GOP Primary: The Politics of Indoctrination
GOP Primary: The Politics of Indoctrination
As candidates slug it out over the economy and crime, Jesse Sullivan seizes on education issue weighing on suburban voters
On May 24, WGN-TV hosted a debate for Republican primary candidates for Governor.
Three candidates participated in the debate – Darren Bailey, Gary Rabine and Jesse Sullivan.
The first question from the moderator to the debaters was “why should undecided voters pick you?”
Bailey stumbled a bit but eventually fell back on “I’m a farmer and I’d like to remind people what farmer’s do. Farmer’s solve problems. Farmer’s fix things.”
Rabine, who hails from McHenry County and started out seal coating driveways before forming the Rabine Group, answered in a high falsetto tone of voice, “I’m a business leader. I’ve been building businesses all my life, I’ve been turning around businesses all my life. I think we need a business leader.”
The last candidate to answer was Sullivan. Also from a business background, “Sully” from Petersburg, responded as none of the others did saying, ”as a father to young children, we are going to get indoctrination out of the schools and excellence back in.”
High crime, burdensome taxes, overregulation. These are topics all GOP candidates – and Republican voters – agree are problems that need fixing in Illinois. They may have differing ideas on how to do the fixing, and that’s for Illinois primary voters to sort out.
But ‘indoctrination out of schools’ is not an issue we’ve heard with regularity on the gubernatorial campaign trail. Sullivan jumped on a subject that has become a popular talking point in other gubernatorial political races, most famously in Virginia last fall and currently in Florida.
Later in the May 24 debate, candidates were given a platform to expand on the idea that school curriculums are used as grooming tools for teaching radical theories on race.
After questions on gun and abortion rights and addressing the pension crisis, the moderator asked “would you place restrictions on teacher’s addressing race, sexuality and religion?”
A portion of Bailey’s answer:
CRT (Critical Race Theory) was written into the rules, CRT can be written out of the rules. Government needs to be pulled out of our schools. Get the unfunded mandates out of the way and let local school boards and parents come together and decide how they want to education their children and their schools. School choice will solve this.
Rabine:
Parents, not politicians should be raising their kids. I look at our local communities, our school boards, they should be working together with teachers to build the curriculum that’s best for them.
Rabine went on to accuse libraries of carrying books he labeled as “child pornography.”
Then Sullivan answered with more defiance and detail, qualifying his remarks by saying his father and wife are teachers:
The fact is, in the state of Illinois, our education system is failing our children. Two-thirds of our kids are not reaching grade-level standards in math, science, english. In CPS (Chicago Public Schools) three out of every four children in 11th grade are not reaching grade level standards in the basics. We have to solve that problem.
Sullivan went on to tout his “Power to the Parents” agenda and how “parent’s have a fundamental right to know and have transparency in their children’s education.”
He offered up a viral sound bite when he called to “defund the Chicago Teacher’s Union, call it out for the extremist wing of the Democratic party” (right on, Sully, but never gonna happen) and ended with a short elaboration on his ‘indoctrination’ tease from the debate’s open:
We need to get this indoctrination of sexuality and gender identity in kids as young as second grade. Gender identity does not belong in our curriculum. I am a fighter on this issue for my kids and for yours.
The moderators next shifted to a straight-forward, blunt question:
“What is Critical Race Theory?”
Rabine answered first, saying he believed CRT “teaches people to be victims.”
Bailey took a shot at the 100,000-plus member Illinois Education Association, one of the largest unions in Illinois, accusing them of strong arming CRT language into the classroom in the form of “worksheets…it’s an idea that my right could be your wrong, your wrong could be my right. It’s a bunch of nonsense.”
Going last again, Sullivan gave the most cognizant answer (and borrowing a line from one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history) to the ‘what is CRT’ question:
The primary lens you should use to judge a person is not their racial identity. The primary basis you should judge a person on is the content of their character. That is Martin Luther King, Jr. We need to be doing more civics lessons for teachers so we have love of country rather than looking and saying we have built-in racism into the design of our country. That is not what we have…we are in no way against looking how there is discrimination in our society. We are against labeling race as the primary identifier between victim and oppressor.
Debaters are always straddling between hyperbole and poignancy, embellishment and truth.
At the May 24 event, Sullivan was better than his peers on speaking his truth on CRT and issues around curriculum indoctrination.
Wisely, he’s savvy enough to double down this week and seize an opportunity to gain momentum around the topic, post-debate.
At a May 26 Board of Education meeting for Oak Park-River Forest High School, located in west suburban Cook County, an assistant superintendent of the district, Laurie Fiorenza, presented a plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading.”
In a recording of the meeting reviewed by The Kerr Report, Fiorenza said the following while explaining the plan to board members:
We know that traditional grading practices perpetuate the inequities. We are committed and focused…(audio inaudible for a second)…on grading opportunities systemic to the building.
Next year we are going to focus on establishing a building-wide equitable grading philosophy and helping teachers to to use those practices in their classroom
Here’s what’s listed on a slide from the “Summary of Findings” section of the presentation:
Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and perpetuate the opportunity gap
Integrating equitable assessment and grading practices into all academic and elective courses requires the collaborative effort of a team of educators committed to improvements that benefit all students
Many OPRFHS teachers are exploring and implementing more equitable grading practices such as: utilizing aspects of competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book, and encouraging and rewarding growth over time
Sullivan, citing a Tuesday article from the board meeting in the online publication West Cook News, tweeted out a talking point thread first voiced in the May 24 debate:
Sullivan’s tweets incited a response from Bailey, who released a statement Tuesday chastising OPRF: “The new grading policies at Oak Park and River Forest High School are just the latest example of ‘woke’ ideology polluting our schools.”
The combative dialogue forced OPRF District 200 to release it’s own statement Tuesday, stating, “OPRFHS does not, nor has it ever had a plan to, grade any students differently based on race.”
For candidate Sullivan, there’s a couple of ways to look at this.
“CRT” and “indoctrination” are election year buzzwords going back to 2020. A cynic might say by attempting to be a thought leader amongst his opponents on these populous topics, Sullivan is desperate to get attention in a primary race not polling in his favor.
(An Emerson College study cited in the WGN-TV debate listed Sullivan as polling at 7.3%, almost even with Rabine (7.8%) but well behind Bailey (19.8%) and front-runner Richard Irvin (24.1%).
A more optimistic viewpoint: Sullivan is smart enough to understand that thousands of undecided suburban Cook County, DuPage and Lake County voters care deeply about this issue (especially women). After two-plus years of dubious practices, parents of public school children are distrustful of school leaders. They want to rally behind a candidate inclusive on school choice and vocal on destructive shutdowns rubber-stamped by their local school boards. For a candidate to publicly condemn a district’s curriculum and affirm the beliefs of parents fed up with bait and switch tactics, it’s smart political strategy and in using social media, sound tactic.
The same Emerson College/WGN-TV poll cited a 36.9% “undecided” number of voters. There are ballots to be won.
And while ‘education’ significantly trails the ‘economy’ and ‘crime’ on issues most important to voters, it’s natural for an ‘undecided’ to look more closely at a candidate with whom they share a common value.
Is it enough to sway enough voters and erase a wide deficit four weeks from the primary?
We’ll find out.
But Sullivan would be wise to stay on message.
Thanks for this Jon. Hadn't heard of this.
I watched that debate. I didn't get much out of it. I thought it was too short (?) and the one "moderator" seemed to be nicer to Sullivan than the rest.
I could only wonder why Irvine failed to be a part of it. Another one tomorrow ...... I heard that he will attend, but scandals he is a part of keep popping up. Will he show up this time?
With the shape we're in, some times I think ---- why do I even bother??!!