Conservatives have been raising the flag for a long time regarding indoctrination in schools, only to be ignored, mocked, and called conspiracy theorists. Worse, in recent years, some officials have even labeled them as domestic terrorists for standing up for their rights as parents at school board meetings. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the supposed watchdog for hate groups and crimes, is now being investigated for funding the very wrongdoings they purport to condemn. To make matters worse, it appears SPLC is scrambling to hide any evidence of its teaching materials that reportedly promote hate and division.
Capital Research Center likened the sudden disappearance of lesson plans and other education material that SPLC provided to teachers to the “memory hole” out of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where “a chute leading to an incinerator, down which the regime’s Ministry of Truth would dump embarrassing news stories that had been rewritten to cover up official misdeeds and humiliations.” The classroom resources and the archived lesson plan builder pages now just provide 404 error codes instead of the hundreds of lessons that teachers could use for free and that were distributed in public school classrooms across the country.
Since SPLC is currently under indictment for federal fraud charges, including giving money to white supremacist groups, is it any wonder the agency has pulled all of its educational resources? Especially when you look at just a couple of lessons, where the name says it all. Digital Activism Remixed: Hashtags for Voice, Visibility and Visions of Social Justice “teaches students to build social justice hashtag campaigns,” the Research Center explained. The Color of Law: Developing the White Middle Class “tells children that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a myth and the American Dream is a lie, or only for white American males. Lessons are built on the premise that the color of your skin determines your destiny in this country.”
Kali Fontanilla, a teacher in California who works with the Capital Research Center, wrote: “I saw these messages poison students. The SPLC called this educational material. I call it indoctrination, and it was funded by a nearly billion-dollar nonprofit.”