Accusations of McCarthyism, biased teachers among complaints sent to Lt. Gov.'s 'indoctrination' task force

WRAL News reviewed the 506 submissions made to the task force through Wednesday and found most are merely messages of support for the task force, messages against it, joke submissions, messages in support of teachers, complaints about pandemic health protocols or accusations that the task force is a 2021 version of McCarthyism.

Many submissions named specific teachers and the schools at which they teach. One submitter complained about a university education student, by name, who had refused to engage in a debate with them on social media about critical race theory and noted they had also complained to the student’s university about them. The documents the Lt. Governor’s Office provided to WRAL redacted the names of those who complained but not the names of educators mentioned in the submissions.

“It's McCarthyism. It's the Red Scare all over again,” said Lauren Piner, a high school history teacher at South Central High School in Pitt County. “Instead of looking for, you know, Soviets and Marxists in Hollywood and in the government, we're looking for them in our classrooms.”

It could have a chilling effect on young teachers who lack the strong institutional support typically gained from years of experience, Piner said.

Robinson’s Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students task force, or FACTS, is primarily focused on complaints about “indoctrination” in North Carolina’s public K-12 classrooms.

It’s so far unclear how the task force plans to define “indoctrination” or develop a method for measuring whether indoctrination has occurred. But the webpage soliciting submissions provides five suggestions of what people should submit to the task force: examples of discrimination, disparate treatment, indoctrination via assignments of “hostile classroom environment,” students being required to disclose their affiliation with different identity groups or exposure to “inappropriate content or subject matter.”

Robinson’s office declined to comment for this story, citing the pending release of its own report on the task force submissions.

It’s not clear what the task force would do if it were to conclude that indoctrination had occurred. But state lawmakers have alluded to the task force as being a useful repository for identifying teachers who may be in violation of an anti-indoctrination bill Republicans are pushing in the General Assembly. That bill also doesn’t list penalties for violating it, should it become law.

North Carolina has more than 1.4 million public school students, more than 2,000 public schools and more than 93,000 full-time teachers.

The 506 submissions represent only a small slice of the population with children in school, and dozens of those submissions were not complaints of indoctrination.

It’s unclear whether the incidents described are widespread or whether they occurred as reported, which was often done secondhand.

Republicans have pushed the task force since Robinson announced it in March.

The bulk of submissions that concerned classroom activities reflected Republican talking points on critical race theory and the party’s older cause against alleged liberal “indoctrination” in schools.

Of the task force submissions that concerned classroom activities, the complaints mostly concerned three things: sex education and LGTBQ issues, the alleged bias in or inappropriate nature of classroom materials and discussions on race.

Complaints often asserted that certain topics, such as equal pay, LGBTQ issues or racism were too “mature” topics for elementary school students.

Parents complained that their children had been asked what their pronouns were or had been taught about LGBTQ issues during sex education. Some complained about the presence of LGBTQ literature in libraries or portraying LGBTQ people in a positive light through assignments or readings.

The presence of CNN or The New York Times in a classroom or during current events was also a concern for many parents, who believe those news sources have a liberal bent.

One wrote, “All Suggested Sources were Left leaning, Anti Trump.”

One parent complained about a book about Ruby Bridges’ experience integrating an elementary classroom, in which she experienced extreme racial harassment, being taught to 6-year-olds. Another parent complained about high schoolers reading the book “Speak,” which chronicles a high school freshman’s experience overcoming the trauma of being raped by a fellow high school student.

Concerns about race being discussed in class didn’t concern a disagreement over facts of history, but rather which facts to emphasize and how to contextualize them and which conclusions can be correctly drawn from those facts.

The complaints about indoctrination and the complaints against the task force’s mission illustrate the divide between those who believe the United States is a full meritocracy, in which anyone can succeed through hard work, and those who believe the United States is home to people who start off disadvantaged when they are born, chiefly because of their race, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation.

One complaint came from a parent who listened in their daughter’s virtual middle school social studies class.

“I was appalled at how they were portraying white people in history,” the parent wrote, adding, “I almost felt bad for being born of European descent, which was completely out of my control.”

Conversations about natural hidden racial bias have been interpreted by some as explicit accusations of being racist. It’s unclear whether educators, in diversity training, have been explicitly called “racist” or if they have been told they have unconscious bias, or how much the distinction between those two things matters to some of the teachers receiving the training.

One teacher wrote, “I have never been a racist, and am insulted when I am treated like I am.”

Other complaints concerned teachers expressing their opinions during class, leading some students to fear expressing their own.

“My nephew came home yesterday from school and informed me that his teacher laughed in his face when he said George Washington was the best president,” one complaint reads. “The teacher laughed and embarrassed him and then told the class that the only right answer was [Barack] Obama.”

Some complaints concerned assignments related to Black Lives Matter or Black Lives Matter posters in classrooms. One complaint alleged a teacher modified the punctuation in ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s systemic racism webpage and then used the passage for a grammar quiz.

Not all complaints were of liberal bias in classrooms.

Some complaints were actually of conservative or religious bias in classrooms, including science teachers saying God created humans, or of not enough information about Black Codes or Jim Crow laws being taught in schools.

While conservative parents wrote about their conservative children feeling attacked in the classroom, some educators said students can often be discriminatory to their classmates in other contexts, such as telling Hispanic students to return to Mexico, even if they were U.S. citizens or not from Mexico. One teacher reported students chanting “Build the wall.”

Some who oppose the task force argued it has the potential to suppress certain ideas being discussed in classrooms, which they said was a form of indoctrination.

“I submit the concern and complaint that the very formation of this committee is a dangerous step toward indoctrination,” one submission read.

Another said Robinson had identified “comprehensive, historically unbiased representations of our collective as ‘indoctrination.’ Please help put a stop to this toxic conversation before my daughters are subjected to whitewashed, outdated, manipulated versions. I would hate for them to never be told the ugly truth of the exploitation and genocidal racism on which this country was built.”

Another task force opponent wrote, “This task force is a travesty that flouts open-minded thinking and seeks to have a witch hunt against educators. Education is about the free exchange of all ideas, not just those you agree with.”

Lt. Gov. decries politicization of NC classrooms

“Indoctrination” is generally considered to be the act of instilling a belief in another person through repeated instruction.

Many complaints about actual classroom activity don’t say that the student was successfully indoctrinated but rather that they felt uncomfortable expressing their beliefs in class. Many others complained of teachers discussing topics parents didn’t approve or expressing their own belief to students.

Indoctrination is largely unquantifiable without confirming that a student isn’t thinking for themselves. No data exist to show whether indoctrination is occurring in schools or how many students may be impacted by it if it is occurring.

The Republican-created task force’s existence seeks to fill some of that gap and provide a higher-level resource for parents to air their grievances, generating many agreeable comments and support for Robinson’s politics on race and LGBTQ issues.

The ideas listed in the legislation are feared potential derivatives of the use of critical race theory in analyzing history and current events. Those include believing one race or sex is inherently superior and believing any individual should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” solely because of their race or sex.

Nationally, bills have appeared in dozens of state legislatures meant to limit conversations about race, gender or LGBTQ issues in classrooms. Many have been authored by national conservative think tanks, while pushback against critical race theory at local schools boards has come from local parents who coordinate nationwide.

Who all has contributed to the crafting of North Carolina’s legislation is unclear.

When asked this week who had worked on it and if lawmakers had worked with any civil rights groups of teacher groups, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, the sponsor of the bill, said lawmakers had talked with constituents, colleagues and opinion writers. He noted that Robinson, who is Black, has been the biggest proponent of the bill.

The bill has no Black sponsors or co-sponsors.

Republicans move to keep 'critical race theory' out of NC schools

Social studies teachers told WRAL they’re concerned about the impact the task force and the proposed legislation might have on beginning teachers.

”I believe that's who this bill is targeting,” said Rodney Pierce, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Red Oak Middle School in Nash-Rocky Mount Public Schools.

Pierce and Piner, the high school history teacher, said they aren’t as concerned about the potential impact on themselves, noting that they’re established teachers with years of instructional support and relationships with colleagues.

Teachers may avoid certain topics that may stir up more controversy, such as Nat Turner’s rebellion, the Wilmington Coup of 1898 or the school desegregation case Swan v. Mecklenburg County, Pierce said.

Teachers may ask themselves, “Am I going to get some nasty inbox messages? On my social media? Am I going to be called into the principal's office to meet with my administrators? You know what, I'm not even going to talk about it at all,” Pierce said. “I'm just going to stick them on with Dr. King [and] Rosa Parks because that's the safe stuff to teach.”

Piner said the pushback against history and social studies education comes from evolving ideas of what happened in history.

“When you look at textbooks that refer to the Civil War as the 'War of Northern Aggression,' we have the creation of the myth of the 'Lost Cause' and so on,” Piner said. ”We have generations that were taught from those textbooks, and some of those people that were taught those ways of thinking – our parents and grandparents of our current students – just as best practices in medicine and law change, so do perspectives on history.”

Pierce agreed.

“I think a lot of it boils down to, we're telling them things about people they may have been taught to revere,” he said. “But we're telling them not just the good side of these people, but things that they might not want, things that their families might not want them to know.”

Pierce added, “I merely teach the history of this country, and some of the history of this country doesn't reflect well on certain groups of people.”

Piner teaches sordid history in world history and also in her elective course that focuses on the Holocaust and other genocides. One topic she brings up that relates to North Carolina and might be lesser known is the state’s forced sterilization of thousands of people, mostly Black people, that the state believed to be inferior. The state’s eugenics program lasted into the 1970s.

“You can't teach something like that, you can't teach slavery without recognizing that race and racism played a huge hand in it,” she said. “That is not critical race theory. I'm not teaching my students to be ashamed of their heritage. I'm teaching them the facts so that they can understand how we got to this point. Why is the world the way it is right now? And now, how can you change it?”

Teachers should teach all sides and all perspectives of history, Piner said. That could also include teaching about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s achievements while noting that they enslaved hundreds of people.

Teaching “all sides” of an issue should have limits, she added.

“We have to understand that there is no opposing side to things like racism is bad and slavery was bad,” she said. “The opposing side of that, to some of that, is immoral, and I, just as a teacher, I can't teach an opposing side to the oppression of a specific group of people, whether that is, you know, women, African Americans, Native Americans. There is no opposing side. Those items were bad. They were ugly parts of our history.”

Pierce emphasized that he doesn’t share his opinion with students. He asks them what they think and pushes them to back up their conclusions.

He showed an early version of House Bill 324 to his class this spring and asked his students what they thought.

“Of course, the opinion was divided, and that's fine,” he said. “My main thing is, let me present you with the facts, let me hit you with some inquiry, and then you come up with your own opinion. You know, I'm not going to attempt to indoctrinate you or make you think what Mr. Pierce thinks, because that's not what we're doing here. The thing is to give you the facts and to help you become a critical observer and thinker so that you can articulate how you feel about the history that you learned.”