Activists from a South Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty — a group best known for opposing LGBTQ rights, pushing for the removal of library books, and fighting racially inclusive curriculum — are starting their own public charter school.
I almost let my subscription to you all lapse --- Then I read an article like this and I realize just how essential you all are --- thanks for doing journalism that isn't copying others - amazing - and thanks for making your work so easy to share - critically important - thanks for being so good at what you do --- priceless
Thank you Judd for this important info. They tried to implement the 1776 curriculum at a local school district near me, and it did not go well. Happily the board members who supported it were voted out in the last election and sanity returned. But this is what we are all up against. Make no mistake.
Judd and Rebecca, your intensive examination of the depths of ineptitude in these educational movements deserves deep appreciation and high praise! These "private companies more interested in turning a profit than educating children" show their avarice and incompetency.
Now we can understand more thoroughly why Nikki Haley didn't want to acknowledge the ugliness of slavery as a huge part of South Carolia's history. And, DeSantis does not even have to skirt the anti-women, racist biases he holds so dear.
Media must expose the stupidity and greed in Mom's for Liberty, the 1776 Curriculum, and the misuse of South Carolina's taxpayer funding of its money for education.
Trump just won the Iowa caucus...by a lot. Really clarifies a lot for me ... the values of so many are aligned with him... thief, adulterer, rapist, seditionist, bully, narcissist. Our society is currently in trouble and the best antidote for the future, education, is compromised as more school boards become tainted.
Watched some of the interviews of real Iowan voters last night on why people voted for Trump, and a young couple who obviously did not have a hold on my memory: their answer was that WE are responsible, the voters who elected him. They were right! Trump reflects us as a whole.
Marilyn, let's add context to that win. tfg win 50% of the republican vote out of a state that has a little over 3 million. That's not a big whoop to me. On the other hand, living in NW IL, just a little more than a hour away from Davenport, IA, I could have told anyone that IA would go for tfg. I used to love going to that state. Now everyone is so angry, everywhere we go. When tfg and his pitiful party are gone, maybe, just maybe we'll return.
It's so ridiculous to me that those on right think our schools are teaching "white man bad." When I learned about the Civil War, Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson were made out to be heroes. We never learned about John Brown, we never learned about things that happened later like the Tulsa race massacre.
Yup. Growing up in the 1900s my public education system only mention of slavery was that President Lincoln freed them. I learned about the civil war from the Disney telefilm Johnny Shiloh and bubble gum trading cards about civil war battles and their hero’s. Both Union and Confederate. Stonewall Jackson and General Lee were made out to be leaders to respect and admire. And I grew up in N.E. Ohio. This attitude about U.S. history is what the MAGA subculture wants. Which is so wrong that it is not even wrong. It’s propaganda.
That's correct. History can be terribly distorted when an ideology like this gains a foothold and imposes its views and its books on children.
I do not believe that "white man bad" is what is being taught at all. Instead, teachers teach that stealing a person's labor is bad BEHAVIOR. Selling a person's offsprings is bad behavior,. Mutilating a person is bad behavior. Preventing them from voting is bad behavior.
As a teacher, that is a very important distinction to make whenever teaching anything to anyone. "Respect the child but punish bad behavior". That was my mantra when I was teaching and I never had a student stay mad at me for a detention or a bad grade. From the first day, I established that every day was a brand new day and a good day to make progress.
I remember a great t-shirt that a student wore on the first day of school: "Please be patient: God isn't through with me yet".
People are not good or bad *intrinsically*: They say that Hitler was a good father, for example.
I am willing to believe that: We all have an attachment to our progeny. Instead, it is his behavior that was horrendous.
Indeed, there is some good and some bad in all of us. That is what REDEMPTION is all about: Realizing that some behavior was bad and promising [to yourself, if to no one else] that you will not repeat the behavior.
Those who feel that when we talk about that bad behavior, we are targeting THEM; those folks have not yet accepted that this behavior is bad and needs changing. Until they do, they are a danger because they would continue and try to get away with their bad behavior if given half a chance.
Bad behavior should ALWAYS be called out: that is how you create a society in which people respect the norms of good behavior, are good citizens, participate in the democratic process, pay their taxes, respond to subpoenas and generally accept the rights of others to prosper honestly.
The aims should be to eradicate bad behavior while enhancing that person's good judgement. If only all prisons did that, we would not have so much recidivism.
Well said but in my opinion there is one nuance missing.
Don't forget it's not just stealing a person's labor but stealing and selling their BODY as well. Runaway slaves were routinely charged with theft of their own person.
Thank you for exposing this and here's hoping media outlets in SC pick this up.
In SC at least, so long as MAGA and GOP run the state, the only way to ultimately beat these Christofascist "schools" is via the proverbial market place. Whereby their financial and academic failures continue to be exposed and enrollment declines follow...
Very difficult, perhaps impossible, if state law does not require disclosure. It is one of the advantages of being a private business, doubly so for ‘religious’ schools. If SC doesn’t care about plugging the ‘quality’ standards loophole, chances are enough parents don’t either.
Rumor has it that the curriculum will include classes in "Ethical behavior in Threesomes" and "How to go shoplifting for fun". Both life skills more useful than anything they will learn from a Hillsdale College created curriculum.
You should see the one about the "Trans Agenda" for these United States. Something like 0.002% of the population is gonna TAKE OVER EVERYTHING and make ALL of youse GAY GAY GAY!!!
I live in Massachusetts and was on Scott Lively's email list. It apparently was small enough that you could get personal replies to all inquiries. He believed in conversion therapy and suggested I go to Northampton Mass and tell people on the street that it was a sin to be gay.
Let's drive out and have a chat with Mister Lively. I'm sure he'll appreciate being converted by concussion. I am convinced that he'll apprciate being shown a (snicker) "lively time!"
It's difficult for me to wrap my head around the apparent support for this MFL movement; it is truly the furthest one can get from basic American values and not really even Christianity...it's old testament-based sharia law. What used to be conservative has become malignancy that needs exposure and excision.
Because people that are brainwashed by conservative Christians think they are doing the right things for their children. Parents often leave the teaching to the schools, not questioning and not realizing what their children are hearing is feeding a greedy and sick business. My parents bought into Catholic school dogma long ago. It wasn’t all bad, but I remember my mother telling us that “they know what they are doing”. A lot of what I witnessed and endured would be called child abuse now. Biased and not based on fact, but on belief.
No wonder people don’t know what to believe anymore. Between religion, tv and the internet, it’s a mess that demands rigorous questioning and clear thinking.
We are watching a minority of people bulldoze the majority. We need to see justice at the very top, i.e., trump et al. And then proceed to remove the rest of the scum.
They are taking advantage of states that are run by Republican state houses of government like SC, Fla, Tx etc. and Republican governors. 47 states are Republican controlled just so you know. The battle isn't just on the federal level, it is in the states big time and I. My opinion much harder to deal with in elections particularly because states control their election regs to a degree. GA is a good example.
They have truly rigged the system… we saw the beginnings when trumpers pulled together fake electors to make the steal last presidential election. Just a preview imho.
These are nothing but "indoctrination schools". The fact that they can be fully taxpayer funded tells you that something is terribly wrong with a Government that would allow that.
So much for not picking "winners and losers".
They are so hellbent in their goal to continue funding these [often religious] schools] that even if the school is declared a failure, complete, with the achievement numbers to prove it, it can continue to operate on public funds.
We need to defund these grifting operations, because at this point, they are nothing but a grifting operation. These children are being robbed of a more rounded education.
As you can guess, I am in total opposition to public funds being used for private ventures: When public funds go into private ventures, these private ventures claim...PRIVACY, which means that you cannot hold them accountable.
I have hated the concept of publicly funded charter schools since they were used in the 60s to support segregation. I am particularly adverse to religious charter schools on First Amendment grounds, but it seems to me that any school that actively promotes discrimination in the overall society is just as bad. They drain public funding (all too inadequate in the first place) from public school systems. There was a much hyped study last spring about how they "perform better" but Forbes has pointed out that even the organization that did that study itself had done another study that showed the very same metrics put charter schools BEHIND public schools, and concluded that the exact same numbers were in THAT study "meaningless" and "small." Oops.
If groups want to set up private schools that leave their students ill-prepared after graduation to deal with society as it actually is, I guess they can--but not with MY money. My kids are long out of school and my grandkids just out, but I still vote for tax levies for school districts. Maybe the tax levies should add a few additional percents or so for those whose children are using it for private tuition.
I guess these Mom's For Liberty schools could be used to defuse pressure on school boards to ban books and ideas. Go to your own school and leave ours alone. Our kids will be much the better off if just THAT happens.
I don’t think that’s how it works. Taxpayers will be paying them to go away as they gut what is left of public schools. These are folks who don’t want oversight & I suspect in SC the curriculum is not a problem. There is something more here about shifting power and $$$ to them (personally and their schools) and weakening public schools.
Oh, I see. Hard to recognize the irony because it is not too unusual of a philosophy.
SC has a new law going into effect that gives $6K to parents for tuition at private schools - about 1/3 of the $$ of the cost for a SC public school student. Therefore, the big interest in “education”.
Our state is flat funding public schools but has passed charter schools that couldn’t get private funding. A bill to that was a spin off of the FL plan that allows private donors to ‘donate’ and get all their money back in tax deductions. The $$ has to come from somewhere for the deductions & as they eliminate the state income tax. It was struck down. Our state constitution must be amended to allow $$ to go to education outside “common” schools. After many yrs of failed court cases, it will be on the ballot this November.
Literacy for 54% of adults is below sixth-grade level because states invested in private contractors & failed methods to teach reading. The unwinding has slowly begun & will take many yrs. That is where $$ should be directed.
well, the attempt was to see the kids in them as segregated so they (or their parents) would do less harm to regular kids--a kind of eternal recursion to the 50s.
“Do no harm” is not their goal or they would quietly homeschool. 😀
I’m admittedly a bit sensitive on this issue. I fear we are about to lose our public school system. It will hinge on what the rural voters do. In the past rural legislators would not vote for these schemes unless they only targeted the 3 more ‘urban’ areas. They don’t have enough students in rural areas.
The GOPers don’t let bills into the public domain until they are ready to pass them. So we don’t know if the proposed amendment will again target the largest districts or be statewide. Ironic because our $$ is ‘distributed’ among the rest of the state - which resents us. They also don’t have enough tax $$ to support their schools.
I actually agree with you completely. I was referring to the fact that the segregationists thought blacks being in the same classroom with their kids would pollute the kids. Hence, segregation.
I think people are discouraged because we do not see any legal punishment happening to the worst orange terrorist from within. If the big honchos let him get away even though he is an existential threat, why bother. This is a dangerous set up.
But we must also be ready to protest in person with massive crowds.
It's very difficult not to make cynical comments about how the term education has been corrupted by both religion and politics. Moreover, elected representatives in many states appear to be siphoning off taxpayer funds to fund sham schools started to address the cultural grievance of the day. How can funding such enterprises (not schools) continue when there is no oversight? It boggles the mind what has now becomes accepted practice in some corners of education today.
I received a "National Opinion Survey, (from Hillsdale College) , on the threat of Critical Race Theory in American Education". This is a thinly veiled donation pitch, and return address is Washington D,C, Their goal, stated in the mailer, "Fully funding National Education Campaigns" Obviously the campaigns are directed at destabilizing public education. I am returning the survey without a donation, want to see next steps.
I almost let my subscription to you all lapse --- Then I read an article like this and I realize just how essential you all are --- thanks for doing journalism that isn't copying others - amazing - and thanks for making your work so easy to share - critically important - thanks for being so good at what you do --- priceless
Bet you won't do that again. We ALL need Judd and crew to keep doing what they do. Informing the rest of us on matters the MSM is loathe to handle.
Thank you Judd for this important info. They tried to implement the 1776 curriculum at a local school district near me, and it did not go well. Happily the board members who supported it were voted out in the last election and sanity returned. But this is what we are all up against. Make no mistake.
Precisely why we must make it a priority to pay attention to local elections, to vote out these people who pervert education and government.
Judd and Rebecca, your intensive examination of the depths of ineptitude in these educational movements deserves deep appreciation and high praise! These "private companies more interested in turning a profit than educating children" show their avarice and incompetency.
Now we can understand more thoroughly why Nikki Haley didn't want to acknowledge the ugliness of slavery as a huge part of South Carolia's history. And, DeSantis does not even have to skirt the anti-women, racist biases he holds so dear.
Media must expose the stupidity and greed in Mom's for Liberty, the 1776 Curriculum, and the misuse of South Carolina's taxpayer funding of its money for education.
Trump just won the Iowa caucus...by a lot. Really clarifies a lot for me ... the values of so many are aligned with him... thief, adulterer, rapist, seditionist, bully, narcissist. Our society is currently in trouble and the best antidote for the future, education, is compromised as more school boards become tainted.
For reassuring and expert analysis of the Iowa caucus result, I encourage you and everyone to check out Dan Pfeiffer’s Message Box from today.
Watched some of the interviews of real Iowan voters last night on why people voted for Trump, and a young couple who obviously did not have a hold on my memory: their answer was that WE are responsible, the voters who elected him. They were right! Trump reflects us as a whole.
I agree… that is the horror for me… tRump symbolizes a huge segment of our society. Frightening and disgusting.
Marilyn, let's add context to that win. tfg win 50% of the republican vote out of a state that has a little over 3 million. That's not a big whoop to me. On the other hand, living in NW IL, just a little more than a hour away from Davenport, IA, I could have told anyone that IA would go for tfg. I used to love going to that state. Now everyone is so angry, everywhere we go. When tfg and his pitiful party are gone, maybe, just maybe we'll return.
And privatized.
It's so ridiculous to me that those on right think our schools are teaching "white man bad." When I learned about the Civil War, Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson were made out to be heroes. We never learned about John Brown, we never learned about things that happened later like the Tulsa race massacre.
Yup. Growing up in the 1900s my public education system only mention of slavery was that President Lincoln freed them. I learned about the civil war from the Disney telefilm Johnny Shiloh and bubble gum trading cards about civil war battles and their hero’s. Both Union and Confederate. Stonewall Jackson and General Lee were made out to be leaders to respect and admire. And I grew up in N.E. Ohio. This attitude about U.S. history is what the MAGA subculture wants. Which is so wrong that it is not even wrong. It’s propaganda.
That's correct. History can be terribly distorted when an ideology like this gains a foothold and imposes its views and its books on children.
I do not believe that "white man bad" is what is being taught at all. Instead, teachers teach that stealing a person's labor is bad BEHAVIOR. Selling a person's offsprings is bad behavior,. Mutilating a person is bad behavior. Preventing them from voting is bad behavior.
As a teacher, that is a very important distinction to make whenever teaching anything to anyone. "Respect the child but punish bad behavior". That was my mantra when I was teaching and I never had a student stay mad at me for a detention or a bad grade. From the first day, I established that every day was a brand new day and a good day to make progress.
I remember a great t-shirt that a student wore on the first day of school: "Please be patient: God isn't through with me yet".
People are not good or bad *intrinsically*: They say that Hitler was a good father, for example.
I am willing to believe that: We all have an attachment to our progeny. Instead, it is his behavior that was horrendous.
Indeed, there is some good and some bad in all of us. That is what REDEMPTION is all about: Realizing that some behavior was bad and promising [to yourself, if to no one else] that you will not repeat the behavior.
Those who feel that when we talk about that bad behavior, we are targeting THEM; those folks have not yet accepted that this behavior is bad and needs changing. Until they do, they are a danger because they would continue and try to get away with their bad behavior if given half a chance.
Bad behavior should ALWAYS be called out: that is how you create a society in which people respect the norms of good behavior, are good citizens, participate in the democratic process, pay their taxes, respond to subpoenas and generally accept the rights of others to prosper honestly.
The aims should be to eradicate bad behavior while enhancing that person's good judgement. If only all prisons did that, we would not have so much recidivism.
Well said but in my opinion there is one nuance missing.
Don't forget it's not just stealing a person's labor but stealing and selling their BODY as well. Runaway slaves were routinely charged with theft of their own person.
If the white guys aren’t painted as heroes, it becomes painfully obvious that when one simply tells
I just read the article and immediately became a paid subscriber... we need more sources like this.
Thank you for exposing this and here's hoping media outlets in SC pick this up.
In SC at least, so long as MAGA and GOP run the state, the only way to ultimately beat these Christofascist "schools" is via the proverbial market place. Whereby their financial and academic failures continue to be exposed and enrollment declines follow...
Very difficult, perhaps impossible, if state law does not require disclosure. It is one of the advantages of being a private business, doubly so for ‘religious’ schools. If SC doesn’t care about plugging the ‘quality’ standards loophole, chances are enough parents don’t either.
Rumor has it that the curriculum will include classes in "Ethical behavior in Threesomes" and "How to go shoplifting for fun". Both life skills more useful than anything they will learn from a Hillsdale College created curriculum.
I get their newsletters for fun.
You should see the one about the "Trans Agenda" for these United States. Something like 0.002% of the population is gonna TAKE OVER EVERYTHING and make ALL of youse GAY GAY GAY!!!
You are a glutton for punishment my friend. But as they say, you read that shit so we don't have to.
It's insane but it gives me a wrigglng "worm's eye" view of their mindset, such as it is.
I live in Massachusetts and was on Scott Lively's email list. It apparently was small enough that you could get personal replies to all inquiries. He believed in conversion therapy and suggested I go to Northampton Mass and tell people on the street that it was a sin to be gay.
Let's drive out and have a chat with Mister Lively. I'm sure he'll appreciate being converted by concussion. I am convinced that he'll apprciate being shown a (snicker) "lively time!"
It's difficult for me to wrap my head around the apparent support for this MFL movement; it is truly the furthest one can get from basic American values and not really even Christianity...it's old testament-based sharia law. What used to be conservative has become malignancy that needs exposure and excision.
Because people that are brainwashed by conservative Christians think they are doing the right things for their children. Parents often leave the teaching to the schools, not questioning and not realizing what their children are hearing is feeding a greedy and sick business. My parents bought into Catholic school dogma long ago. It wasn’t all bad, but I remember my mother telling us that “they know what they are doing”. A lot of what I witnessed and endured would be called child abuse now. Biased and not based on fact, but on belief.
No wonder people don’t know what to believe anymore. Between religion, tv and the internet, it’s a mess that demands rigorous questioning and clear thinking.
Thank you to Judd and Company for keeping the light on the path.
An absorbing account about the metastisizing cancer in our body politic. You guys are real journalists. Yikes!
Good article. Sad to see this group aligned with Hillsdale and Erskine. Another layer of brainwashing being performed on young minds with
1776 curriculmn.
We are watching a minority of people bulldoze the majority. We need to see justice at the very top, i.e., trump et al. And then proceed to remove the rest of the scum.
They are taking advantage of states that are run by Republican state houses of government like SC, Fla, Tx etc. and Republican governors. 47 states are Republican controlled just so you know. The battle isn't just on the federal level, it is in the states big time and I. My opinion much harder to deal with in elections particularly because states control their election regs to a degree. GA is a good example.
GA is an excellent example. OH is too & for that matter so is TN.
They have truly rigged the system… we saw the beginnings when trumpers pulled together fake electors to make the steal last presidential election. Just a preview imho.
These are nothing but "indoctrination schools". The fact that they can be fully taxpayer funded tells you that something is terribly wrong with a Government that would allow that.
So much for not picking "winners and losers".
They are so hellbent in their goal to continue funding these [often religious] schools] that even if the school is declared a failure, complete, with the achievement numbers to prove it, it can continue to operate on public funds.
We need to defund these grifting operations, because at this point, they are nothing but a grifting operation. These children are being robbed of a more rounded education.
As you can guess, I am in total opposition to public funds being used for private ventures: When public funds go into private ventures, these private ventures claim...PRIVACY, which means that you cannot hold them accountable.
I have hated the concept of publicly funded charter schools since they were used in the 60s to support segregation. I am particularly adverse to religious charter schools on First Amendment grounds, but it seems to me that any school that actively promotes discrimination in the overall society is just as bad. They drain public funding (all too inadequate in the first place) from public school systems. There was a much hyped study last spring about how they "perform better" but Forbes has pointed out that even the organization that did that study itself had done another study that showed the very same metrics put charter schools BEHIND public schools, and concluded that the exact same numbers were in THAT study "meaningless" and "small." Oops.
If groups want to set up private schools that leave their students ill-prepared after graduation to deal with society as it actually is, I guess they can--but not with MY money. My kids are long out of school and my grandkids just out, but I still vote for tax levies for school districts. Maybe the tax levies should add a few additional percents or so for those whose children are using it for private tuition.
I guess these Mom's For Liberty schools could be used to defuse pressure on school boards to ban books and ideas. Go to your own school and leave ours alone. Our kids will be much the better off if just THAT happens.
I don’t think that’s how it works. Taxpayers will be paying them to go away as they gut what is left of public schools. These are folks who don’t want oversight & I suspect in SC the curriculum is not a problem. There is something more here about shifting power and $$$ to them (personally and their schools) and weakening public schools.
well, I wasn't actually serious about letting them have their own nest to foul.
Oh, I see. Hard to recognize the irony because it is not too unusual of a philosophy.
SC has a new law going into effect that gives $6K to parents for tuition at private schools - about 1/3 of the $$ of the cost for a SC public school student. Therefore, the big interest in “education”.
Our state is flat funding public schools but has passed charter schools that couldn’t get private funding. A bill to that was a spin off of the FL plan that allows private donors to ‘donate’ and get all their money back in tax deductions. The $$ has to come from somewhere for the deductions & as they eliminate the state income tax. It was struck down. Our state constitution must be amended to allow $$ to go to education outside “common” schools. After many yrs of failed court cases, it will be on the ballot this November.
Literacy for 54% of adults is below sixth-grade level because states invested in private contractors & failed methods to teach reading. The unwinding has slowly begun & will take many yrs. That is where $$ should be directed.
well, the attempt was to see the kids in them as segregated so they (or their parents) would do less harm to regular kids--a kind of eternal recursion to the 50s.
“Do no harm” is not their goal or they would quietly homeschool. 😀
I’m admittedly a bit sensitive on this issue. I fear we are about to lose our public school system. It will hinge on what the rural voters do. In the past rural legislators would not vote for these schemes unless they only targeted the 3 more ‘urban’ areas. They don’t have enough students in rural areas.
The GOPers don’t let bills into the public domain until they are ready to pass them. So we don’t know if the proposed amendment will again target the largest districts or be statewide. Ironic because our $$ is ‘distributed’ among the rest of the state - which resents us. They also don’t have enough tax $$ to support their schools.
I actually agree with you completely. I was referring to the fact that the segregationists thought blacks being in the same classroom with their kids would pollute the kids. Hence, segregation.
I think people are discouraged because we do not see any legal punishment happening to the worst orange terrorist from within. If the big honchos let him get away even though he is an existential threat, why bother. This is a dangerous set up.
But we must also be ready to protest in person with massive crowds.
It's very difficult not to make cynical comments about how the term education has been corrupted by both religion and politics. Moreover, elected representatives in many states appear to be siphoning off taxpayer funds to fund sham schools started to address the cultural grievance of the day. How can funding such enterprises (not schools) continue when there is no oversight? It boggles the mind what has now becomes accepted practice in some corners of education today.
How can the funding continue? Well I’ll let Pink Floyd answer that: “Money
It's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit… “.
Also from 1984 - Winston: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,"
And don't forget, they ALL think they need a Lear jet!
True.
I received a "National Opinion Survey, (from Hillsdale College) , on the threat of Critical Race Theory in American Education". This is a thinly veiled donation pitch, and return address is Washington D,C, Their goal, stated in the mailer, "Fully funding National Education Campaigns" Obviously the campaigns are directed at destabilizing public education. I am returning the survey without a donation, want to see next steps.
Good article. Sad to see this group aligned with Hillsdale and Erskine. Another layer of brainwashing being performed on young minds with
1776 curriculmn.