The Radical Indoctrination Curriculum
On January 29, 2025, the White House issued an Executive Order demanding the “ending of radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling.” Among other things, it takes aim at what it calls “discriminatory equity ideology,” which “treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations,” including the idea that “Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally or inherently superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.” Systemic racism is not to be taught or even mentioned.
Instead, the Executive Order promotes “Patriotic education” that presents American history as grounded in “an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles” that includes “celebration of America’s greatness.”
So, the curriculum would still have a point of view. The White House’s curriculum would maintain that we live in a society that is basically fair and becoming more so with time. I grew up with that point of view. Whose reality does it fit, and what could be wrong with it?
Well, if you believe society operates reasonably fairly for everyone, then how do you understand the inequalities that are visible around us? Lacking another explanation, the stereotypes we all learn (whether we like them or not) provide handy explanations: a person, community, or ethnic group isn’t trying, didn’t work hard enough, hasn’t assimilated, hasn’t learned the language, doesn’t value education, is lazy, and so forth. But, so as not to deliberately tag individuals with these stereotypes, we are supposed to be colorblind. This is a point of view commonly taken for granted by white people, especially white cis-gender men.
I’ve spent about the last fifty years reading ethnic studies books, including Black history, Mexican American history, Native American history, and Asian American history. I’ve noticed three big ideas that permeate these histories (as well as literature, philosophy, etc.), that contradict the President’s patriotic curriculum:
an accounting of how systemic racism and colonization were created, institutionalized, and still maintained,
the long history and ongoing efforts of minoritized groups to resist, push back, and dismantle racist systems, and
the wealth of ancestral knowledge and intellectual work that has been part of minoritized communities since time immemorial, but that is dismissed and erased by the dominant society
These aren’t just ideas in books. They reflect and name the everyday experiences of minoritized students, families, and communities. An ethnic studies curriculum gives minoritized students the tools, vocabulary, analytical frameworks, and knowledge to probe into their daily experiences; an ethnic studies curriculum does not indoctrinate them into a world view they otherwise would not have.
Now let’s look at whose viewpoint schools are teaching. There’s a wide variation, but textbooks provide a useful index of the mainstream curriculum. A simple method for analysis is to count people in textbook images, people who are named for study, or main characters in stories, identifying each person by race and gender. In the process, note how each group is represented: what characteristics do they have, do common stereotypes show up, what roles do people occupy? While this counting exercise does not probe the deeper curriculum narrative, it does provide a useful way of “taking the temperature” regarding whose perspectives dominate.
For example, about ten years ago, I and a team of graduate students analyzed 10 reading/language arts and 10 social studies textbooks published by major publishers and used in New Mexico schools. Here’s what we found:
In eight of the 10 reading/language arts texts, and nine of the 10 social studies texts, White people dominated. In all 10 social studies texts, Whites (especially men) were far more likely to be named than members of any other group. Across the texts, White people—mainly men—appeared in a wide variety of roles such as political leader, soldier, lawyer, police officer, writer, and scientist. White women appeared in more limited roles such as teacher, cook, writer, and childcare worker. The presence of African Americans varied widely (ranging from 2% of the people to 33%), but African Americans were not a majority in any text. Only a few African Americans (such as Martin Luther King Jr., and Harriet Tubman) were named. Their portrayal ranged from nonstereotypic (such as teacher) to stereotypic (particularly athletes and slaves). Depiction of American Indians was minimal, except for one 5th-grade text that had a story about American Indians. American Indians were shown largely in the past or as engaged in traditional activities such as playing a drum and painting pottery. Despite Latinx being the largest category of students in New Mexico, they barely showed up in the texts (ranging from 0 to 12%). Light-skinned Hispanos appeared as senators, soldiers, astronauts, and artists; darker-skinned Latinxs appeared as food servers, field workers, labor union supporters, and police officers. Asian Americans appeared sporadically in most texts, in roles such as modern-day kids, immigrants, English learners, and participants in a science fair.
Our analysis is not alone. In her 2023 analysis of the K-12 standards for U.S. History in Georgia, Caroline J Conner found 164 individuals included by name in the standards; “82.3% of them are White, 14.6% are African American, 1.8% are Indigenous People, and 1.2% are Latinx.” In their analysis of 15 U.S. history textbooks widely used in Texas between 2015 and 2017, Li Lucy, Dorottya Demszky, Patricia Bromley, and Dan Jurafsky found that “Latinx people are virtually absent from textbooks and named individuals are mostly white men. Measured associations between words show that women are mentioned in the contexts of marriage, home, and work, and Black people are involved in actions with low agency and power. . . . discussions of minority ethnicities center on their relationships with White people.”
I encourage readers who are educators to examine textbooks you use, or those of you who are parents, examine your children’s textbooks. Don’t just take my word for it.
Now let’s ask to what extent the three big ideas that reverberate through ethnic studies show up in mainstream K-12 textbooks.
An accounting of how systemic racism and colonization were created, institutionalized, and are still maintained.
Absent. Slavery is mentioned, but texts rarely use the word racism and do not link racism and colonization in the past with inequities today. Individuals can be studied but not systems of racism. As a result, young people—particularly white young people—are left seeing racism as a blemish on our past and as a characteristic of some individuals, but not as an ongoing system. Texts provide no way of understanding why inequalities we see, and protests against them, exist except to draw on assumptions and stereotypes.
The long history and ongoing efforts of minoritized groups to resist, push back, and dismantle racist systems.
Individuals—mainly Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez—show up in texts, but not the history of push-back, much of it being well-organized. This absence leaves the impression that, to the extent that racism existed, it must not have been that big of a deal, or it was resolved. And if solutions are needed today, with the exception of M. L. King’s work in the Civil Rights movement, there is no history to draw on.
The wealth of ancestral knowledge and intellectual work that has been part of minoritized communities since time immemorial.
This gets reduced to a few cultural contributions that are interesting, quaint perhaps, but not particularly important. It’s the wealth of European and Euro-American knowledge that texts treat with some seriousness.
In other words, although people of color appear throughout textbooks and other forms of curriculum today, most of what we have can be viewed as “white studies,” since the underlying assumptions resonate with white experiences, and contradict core ideas that are in ethnic studies. Perhaps we should directly call out the curriculum’s whiteness. There is no curriculum that’s free of a point of view.
The Oxford Dictionary defines indoctrination as “the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.” Hmmm. So, teaching a white perspective, which is what a white studies curriculum does, is indoctrination. Just what the Executive Order prohibits.
It appears that the Executive Order actually calls for a curriculum that opens up a robust conversation across viewpoints and experiences, rather than teaching just one group’s viewpoint. I’ll go for that!