Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette, who revealed teachers in Metro Nashville Public Schools are still teaching CRT and 1619 Project curriculum in the classroom despite the law.
Leahy: Now on our newsmaker line, the President of Accuracy in Media, Adam Guillette. Do I have the last name correct? Is it Adam Guillette? Is that correct?
Guillette: Close enough. I’ll take it.
Leahy: What is the correct pronunciation?
Guillette: Guillette.
Leahy: Is that French Canadian in background?
Guillette: It is. Well done, sir.
Leahy: Where about is your family from – Quebec, way back when?
Guillette: Brittany, France, way back when. Then they came over to Quebec, I think primarily upper Quebec, and then came down into New England.
Leahy: New England. New Hampshire or where?
Guillette: New Hampshire. Exactly. New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Leahy: Well, there you go. I have a French background, French Canadian. One-eighth French Canadian came over about 1600 on my grandmother’s side, lived in Quebec. My dad was born in Quebec, actually, so I know that culture.
Well, you’re with Accuracy in Media. You caught my attention with a little undercover video you did here in Nashville. Tell us a little bit about what you discovered in that.
Guillette: Sure. We have investigated dozens and dozens of school districts around America and many in Tennessee, including Nashville, to see whether or not bans on Critical Race Theory actually stopped Critical Race Theory from ending up in the classrooms.
And quite disappointingly, what we found consistently, including in Nashville, is that these Critical Race Theory bans don’t stop a thing, and these administrators and teachers do whatever the heck they want. It’s outrageous.
Leahy: Yes. That pretty much is the case. And it’s interesting, because we followed that law and it was very well crafted, the 14 tenets of Critical Race Theory that are not allowed to be taught in K-12 public schools here in Nashville.
The enforcement mechanism is parents file a complaint and the Commissioner of Education who leads Left, Penny Schwinn, would be the adjudicator. The only complaint that I’ve seen, she said, well, that’s moved because they haven’t been teaching that particular stuff of late.
But how did you get in? And you had an administrator here in Metro Nashville Schools who basically on-camera said, yeah, it’s a well-crafted law, and it makes no difference. We’re not changing anything about what we do. How did you get that video?
Guillette: Well, we’ve got a really dedicated team of investigative journalists. I go in the field as well. And you’re right. A Metro Nashville administrator told us, just like you said, it’s a well-crafted law.
But he went on to say it accomplishes nothing because at the end of the day, as many administrators told us, these teachers can close the door and do whatever they want.
If you ban the horribly inaccurate and incredibly divisive 1619 Project from The New York Times, then the school district just signs up for a service called Newsela, which sounds innocuous enough.
They’re a direct partner of the 1619 Project. So that gets the stuff in classrooms. In other districts, they told us, well, we now call it social and emotional learning instead of Critical Race Theory.
But the parents caught on to that. So rather than calling it social and emotional learning, they simply call it mental health. It’s an endless game of whack-a-mole.
Leahy: Yes. And now the question I think that I have on this is, what is the solution to rein in these teachers who teach whatever they want, with absolutely no recourse for the parents?
Guillette: I think it’s abundantly clear that the only true solution is school choice. Yours is a state like many others currently considering expanding school choice, expanding education reform.
It’ll force the administrators and the school districts to compete, and it gives parents better opportunities. Our government school system is inherently broken on so many levels.
Parents deserve better education opportunities. We currently have an action alert set up on our website, aim.org, where you can put in your name and your address and automatically send a message to your state reps, state senators, and so forth and you can tell them that you want school choice for your children and your family.
Leahy: But right now, let’s say there’s a parent sending their kids to Metro Nashville Public Schools, which there are plenty of our listeners and other schools, Metro Nashville Schools and Williamson County and Wilson County.
They all have teachers that are basically teaching what they want, regardless of the law. What can those parents do right now on March 29, 2022, knowing that there’s a high likelihood that their kids are being indoctrinated with this Woke left-wing ideology?
Guillette: I really think the only opportunity is school choice and to get your children ultimately out of those schools, because the real danger, surprisingly, that we found with so many school districts, is that you talk to the administrators and the teachers, and they come across as incredibly kind, incredibly well-intentioned people who want what’s best for your kids.
But what they view as best for your kids isn’t necessarily what you view as best for your kids. And you talk to them and they’re nice people. And it almost reminds me of Congress, where the approval rating for Congress overall is incredibly low.
But 98 percent of congressmen get re-elected because people assume theirs is the good one. These school districts are the same way.
You talk to these administrators and teachers, and they seem like nice people. But they’re dedicated, they’re focused, they’re committed, many of them, to making sure that no matter what your child learns [are] these horribly racist Marxist principles. There’s just no way to fix government education.
Leahy: Well, I agree with that. The question, though, is, to what extent do parents who look at this as well, the school. Both mom and dad are working. They have to have a place for their kids to go and learn.
And the schools are ‘free.’ They are facing a dilemma. And it seems to me that there’s some responsibility on the part of parents who realize that the option of free schooling is too costly. Your thoughts?
Guillette: Well, that’s exactly right. Just like anything else with the government, whatever is free is the most expensive and horrible product you’ve ever gotten that you never wanted. And that’s totally the case with these government schools.
I’ve never been a big proponent for one or versus another in terms of education, savings accounts or vouchers, or charter schools.
I am for whatever we can do to give the most kids possible an opportunity to get an education away from these government schools.
Because even if you’re a concerned parent and you go and look at the curriculum, well, they bring in content that’s outside the curriculum.
Leahy: They always do that.
Guillette: Exactly. And honestly, I would want that, I would want good teachers to be bringing in new resources, but I would want to be in an education system where I could trust the teachers.
Leahy: But isn’t it part of the problem is that the teachers are sort of making up the curriculum? They’re teaching to some standards. They don’t necessarily always have a curriculum.
They go out on the internet and they get some left-wing junk and they jam it down their kids in the classroom. That’s what I think is happening there day to day.
Listen to the full interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Adam Guillette” by Adam Guillette.
If it’s such a “well-crafted”‘ law, why does it not have any teeth? Why not jail time or at least hefty fines for those who violate the law? Or possibly a clawback provision that forces school districts who violate the law to pay back part or all of their state funding? Or maybe de-certifying any teachers’ union that is involved in violations of the law (such as encouraging or pressuring teachers to ignore the law)?
If there are no real consequences for violating the law, why is anyone surprised that the administrators, teachers, and, especially, the unions are ignoring it?
[…] Read and listen to the entire interview at The Tennessee Star […]
[…] Guillette Uncovers Teachers Still Teaching CRT […]
CRT is now a core pat of the democrat religion. The only things we can do is rid our government and institutions of them
Good for that teacher in defying this unjust law! Accuracy In Media is merely a front for right-wing extremists who pretend to speak for Tennessee.
So it”s OK for teachers to just ignore any law they think is unjust? And anyone who dares to expose their criminal behavior must be a “right-wing extremist”? Whatever happened to “Nobody is above the law” which all of your Commie heroes are so fond of spouting? I think you’ve just set a new record for stupid comments.
And, before issuing such a blanket condemnation of AIM, I would suggest you invest a little bit of time learning about the organization…oh, wait, I forget, you already know everything, so there’s nothing left for you to learn.
Time to start firing involved school administrators. They, unilaterally, are choosing to ignore the law or have lost control over the educators in their system.