Some California schools rewrite history for ‘woke’ version of 9/11

When schools teach about 9/11, the focus should be on honoring the memory of those who lost their lives, the bravery of first responders, and those who made sacrifices to save victims.

Instead, North Monterey Unified School District in California is teaching students that 9/11 should be understood as an event that made “already existing prejudices against Arab and Muslim Americans more obvious and shameless” and as a catalyst for state-sponsored Islamophobia.

The unit, which is part of the district’s mandatory ethnic studies course, mirrors the recently exposed “Muslim Studies Curriculum” from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

These are not isolated examples. They are part of an aggressive campaign to inject radical political activism into K-12 classrooms nationwide.

Moreover, these deeply divisive curricula are designed to teach students to adopt an anti-American, anti-Western mindset and to view society through the lens of oppression, identity-based guilt, and class struggle.

Besides a framing centered on “Islamophobia,” North Monterey County’s ethnic studies curriculum also includes the usual Marxist class resentment, links “whiteness” directly to settler colonialism, and relies on the “Wheel of Power/Privilege.” The course commands students to push for “transformational change” through “critical hope” — a call to activism in the hope that they will bring about a neo-Marxist utopia.

Like North Monterey, Minneapolis Public Schools’ ethnic studies course features critical race theory and uses Karl Marx’s economic theories to teach students that “exploitation uses capitalism to oppress” the working class, and that slavery, genocide, colonialism and white supremacy stem from capitalism and Western culture.

These classes are not aberrations or anomalies.

In fact, at Defending Education, we have published over 50 reports on ethnic studies curricula and materials that push the same political agenda and ideology.

And these radical and divisive concepts are not limited to ethnic studies courses; they are also integrated into school cultures and teaching methods.

For instance, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) recently demanded that NYC public school students should be taught through a “democratic socialist” framework, and that these ideas should be embedded in the school system as the foundational principles by which all children are taught.

The district and others across the nation have already incorporated key components of this far-left ideology through methodologies like “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education.” In NYC, the policy and education strategy requires teachers and staff to have an awareness of “past and present forms of bias and oppression,” “foster critical consciousness,” and approach daily instruction with a race-conscious framework. 

Even more concerning is that state-level entities and K-12 districts across the country appear to be more in line with the DSA’s political platform than with the US Constitution and Western culture. 

For example, New Mexico Public Education Department’s high school history Instructional Scopes center critical consciousness as an anchor standard that students use to evaluate 9/11, how it impacted “diverse groups in America,” and question what constitutes a “credible source.” The documents also push intersectionality, environmental activism, and define equity as the allocation of “exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome” between identity groups.

While proponents claim they are simply teaching “honest history,” what they are actually doing is cherry-picking the darkest chapters of Western history to contrast against their own whitewashed versions of Third World cultures and historical records.

A truly honest education does not hide from Western culture’s moral failings and sins of the past but seeks to present them with nuance and context alongside the triumphs and achievements of individuals and groups that have made the American experience successful.

Parents and community members need to demand that K-12 schools provide a rigorous and balanced education. Classrooms should be places where children learn to read and do math, discover science and history, and to problem solve –– and not platforms for spreading divisive ideas to a captive audience.

Rhyen Staley is a researcher for Defending Education. He holds a master’s degree in elementary education and has over a decade of classroom experience in both public and private schools.

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