The PowerPoint slide says it all: “I pledge to support Black Lives Matter at School principles.”
It’s what students at a northern Virginia middle school were shown, according to post on Twitter that went viral and is being reported on by The National Desk.
It’s not a hoax. It’s an attempt at peer-pressure-based indoctrination. Fairfax County Public Schools even verified its authenticity by making a statement about it that claimed:
This slide was part of a lesson about the danger of not listening to multiple perspectives. There was no pressure to sign up to support anything. We embrace all viewpoints at FCPS and we want to ensure that students are aware of all perspectives. We are proud of our diversity and our inclusive culture.
Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neily reacted: “Children were asked to pledge to Black Lives Matter which was something that took a lot of families aback because I think people like the idea in general, but the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation that has pushed this in a lot of schools is deeply controversial, pushing ideas like celebrating queerness and disrupting the nuclear family. BLM itself also has come out supporting Hamas, supporting Cuba, and so there are a lot of people who have a lot of problems with BLM. So for this to be pushed in a classroom, is a little bit appalling to a lot of people for good reason.
“I feel like more often than not when schools are caught with their hand in the cookie jar like this, they often end up kind of backpedaling, but would they have issued such an apology? And what was the decision-making process that went into actually integrating this in the first place? This was flagged for us because a student in the classroom felt deeply uncomfortable with this lesson.”
A Minneapolis middle school paper recently published a guide to attending protests, including information on what to do if you are arrested, how to deal with tear gas, and other helpful tips like not speaking through megaphones.
” … Why are we encouraging our children to go out and put themselves in dangerous, violent situations?” Niely asked, about that incident. “If that is something that a child wants to do, then they should certainly be with the parent and not being told what to do and how to act in these extremely dangerous situations without parental input.”
