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Radical and regressive, but inspired by cultural Marxism? E3 applies the duck-test

They called it a “fundamental transformation” of River Forest public schools in 2016, and bringing back constructivism was tantamount to re-igniting the math and reading wars.  


Three years later, OPRF District 200 leaders vowed they would be “racializing everything,” promising voters this would “equalize” high school education by, among other things, eliminating separate stand-alone honors classes for OPRF freshmen.  


These ideas were radical, and more importantly they were unproven. Their effects on River Forest student achievement were immediately regressive – the data now shows this clearly and the early trend at OPRF is dismal.


It is up to you to decide whether the regressive part was also purposeful.


Critics of so-called “equity,” or replacing highest student achievement with equal student achievement as a school system goal, say it is a form of Marxism.


In this newsletter, E3 applies the duck-test to this claim:

Does the prevailing new philosophy of education look, walk, and quack like Marxism?


Most of us first learned of the social and economic theories of Karl Marx in high school or college. For the purposes of the duck-test, we’ll assume Marxist concepts are familiar. 


Here are (fairly steep) Cliff’s Notes for the uninitiated.


The Marxist goal is the abolition of capitalism and establishment of a “classless” society in which the means of production are controlled by the State.  Marx believed destabilization of society was necessary to convince people to embrace these changes. He sought to create social chaos and anarchy by pitting the working classes against the elite capital owners. 


Marx’s theories originally failed in the West, likely because it required violence, and capitalism as implemented looked better than Marxism from a far, for all classes. Going “classless” and imposing “equality” would have meant a lower standard of living for all involved.


Enter Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, who flipped Karl’s tactical script in the 1920s.


Gramsci believed the necessary social chaos and anarchy could be instigated by pitting groups with different immutable characteristics against each other, like their sex or race. As Marx characterized wage earners and capital owners, Gramsci judged some races and sexes as oppressed, while others were their oppressors.


This mutated strand called “Cultural Marxism” wouldn’t mean abolishing old and creating new Marxist institutions, but rather purposefully infiltrating existing ones to redirect efforts away from their intended mission, and toward creation of that “classless” society. 


The textbooks show schools, providing access to the critical consciousness of youth, were always among the highest priorities for histories radical revolutionaries.


Alas, the question for today: does the transformation of public schools in Oak Park and River Forest look, walk, and quack of cultural Marxism?Only you can be the judge.  


Oppressor, or oppressed


Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire published Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1968, and his “Transformative Learning Theory” rapidly permeated academic institutions.  


In his recent doctoral dissertation through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, OPRF high school Superintendent Greg Johnson investigated whether a teacher’s race affects their ability to implement such “transformative” teaching tactics, in which equal outcomes are the goal.    


Johnson’s recent politicization of education comes through again where he wrote the OPRF community is “tethered to whiteness and white racism”.  He contributed a chapter in a book chapter called Anti-racist Leadership in Precarious Sociopolitical Contexts.


Freire believed education should cause students to see themselves not as individuals, but as part of a hierarchical system of oppression.  Students were now “oppressed” or “oppressor,” and there was a need for “liberation” through political activism.


Oak Park and River Forest High School, perhaps inspired by Freire, has accelerated encouraging students to separate into race-based “affinity” groups, based on students’ own immutable characteristics, and to accuse each other of “racism” 


The school once held a blacks-only assembly, raising the ire of even President Barack Obama’s U.S. Department of Education, which called it a Title VI violation.


OPRF leaders have been clear. White people are oppressors. Black people are oppressed.  The community watched as administrators used national unrest during the summer of 2020 to fuel their local agenda, instead of teaching history and tolerance.


We don’t need no education


Marxists view institutions for traditional “education,” with its rules and traditions and limitations, as itself oppressive. They avoid using the word “education” all together, hoping to reconstruct it as something less specific, but more all-encompassing and transformative for individual students.


These public schools now emphasize instructing students in how they should feel, so-called “social and emotional learning”, as much as they do reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Equity is the top priority, and how you feel about your race and gender is a close second at OPRF and District 90.


“Advisory workshops” have a “goal of helping students better manage their mental health while simultaneously managing school work, activities and complex social lives,” wrote a former OPRF student in the Wednesday Journal.


Whatever the result, OPRF teachers are instructed to affirm their students’ feelings, their “lived experience”, which now rationalizes school resource allocation and curriculum decisions, replacing actual evidence and performance data.


Marx believed that alienation or the estrangement of people from their own human nature was a prerequisite to revolution. 


In Marxism After Marx: Critical Consciousness and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the pro-Marxist YouTube publisher, The Marxist Project, details the precise tactics of “Transformative Teaching Theory.” It is well worth ten minutes.


For starters, they include letting students “lead” their own teaching, putting teachers and students on the same level, creating affinity groups to pit students against one another, elevating the importance of political activism, and “giving students voice” in forums formerly reserved for adults. 


After decades of pursuing “educational excellence,” District 90’s new vision is to “inspire and empower all learners to achieve their personal best”.  OPRF “strives” for equity and doesn’t include the word “education” in its mission or vision.


“Lowering the ceiling”


Manipulating and confusing language and meaning is a Marxist tactic. Some River Forest examples:To avoid revealing the true failure of the de-tracking curricula and instruction, the former River Forest District 90 director of curriculum spent years bobbing between definitions.


The historically accurate district definition described simultaneously challenging different ability levels in the same class, grade etc.  The new definition refers to different styles or media to teach and evaluate the same lesson given to the entire class.  District 90 still won’t address the word play directly.


Almost every publicly announced curricular change has come with the reassurance it was “research-based”, “best practice”, or “evidence-based,” though no evidence is ever presented.


The goal of these changes, equality of result, is consistently omitted from public discussion. Rather, it is presented as “equity.” A word that means fairness and sounds like “equality,” and to 99 percent of parents, has a different connotation and meaning to that which is intended by school leaders.


In River Forest, the actual school goal of “lowering the ceiling” or lowering test results of the highest achievers, so as to bring them closer to the lowest achievers, was accidentally and clearly articulated by the curriculum director, only to be denied and distorted by the board’s director of communications.  


Listen to OPRF school leadership discuss the importance of stunting academic achievement of K-8 students in Oak Park and River Forest prior to de-tracking OPRF high school.


At the center of it all has been Ralph Martire, a socialist and teacher’s union lobbyist who knows how to manipulate language. Martire led the local transformation of schools, implementing de-tracking in River Forest and then at OPRF high school.


Listen to Martire carefully tell the community the curriculum will be rigorous for all students, something families and students say isn’t true.  


As District 90 board president Martire said “our teachers and their curriculum discriminate against black students” as rationalization for adopting a pedagogy of the oppressed, even though the truth on high achievement for black and white students was right out in the open. Or maybe because it was.


HereMartire describes organizing society and allocating scarce but needed resources in an “open mic incident.”  OPRF has anything but scarce resources, spending $24,186 per pupil in 2023, an amount that doubled in 15 years.


But Martire isn’t the only one.


Listen to District 90 board president Rich Moore obfuscate a response to the community allegation of “group think” even after this radical board repeatedly and unanimously voted in favor of a pedagogy of the oppressed.  Moore campaigned with Martire for during the District 90 school board election.


After covid, Moore went so far as to say safety and unvaccinated students were the reason for adopting block scheduling by Roosevelt Middle School, when in reality, longer classes were part of the prescription for the district’s new transformative learning theory.  


OPRF administrators performed their own dances with words in announcing de-tracking freshmen year.  It started with “redesigning and re-writing” the curriculum, then went to providing “Access”, and finally landed on “restructured” freshman year.  During one meeting board member Gina Harris grew frustrated with the dance saying, “call it what it is, it’s de-tracking”.  


Applying critical theory and manipulating people with language are just two Marxist trademarks.  There are others, and there are many more school examples.  It is up to you to learn more and decide for yourself if the transformation of these public schools looks, walks, and quacks like a Marxist duck.


Calling all useful idiots


It was 1945 when Bogdan Raditsa, socialist Yugoslavia’s Minister of Information, saw the country slipping toward communism and gave this warning “Be careful about people whose vocabulary is yours but whose record wherever they hold power is your destruction.”  Raditsa’s “Koristne Budale” or (translated) “useful idiots”, were the people who unknowingly consented to collaborate with the subversive methods of the communists.  It would take the death of dictator Tito plus twelve deadly years before communist Yugoslavia collapsed in 1992. 


This duck-test comes during a political season and E3 would like to remind you of this.  The Marxist really doesn’t care about your politics or who you vote for.  They are looking for useful idiots.


Realistically, many will have this moment of uncertainty when it looks or walks like this duck, and there is pressure to not ask if it quacks.  When it comes to educating youth, asking questions and sharing opinions has always been of supreme importance, because accidents do happen. 


As the saying goes, and useful idiot or not, it’s what you do next that really matters.


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