’t know how folks see this as different (from) us saying you know we will have a curriculum for Jewish history,” he said. “We will have a curriculum for African American history. I’m just baffled by that. I want young folks to be educated about the world. That includes the impact that Christianity has had on this country, the impact that Judaism has had on this country and the impact that Islam has had on this country. Education is not indoctrination. The lack of education is indoctrination.”
That’s quite a twist, but such gaslighting is passe. A similarly perverse logic is used to “protect” children from ignorant parents by “educating” (never indoctrinating!) them that abortion is a human right that harms no one, that all white people are oppressors, that anyone who questions the morality of homosexuality is homophobic (even Muslims?), etc., etc., ad nauseam.
When Senator Winfield refers to “the impact that Islam has had on this country,” does he mean “marginalized” Muslims, who he will now say (like black slaves) “built the nation,” or is he referring to the Somali fraudsters who are ransacking it today? Maybe he is alluding to the extremist attacks of 911? Is he suggesting the Constitution, clearly constructed on the foundations of Judeo-Christian values, incorporated Islamic ideals? What nouveau history is he contemplating as he expresses mystification that anyone would question the motives here? “Folks” are catching on to this endless mind game. As Lindsay points out, the word “folks” is a Marxist dog whistle and an effort to appear earthy while on the indoctrination prowl.
Winfield’s feigned ignorance of why parents increasingly distrust public schools is capped off by his laughable effort to pervert language itself in his gaslighting remark that “the lack of education is indoctrination.” Perhaps he didn’t learn in school that the word indoctrination means the precise opposite: “the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.”
Time will tell how Connecticut schools implement the new law and, thus, how it fares in any potential court challenges. Teaching Arab culture and history is a very different educational animal than teaching Islamic theology, but the statute’s drafters have conflated the two. Perhaps that was by design.
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