Many educators and students are concerned about the impact of recent changes to U.S education
policy. Several leaders in government have shared their intention to sanitize and uplift U.S.
history while restricting any education on race, gender, gender identity and sexuality.
A panel of teachers spoke at Morgan State University and shared the potential loss of cultural
sensitivity in the classroom.
The Society of Future Educators (SOFE) led a panel discussion titled “TeachHER” and one of its discussions focused on Trump’s recent executive order affecting K-12 teaching in U.S. schools.
The executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” requires schools refrain from teaching race, gender, gender identity and sexuality as they happened in American history and labeled all of it as “discriminatory ideology.”
According to the order, “‘Discriminatory equity ideology’ means an ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals …” The order clarifies this includes generalizations about race, color, sex, national origin, oppressed and privileged classes, racism as it appears among certain groups, and leans heavily into individualism.
“Parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” wrote the Trump administration. “Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children…usurps basic parental authority.”
Raizel Stebbins, a fourth-grade teacher at Westowne Elementary school, said she’s worried that Trump’s executive order will diminish cultural awareness in K-12 Schools.
“It’s very disheartening to try to throw away history and not just of African Americans, but also of all colors, cultures and all heritages,” said Stebbins, “As teachers, we need to educate and be worldly so we can help our kids be worldly too.”
The executive order pushes schools to adopt a “patriotic” education, fully embrace “biological sex” and abstain from treating members of one race, sex, or national origin as preferred over as well as criticizes previous “anti-American” teachings — specifically targeting subjects about race and gender.
“…eliminating Federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology,” wrote the Trump administration.
The order seeks to prevent schools from teaching anything related to gender identity, particularly the transgender experience. It labels these teachings as “gender ideology” and threatens to cut federal funding to schools that fail to follow the instructions given.
To Stebbins, removing DEI and incorporating “patriotic” curriculum in K-12 schools will harm students, especially those who lack exposure to diverse backgrounds.
“As teachers, our number one rule is to educate our students as much as possible, because they deserve to know about their history and culture,” said Symone Gaskins, a senior in elementary education. “As African Americans and just people of color, we’ve fought so hard to have our history brought to the light and for [Trump] to be taking that away from us is just sad.”
