John Ransom | March 18, 2023
(The Lion) — The Virginia Education Association is finding ways to introduce Critical Race Theory (CRT) materials into classrooms, despite a statewide ban.
In February, as a part of its Black History Month, the VEA provided educators with a Black Lives Matter “tool box,” Fox News reports. The union claimed that it was “a resource guide for advancing racial justice in Virginia’s schools,” as first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
But “inherently divisive concepts” in the resource were banned by an executive order issued by Gov. Glenn Youngkin right after he took office in January 2022. In fact, his election was aided by his strong stance on parents’ rights in education and his opposition to progressive ideologies in classrooms.
The VEA’s racial justice guide was just one part of a “week of action” planned by BLM, and some of the resource guide’s principles have nothing to do with slavery or race relations.
The guide claims to be “working towards a queer-affirming network where heteronormative thinking no longer exists” and “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.”
“The idea that the ‘nuclear family’ is a Western construct would certainly surprise Chinese, Indians or Koreans,” reflected the Journal dryly.
The union says there’s nothing nefarious about the Marxist-inspired eradication of “heteronormative thinking” and the nuclear family.
“As is stated on the first page, the goal of the toolkit is to inspire an ongoing movement of critical reflection and honest conversation on issues of racial justice,” VEA President James Fedderman said in a statement.
“Some people, like Governor Youngkin, find this to be an objectional stance, but we are unapologetic in our support of this goal. As a union of public school educators, we seek nothing more than to present an accurate portrayal of America’s past, without which we will not make the progress we so desperately need to make as a nation,” he added.
The VEA union represents more than 40,000 Virginia teachers.
However, Youngkin’s office called the resource “politically driven,” promising the state’s schools will stick to teaching history.
“The Administration will not support a teacher’s union attempts to prop up a politically driven curriculum toolkit which contains tenets that go beyond teaching history, lesson plans, and operates as a political manual for the next generation of Virginia’s students,” a spokesperson for the governor told Fox News Digital.
“Virginia’s schools will continue to teach all history – the good and the bad,” the Youngkin spokesperson added.