A Florida mother received a standing ovation this week after she called for a “mass exodus” from the public school system, which she condemned for propping up “unbiblical” critical race theory.
The raucous applause happened Thursday, when Moms for Liberty spokeswoman Quisha King took part in a panel discussion, “Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale,” during the Family Research Council’s annual Pray, Vote, Stand Summit.
“This is not going away,” she said at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia. “The enemy has no chill. … These people are serious. They want to silence us and shut us down. I really think, at this point, the only thing to do is have a mass exodus from the public school system. That’s it.”
King’s comments come on the heels of parents questioning U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s instruction to the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to investigate alleged threats made against school board officials by parents who have taken issue with the use of critical race theory and other racially charged curricula in the classroom.
One prominent critic of Garland’s action is Asra Nomani, the vice president of investigations and strategy for Parents Defending Education. She argued the attorney general, whose son-in-law co-founded an education company that utilizes critical race theory, has “declared a war on parents.”
Nomani argued Panorama Education stands to benefit from Garland’s “outrageous silencing of parents who are challenging its data mining of K-12 students.” The education company, it should be noted, compiles social and emotional data from grade-school students. The surveys it conducts — known as social and emotional learning (SEL) monitoring — include race-based questionnaires and trainings on systemic oppression, white supremacy, unconscious bias, and intersectionality, according to the Washington Examiner.
She went on to call for hearings and an ethics investigation into the company and the potential conflict of interest it poses, noting that Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia recently increased its contract with Panorama to $2.4 million.
King, for her part, argued Thursday critical race theory promotes the idea that the U.S. is an “intrinsically racist” country. She also asserted such teachings are counter-biblical.
“Everything about it is anti-biblical,” she said. “It is un-American, and it’s just a flat-out lie. It’s just not true. You cannot have a country that has been moving towards racial reconciliation literally from its beginnings — if you really, really dig into the history — and say that America is intrinsically racist. Those two things just don’t go together.”
Many parents, she added, don’t realize how woven into education critical race theory has become.
“I don’t think parents realize just how pervasive it is,” she said. “I know in Duval County [in Florida], I found critical race theory workshops and events as far back as 2011. So I think understanding that they are not kidding, this is not going away.”
This comes as more parents are opting to continue their children’s homeschooling education even as most public classrooms across the U.S. have reopened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, roughly 2.5 million American students learned from home. Today, that number has doubled to nearly 5 million children. And in California alone, homeschooling applications tripled from last year to this year.
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