'Undoctrinate' Your Kids: Pushing Back Against Classroom and Campus Propaganda

Tolerance of different viewpoints and values is a key principle of a free society, and yet in classrooms and on campuses across the country, young people increasingly self-censor and self-silence to avoid speaking out against the dominant cultural narrative. Some may not even realize that there are different viewpoints and values, conditioned as they are from their early days in a public school classroom to accept whatever their teachers say. And their teachers are being similarly conditioned, spending time in schools of education that tie grades to ideological activism and link achievement to allegiance with an approved interpretation of concepts like “social justice” and critical race theory. 

All of this can lead parents to wonder what they can do to help prevent their children from being indoctrinated into a belief system that may run counter to their own values or may not allow for viewpoint diversity. 

The answer, according to Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder, is to undoctrinate your kids. Bonnie is the director of high school outreach at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and author of the new and important book, Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—and What We Can Do About It.