by Matt Muns
What do George Floyd, Thanksgiving, and the Civil War all have in common? The publicly traded Scholastic Corporation has made a conscious decision to weave them into a twisted account of American History (their label) portraying our country as systemically racist, fundamentally flawed, and essentially evil. Articles written in their weekly Scholastic News Review are mandatory classroom reading and discussion for our children—6 million in total from first through sixth grade across the country, according to Scholastic.
During back-to-school week in August, these 6 million mostly elementary-age students were welcomed back with an article titled “Demanding Justice,” with the subheading: “Protests spread across the United States after a Black man is killed by police.”
The opening article paragraphs are misleading and disturbing:
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are demanding an end to the long history of racism and police brutality against Black people in the U.S. He (George Floyd) died after being pinned to the ground by a white police officer. The officer had pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes. Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe.
This skewed portrayal of the event was pushed onto my 9-year-old, fourth-grade daughter. George Floyd was arrested for a purported crime. In June, the county medical examiners found the cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest, which potentially had to do with the combination of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cannabinoids discovered in his blood, according to the toxicology report.
This public information existed long before Scholastic decided to push out a false narrative that would lead most children to infer that George Floyd had died from the police officer kneeling on his neck.
This theme of portraying the United States as systemically racist was visited again in a Scholastic News Review article in November titled, “We’re Still Here.” Thanksgiving week, instead of learning about the history of the early Pilgrims, their struggle to survive in a harsh new environment, and the early support given to them by the Wampanoag tribe that led to the “First Thanksgiving” celebration, our children were given another misleading narrative labeled American History.
The opening paragraphs detail how the Europeans brought diseases that caused the death of many of the Wampanoag and that the Pilgrims then built their settlement where the deceased Wampanoag once lived. The article takes a dark turn under the main section labeled “Broken Promises.”
Without explaining to our children that more than 50 years had elapsed since the first Thanksgiving, the article states that Europeans then took over the Wampanoag’s land, killed many of their people, and enslaved the remaining ones. This again would lead a young child like my daughter to believe that after celebrating a good harvest the Pilgrims then turned on their benefactors, killing and enslaving them.
The start of 2021 found Scholastic ensuring they, too, were a part of erasing history instead of teaching it. The Scholastic News Review on January 5 had a picture of a J.E.B. Stuart statue being removed with the word box at the bottom of the picture called “Words to Know” with the word racism and its definition.
While the article doesn’t mention or address relevant historical details leading up to the American Civil War, it is heavy on the kidnapping and enslaving of people from Africa, which it infers the United States government actively participated in. In reality, the United States banned the importation of slaves in 1808 (one year after the U.K. did it in 1807) and U.S. citizens had never participated in the capturing and shipping of humans from Africa. This key fact goes unmentioned.
With each of these Scholastic News Reviews comes a teaching guide. One of them titled, “Strategies for Teaching about Racism and Unrest” came from and was linked to blacklivesmatteratschool.com. This is further proof that the Scholastic curriculum being force-fed to our elementary-age children has a clear objective to indoctrinate them that the United States is a systemically racist and fundamentally flawed country and thus should be radically changed.
Scholastic’s goal is simply stated in black and white by their 2nd generation Chairman and CEO, Richard Robinson, in a message posted on the company’s website:
To help them, WE must know who they are. Each day WE try to reach to the very heart of what each child will uniquely respond to—what will CHANGE the way THEY think about themselves and the world.
Scholastic seeks to connect emotively with our children and change the way they think about the United States and the ideals, principles, and freedoms it was founded upon. We must say to our school districts and our state representatives that we want Scholastic out of our educational system and out of the classrooms trying to indoctrinate our children.
These are our children, not Scholastics’, not the school districts’, not the teachers’. We pay for Scholastic with our tax dollars and it is time to say no more.
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Matt Muns is the managing partner of Advanced Global Resources, a technology consulting group headquartered in Dallas. This is his second professional services firm to co-found and lead over the past 13 years, with personnel and clients spanning five continents. He and his teams have successfully implemented technology for the Fortune 500, large multinational companies, and the U.S. government. He is a member of the Texas State Bar and lives in Southlake with his wife and three children.
Folks, this kind of tripe has been pushed on our children for over 30 years. When 1992 came along, I anticipated the celebration of Columbus’ landing in the New World. My daughter did two things prior to that day: She told me that Columbus came to this land, killed off most of the Indians, then took the rest back to Europe as slaves, and brought home a permission slip to go to a museum exhibit depicting art ‘related to’ Columbus Day. It turned out to be only ‘pre-Columbian’ artwork, with zero mention of the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, flat earth-round earth, Ferdinand and Isabella, or any other actual historical information. I let the school know that my child would NOT be subjected to any more of their history revisionism.
The following month, I watched to see what they’d say about the Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving. Pretty much identical to what Scholastic is publishing now.
If anyone wonders why the last few generations of students have very low historical knowledge and complete contempt for our country, look no further than the indoctrination centers being passed off as ‘schools’.
Truth, while it may be negative, is not teaching negativity. George Floyd broke the law but his crime should not warrant death. White privilege is real and needs to both be addressed and evaluated in order to end the racism. We study history in order to learn from past events and hopefully avoid making those mistakes again. If we do not look at events from the perspective of every participant then we never learn the whole truth making it impossible to learn and do better. As a retired American history teacher I used Scholastic magazine in my class because it presented issues that were worthy of discussion. I instructed my students to read all narratives with an open but questioning mind. If they questioned the authenticity of events then research and find facts to either support or disprove their hypothesis. As learners if we do not use facts to support our notions then they are just misinformed opinions. Sadly, far too Americans have misinformed opinions and know very few facts.
SCHOLATICS REMOVED YOUR FREEDOM WITH PROPAGANDA BRAINWASHING !!!! SINCE THEY CAME INTO BEING SPAULDING WAS THE BEST USA EDUCATOR CHILDREN COULD LEARN & SCHOLASTIC MAG REMOVED CIVIL LIBERTY CLASSES BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS !!!! ROCKEFELLER ROTHCHILD PERVERTED YOUR CHILDREN AND YOU LET IT HAPPEN !!!!!
A tainted past that none of us had anything to do with. And if you rrally want the truth and have the right ppl to blame. Try blaming where it came from. Africans enslaved themselves. Brought them here and sold them. Yet again like always they need to take responsibility for their own actions. Which never seems to be the case. And a little education for you. The first slave and owner here in America are both black. Republicans freed the slaves not democrats who still to this day seem to fool far too many of you that they give a damn about you. You ppl elected a racist well documented racist. Sat veside and held hands with one time leader of the KKK and you expect change undet his administration. They dony change their minds about racism and Biden is no different. Funny how your vice pres Kamala Harris couldnt stand Biden and went after him fearlessly till Biden announced her as his running partner for pres and vice pres. She sold out her “nationality or race” by the way she isnt black, for the vice presidential seat. Smh and you see change ??? Lmao no chance! She in fact was part of the problem for black ppl locking them up for longer than needed criminal cases. Her own ppl. She hates her own ppl. Shes a traitor to her own ppl. And only the blind cant see what the obvious shows the world.
Lord white rhetoric is absolutely ludicrous. They have faulty knowledge because white people don’t want the facts known. They want white privileged to be earned not taken by violence and wrong doing. It’s time for an reality check. Let the truth be known.
I agree the scholarly template is far too negative. Soon we will see the pendelum swing back the other way. It’s getting tiring that if you are white you are automatically a racist.
I applaud Scholastic for bringing the truth to ALL children because let’s face it, what’s been put out there is a sugar-coated version of history and reality. Scholastic did not lie in those newsletters, they’ve only done what so few outlets have done and that is have the balls to speak the truth. America is not this picture perfect country the author and so many other white Americans speak of and it’s about time kids learn the truth. We as white Americans need to do better and admit to ourselves that this is a flawed country with a tainted past.
There is no nation on earth that isn’t flawed .
We first need to talk about how the different tribes warred with each other over resources before we introduce the Europeans.
We need to be honest and talk about how the African leaders sold other African tribe captors to europeans for cloth, metal and guns .
Your right we need to be honest but it seems there is a bias in this telling of history
https://www.homeschools.org education from a Christian perspective at home.
Instead of teaching so much negativity regarding this country and the people how about inserting the positive things as well. When teaching so much negativity children begin to see everything in a negative way. This is one of the problems of today’s youth and what we are seeing coming out of many collages and why there is so much hatred being displayed.
Scholastic should be teaching children not to use drugs and not to grow up to beat a pregnant woman like Floyd! Keeping it real…
Floyd was a pregnant woman???
The sentence should have ended with the word ‘did’, since George Floyd did time for armed robbery and putting a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly. Great martyrs the Left puts out there…every time.
No, dipshit, he wasn’t. But he did break into a pregnant woman’s home and rob and beat her. We lost a good one when he got his ticket punched.