Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools―and What We Can Do About It

by Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder, John H. McWhorter

We’re used to assuming that politics stop at the classroom door. Those days are over.

Are your kids being indoctrinated in school?

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly likely. From “social justice” to critical race theory, and from advocacy and activism campaigns to planned “action weeks,” teachers and schools nationwide are abandoning neutrality in the classroom, embracing political agendas and partisan aims, and expecting students to get on board.

Meanwhile, students with doubts or misgivings decline to voice objections due to fears of lowered grades, impacted college recommendation letters, social ostracism, “cancellation,” public shaming, ridicule, and other formal and informal means of “correcting” them and making them toe the ideological line.

Is this what we want for our kids? Will this kind of “education” produce able citizens or independent thinkers capable of self-government?

The range of opinion has been narrowing in higher education for some time; now, heavy-handed thought constriction and chilled speech are choking our secondary, middle, and even elementary schools. The situation is dire—and America urgently needs a response.

This book provides the tools we need to confront and remove hidden agendas, to uproot and reject educational biases, and to restore balance and integrity to America’s classrooms.

It’s time to undoctrinate our schools!

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Cultural, Politics

308 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 14, 2021

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I empathize with Snyder's intentions, and was impressed by the degree to which the audiobook narrator resembled Snyder's own rhythm of speaking, I'm disappointed by many of the conclusions and recommendations outlined in Undoctrinate. She correctly identifies many of the problems surrounding the politicization of classrooms, but neglects to fully acknowledge the degree to which those issues are beyond remedy by government bodies or grass-roots activism.

While it is true that small victories are possible when a articulate minority of parents protests loudly enough, those victories do not change the inexorable direction of education toward greater politicization. Parents have been increasingly following Snyder's advice and attending their local school board meetings to protest the indoctrination creeping into their public schools, but much too late and with limited impact.

Less than a month after Undoctrinate was released, the National School Boards Association asked the Biden administration to protect schools from the "imminent threat" of parents sending "threatening letters and cyberbulling" school officials. Such activities were labelled "domestic terrorism" and the FBI mobilized to address the threat.

Fundamentally, public schools are semi-monopolistic branches of government and thus inherently inclined to becoming tools of indoctrination. Whereas Snyder proposes that democratically determined curricula and government certification of diversity consultants will help solve the problem, both approaches will fail to address the problem of indoctrination in our school systems. The problems reach well beyond political correctness, identity politics, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Diversity / Equity and Inclusion (DEI) curricula.

Contrary to Snyder's optimism in "democratically" determined curricula, Richard Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!) eloquently illustrates his disgust after experiencing first-hand how the "democratic", "expert-advised" processes of assessing and approving public math and science curricula go deleteriously astray at every level. History curricula have been profoundly compromised for decades and Common Core initiatives are but the latest in a series of blunders. Unfortunately, politics ruin everything, including education.

Most of the viable solutions involve the separation of education from government. The more centralized the curricular decisions in education and the less schools are directly answerable to the parents they serve for their funding, the greater the incentives for politicized instigators to capture the curriculum and organize the teachers to oppose positive change.

One elegant but improbable solution would simply be to eliminate public education altogether. James Tooley, author of Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education, provides us with ample examples of how many countries have already solved this problem via inexpensive, high-quality private schools. Another, more politicized option would be to replace public schools with government vouchers that can be used at any private school. Some school districts in New Hampshire already take this approach.

Private education isn't a cure-all either. Many (most?) traditional private schools have embraced the politicization of their curricula to an even greater degree than public schools. If parents at these schools are unhappy, they can vote with their feet by sending their children to schools more closely aligned with their values, but alternative schools are often both hard to find and lack the long-standing reputations and large endowments of the established institutions.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to create competing private or charter schools that do not suffer from the same indoctrination problems. First, most contemporary teachers have been indoctrinated during their own college education, especially those who specifically majored in education. Second, many of the accreditation agencies such as the National Association of Independent Schools and the Association of Independent Schools of New England have been captured and now require member schools to demonstrate their commitment to DEI. In short, teacher certification and accreditation are considerable obstacles to creating truly independent schools.

While Snyder is on a noble quest to address real challenges in education, both in her book and in her role at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, her proposed solutions of grass-roots activism, government certification and democratic curriculum review are inadequate to the problems at hand. On-going, disruptive innovation will likely come from uncertified, unaccredited private educational alternatives.

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was previously unfamiliar with Bonnie’s work, but Greg Lukianoff was kind enough to introduce me to her, and I was able to receive an advanced copy of this excellent book. Bonnie has been in the field of education for years, and she’s seen how the culture wars have started to infect the public schooling system. With both a legal and educational perspective, Bonnie highlights numerous cases around the country where educators are pushing certain social justice and political ideas on children. I’m personally quite progressive, but I parent my son in a way where I teach him how to think and not what to think. As a parent, it’s worrisome to learn about how some educators are not only telling kids what to think, but some children are actually getting punished for having the wrong point of view.

Bonnie starts the book by discussing various stories from around the country, but what’s great is that she cites a ton of sources. I’m always skeptical of how bad this problem actually is, but I was able to fact check some of the sources for my own peace of mind. In this book, you learn of children who are starting to self-censor just to avoid being ostracized by their teachers and their peers, and Bonnie even tells a story of her daughter having this issue in college as well. While there are plenty of views from people that I disagree with throughout the book, school should be a place for open discussion, and educators need to at least attempt to keep their own views out of the discussion.

Although I have not seen this happening where I’m from in Las Vegas, Nevada, the author sold me on the fact that this is something that we should all be concerned about. I could go on about this book forever, but the second half of this book is what really drew me in. The author discusses how limiting speech and conversations can affect children by citing scientific research, and she also helps the reader understand the duties and ethical guidelines for educators as well as the rights of students. While I still don’t know if this is a massive issue, it should definitely be on everyone’s radar, so I highly recommend that all parents and people involved in education give it a read.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-argued, hard-hitting expose of the infiltration of radical, anti-democratic activists (particularly in America) who are indoctrinating children with their own political views, all through the finding of the American taxpayers. Unlike many conservative books like this, Undoctrinate also offers ideas and strategies for actually doing something rather than just wringing our hands in dismay. A very important and timely book for parents that are not happy with wokeism being spoon-fed to their children instead of being given an actual education to be prepare them for adulthood, self-sufficiency, and an unclouded understanding of the world.

[Alan Johnson]

See my post 72 (December 24, 2021) here.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more in the 'what we can do about it' section, and was disappointed that this was a very small slice of the book.

Much of what she said were things I've read on my own (John McWhorter, James Lindsay, etc.). Or things I am already doing within my own school district.

Overall not bad, not great. If this is the first critique you're reading on the woke crowd, it's a good place to start. I personally prefer other scholars on the subject (John McWhorter being my favorite, which was a reason I read the book--since he did the foreword).

[Cool Kid · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anti-woke teacher survival guide.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read.

A very in depth look at the politicization of school. Excellent and logical approach to the material, but it does drag a bit towards the end because of how in depth it goes. But a very rational case against the erosion of traditional educational values.