Virginia kindergarten students will learn about institutional racism alongside the alphabet, according to a new curriculum created for the upcoming school year.
Loudoun County is adding "social justice" to the mission of teaching elementary school students reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Washington, D.C., suburb—the richest county in the country—has teamed up with the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) education arm Teaching Tolerance to develop its new curriculum. The proposed lesson plan will restructure history and social studies classes to emphasize slavery as fundamental to American society for students from kindergarten to the fifth grade.
"Sugarcoating or ignoring slavery until later grades makes students more upset by or even resistant to true stories about American history," the curriculum reads. "Long before we teach algebra, we teach its component parts. We should structure history instruction the same way."
Not every Loudoun County educator is on board with the administration's direction. A longtime elementary school teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said that the school system had always taught students about the reality of slavery—lessons that typically begin in the fourth grade. She said the administrative focus to push racial politics on students who do not yet know how to read is motivated by politics, rather than education.
"I teach lower grades in elementary school.… [Never before] did I have to teach about slavery," the teacher said. "Our standards were always [to] teach about famous Americans, George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., people like that. But, it was all very general and the bigger picture, we highlighted their accomplishments."
The new Teaching Tolerance kindergarten curriculum requires teachers to explain social justice theories to five-year-olds. The Loudoun County elementary school teacher believes this curriculum will prove divisive for children who...
