K-12 ‘Action Civics’ Trained Students Encamped on College Campuses. Here’s What Parents Need to Know.

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Daily Signal

Parents asking why their college student’s graduation is canceled this year need only remember when their child was in high school.

K-12 schools have been training students to disrupt the systems around them for years through the teaching of “action civics,” which primes students to be activists even if it deprives them of understanding if, when, or why a demonstration would be necessary.

Rioting students’ encampments on college campuses today are disrupting schools around the country, putting classes on hold in some places and leading to the canceling of graduation ceremonies at the University of Southern California.

There have been signs this was coming. To wit: In August 2021, Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of the Los Angeles teacher union, was asked what she thought about students’ low test scores as schools reopened their doors after the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Reflecting on the riots of summer 2020 after George Floyd’s murder and forecasting the violent activity taking place today on college campuses, Myart-Cruz said in an interview published in August 2021: “There is no such thing as learning loss. Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. … They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”

Myart-Cruz’s comments are nearly three years old, which means many of the students who were taught how to engage in disruptive protests are in college today.

Los Angeles is one of the school districts that taught students how to protest for nearly a decade. LA school officials had been part of an effort to change K-12 civics instruction in California to become “action-oriented,” teaching students to “take collective action” and “be aware of their power to act and be predisposed to take action” (emphasis added).

The revamped civics instruction in LA was part of a larger movement in education called action civics, which instructs students on how to become activists and even rioters.