School taught lesson on ‘dual pandemic’ of Covid-19 & racism in US

A Maryland school board has come under fire for giving kids a “psychoeducational lesson” about what it called the US’ “dual pandemic” of Covid-19 and “systemic racism.”

According to documents published by Judicial Watch and seen by Fox News, the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) board launched the curriculum last year. In an August 2020 email, MCPS Associate Superintendent Janet Wilson announced that all schools would be “required” to implement the lesson as part of a “mandatory Social-Emotional Learning” module by the following month.

The lesson was said to provide “crisis facts” about a “dual pandemic” of Covid-19 and racism that is “occurring around the country” and in Montgomery County. It was apparently tailored to a range of age groups, from preschoolers through to high-school students.

In an instructional video provided to schools, teachers were told to use “scripted responses” about the lesson to students.

Defining the term pandemic as a disease outbreak affecting a large number of people over a wide area, one slide featured a Black Lives Matter protest poster to show how both Covid-19 and “systemic and structural racism” are “affecting the lives of people in our community and around the world.”

Other learning aids recommended that teachers introduce controversial critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi’s book ‘Antiracist Baby’ to the “youngest readers,” describing it as the “perfect gift” for “ages baby to age three.” 

Another PowerPoint slide said people from “African American and Latinx communities” were “more likely to get sick” from the disease due to how “racism and unfairness impacts their lives.”

Materials for high-school students purportedly taught how “systems of oppression are woven into the very foundation of American culture, society, and laws.”

Conservative posters on social media said the “real pandemic” was the “false propaganda” being spread by Democrats who were “spewing fear” and “wanted racism to stay alive.” One maintained that both Covid-19 and systemic racism were “very useful for controlling the people” and so “neither [would] ever be allowed to end, if politicians have their way.”

Some commenters defended the school board for teaching the “truth” and said they wanted other counties and states to “follow Montgomery County’s lead” and “recognize that there is a double pandemic.” One went even further than the board itself, warning of the “triple threat” of Covid, racism, and Republicans “subverting democracy and embracing fascism and stupidity.”

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