Only one state department of education pledged support for the controversial “BLM at School Week of Action” program that has been implemented in schools across the country and which calls for the “disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics.”
Fox News Digital reached out to all 50 state departments of education asking if they endorse or support the program that was implemented in schools stretching from Washington state to Massachusetts last week. Washington state’s equivalent of the department of education was the only one to say it is “supportive of school districts who want to recognize Black Lives Matter At School Week in their schools.”
Three state departments of education told Fox News Digital they do not support the curricula: South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana.
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“This is the first time we have heard of this. It is not something we endorse,” a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Education said.
A Georgia spokesperson said the state education department does not support the program and pointed to State School Superintendent Richard Woods, who “has stated repeatedly that divisive teachings have no place in Georgia’s public schools and condemns any attempt to promote or push these ideologies.”
Male and female students raising hands in classroom. Men and women are answering to mature teacher.
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The Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, Cade Brumley, has issued similar messages, including this week when he vowed “CRT would not be included in our standards.”
The Week of Action program kicked off in some schools last Monday. The program instructs students in the group’s controversial “13 guiding principles” and guides teachers in implementing an activist-based curriculum.
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The program uses similar academic approaches as critical race theory, with its “guiding principles” calling for the “disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics” and embracing concepts such as “Black Villages,” “Globalism” and “Queer Affirming.”
“We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable,” according to the website “BLM at School.” The website for the program also advocates for people to sign a pledge to stop lawmakers in dozens of states from banning critical race theory curriculum in the classroom.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 05: A woman waves an upside down American flag as people gather at Black Lives Matter Plaza as they wait for the results of the presidential election between incumbent President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in front of the White House on November 5, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
The program has been lambasted by parents as “divisive” and evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement “has trojan-horsed their way into Black History education.”
Former White House appointee at the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys and NFL player Jack Brewer said the “antichrist” BLM activist program needs to be banned not just at the state level, but from the federal level down to local districts.
“If it is not stopped, voices like mine will not be quiet. I will do whatever I can to stand up against this antichrist movement,” Brewer told Fox News on Wednesday. “BLM promotes the destruction of nuclear families, they push for the sexualization of children, and this group should not be given any credibility by having their curriculum in our public school systems.”
Former NFL player Jack Brewer
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Brewer said critical race theory ideology has penetrated everything from “our media, entertainment, public schools” to “the hearts and minds of a large percentage of America” and has left kids “indoctrinated to focus on skin color.”
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“To tell these little black boys and girls, who have been perfectly made and given power by God their creator, that they are oppressed, is disgusting and it’s wrong and it needs to end right now,” he said.
The majority of states that responded to Fox News said that lesson plans are created at the district level, and state departments of education don’t endorse individual programs.
The U.S. Department of Education said more of the same, telling Fox News that “state and local leaders should be meaningfully engaging with parents regularly,” but “The federal government does not dictate or recommend specific curriculum decisions.”
“Those decisions are and will continue to be made at the state and local level.”
Spokespeople from Utah, Wyoming, Connecticut, Kentucky and Arkansas told Fox News that though decisions on lessons are made at a district level, they are unaware of “BLM at School Week of Action” being implemented in their states.
A spokesperson for the Alaska Education Department said definitively that the state “has not implemented any of the principles in our curriculum temporarily or permanently.” And a representative for New Hampshire’s department of education said that the state is “recognizing Black History Month by celebrating Black achievement through four videos.”
In states where schools have implemented the program – including in Georgia where the state education department does not endorse the lessons – controversy has brewed.
Row of empty desks in front of whiteboard. Interior of classroom in school.
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In Georgia’s Dekalb County, students as young as kindergarten-age were offered a lesson titled “Looking at Race and Racial Identity in Children’s Books,” while another, titled “The Truth About Voting,” taught students “some common myths about voting today” and have students think “through who these myths might benefit.”
The district also hosted a featured speaker, Dr. Nicole Prad-Jennings, who was charged with a misdemeanor in October 2021 for battery, specifically “family violence.”
In Denver, a public school was slammed for pushing “preposterous and wholly inappropriate” lessons to kindergartners and first-graders espousing BLM’s “guiding principles.”
To the president of 1776 Action, a group inspired by former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, the lessons in the “BLM at School Week of Action” are “frankly creepy” and “inappropriate.”
“Parents of young students in particular must understand, while the tenets of Critical Race Theory are meant to stir resentment and drive racial wedges between them, Action Civics is about then turning them into protesters and marchers. It’s inappropriate and frankly creepy, and every American who rightfully believes in strengthening actual civics education must understand the difference,” 1776 Action’s Adam Waldeck told Fox News Digital.
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“There must be a renewed effort to keep politics out of taxpayer-funded, K-12 classrooms otherwise we will continue to see abuses like the ‘BLM Week of Action,’” he added.
Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report.
