High schoolers who are walking out of class to participate in demonstrations against Israel are engaging in what “action civics” supporters claim is an “essential component of civic education.”
This according to Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a nationally known education policy analyst.
“Unfortunately, a growing number of school districts allow and even encourage mass student walkouts for political causes,” Kurtz wrote Tuesday at National Review. He noted that, with a shift toward such “action civics” projects, radical school administrators and teachers are able to fuel student protests during the school day or after school with the promise of course credit.
Kurtz explained how fostering public student walkouts in the name of civics curriculum brings a multitude of harms to young people:
Excusing students from school for the sake of protest forces schools to favor some political causes over others. Walkouts also subject a captive audience of minors to political pressures from teachers, peers, and outside groups. And mass walkouts leave students who hold back from popular causes feeling left out or attacked. In the worst case, students become political pawns in adult battles. Under the guise of “civics,” students are manipulated into joining competing political armies.
The analyst investigated how the protests proceeded in Chicago, New York, and the suburb of Edina, Minnesota – all areas led by leftwing political and education forces.
In 2015, for example, Illinois became the first state to mandate political activism as part of civics curricula. Six years later, the state adopted standards that required teachers to “promote student activism and advocacy.”
In January of this year, hundreds of Chicago Public School (CPS) children walked out of class in supposed protests against the war in Gaza.
As ABC7 Chicago reported, critics voiced concerns that the demonstrations caused Jewish students to feel unsafe. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez responded in a statement: “We are a District that is committed to student voice and student participation in civic life and democracy, but harassment, discrimination, and bias-based harm have no place in our school communities.”
Last week, the CPS walkouts involved marching to encampments set up at the University of Chicago.
CPS officials said high school students have a “fundamental constitutional right to free expression, and Chicago Public Schools encourages students to take an active role in civic life.”
The school district permits students to spend 30 minutes in protest during school hours, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
As Kurtz observed, the high school student protests were organized by Chicago Youth for Justice, which posted an invitation on Instagram for students to participate in a May 1 protest.
“Meet at door 6 at the beginning of 7th period,” the post read. “We will rally together in the courtyard by the gym for about 30 mins. Bring signs + posters, chant w/us, show your support for the Palestinian people.”
“SHOW UP AND SHOW OUT!!” the post encouraged further. “THERE IS NO PENALTY FOR COMING AND YOU WILL GET YOUR ATTENDANCE AS WELL!!”
In New York City last November, high school students from over a hundred schools participated in walkouts sponsored by an official community education council, Kurtz reported.
Leftist teacher groups that co-sponsored the demonstration provided students with a “day of action toolkit” that included “scripts” for correspondence with lawmakers, urging them to support a cease-fire in Gaza.
“This was a straight-out lobbying campaign in which students were reduced to script-reading pawns,” Kurtz observed:
Ahead of the walkout, Chancellor David Banks warned teachers against political preaching to students. Yet the pushback to Banks from many teachers only served to prove that indoctrination was the order of the day.
In Minnesota, Education for Liberation Minnesota – the group that recently spearheaded the adoption of what Kurtz called “utterly politicized and entirely execrable” state “ethnic studies” standards that embrace action civics – encouraged an anti-Israel walkout at Edina High School.
Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, explained further in April at the Star Tribune about the Minnesota standards:
A political advocacy organization called “Education for Liberation Minnesota” and its offshoot, the Minnesota Ethnic Studies Coalition (MESC), played a central role in drafting the standards. EdLib MN describes its mission as being “a force” in Minnesota to “contend with the status quo of colonial education that prioritizes Eurocentric curricula.” On its website, EdLib MN states that in 2020, “the decision was made to pack” the MDE-appointed social studies revision committee with its members and allies, who “authored” the new ethnic studies standards.
The Free Press recently reported another example of “action civics” in California, where a group of social justice activists received nearly $2 million in taxpayer funds to train public school students and teachers in “equity” leadership and activism.
At least 78 public high school students were paid $1,400 each to become activists as part of contracts awarded to Californians for Justice (CFJ) by the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD). Since 2019, students had been receiving the funds – which a district spokesperson referred to as “stipends” for “internships” – to join a CFJ club and participate in its political activities.
“Californians for Justice organizes marginalized youth, particularly young people of color, immigrant, low-income, and LGBTQ youth to create the healthy, just and vibrant schools all our communities deserve,” the group boasts on its website.
Kurtz condemns such blatant politicization of education, particularly the approval of walking out of school with the claim it serves as an expression of free speech.
“K–12 students have every right to wear T-shirts or armbands in support of political causes,” he says. “They do not, however, have the right to walk out of class.”
The walkouts, he adds, invite a “mixture of political chaos, bias, thoughtlessness, manipulation, and division taking over our schools right now.”
“Under the influence of the education-establishment Left, even purple and red states may soon be asked to consider laws to facilitate student walkouts,” Kurtz warns. “States need to take a good hard look at what these walkouts bring in their wake and say no.”
