FEATURED
The curriculum for teachers in training at Michigan State University’s top-ranked College of Education has been flagged for lessons that focus on concepts that denigrate white people and promote critical race theory, drawing steep criticism from GOP students and leaders in the state.
MSU student Adrianna Mobley provided a stack of lessons to The Federalist, which published an investigative report in late October detailing how course materials “have a constant focus on race and a consistent dismissal of capitalist principles.”
At the same time, Young America’s Foundation published details of a mandatory course for students in the program called “Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education.”
It teaches that educators “who cling to their Whiteness cannot participate in abolitionist teaching because they are a distraction, are unproductive, and will undermine freedom at every step, sometimes in the name of social justice,” according to one of its textbooks.
MSU’s is currently ranked #1 by U.S. News for elementary and secondary education.
U.S. Rep. John James, a Republican running for Michigan governor, referred to the class as “state funded division.” Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver, also a Republican, posted on X: “Formal action is being pursued immediately to right this deep wrong.” Both the MSU College Republicans and YAF have both condemned the class in social media posts as well.
Mobley also shared teacher training curriculum with The Federalist that includes a required video from Angela Davis, a former Black Panther leader. In the video, Davis states “racism is integrally linked to capitalism.”
Another required video claims “America can never be a meritocracy” until it provides “an equal starting point and equal resources,” The Federalist reported.
At one point a professor told Mobley: “if we’re teachers going about our business as usual in a school which perpetuates inequitable outcomes for students of color or low-income students, we are … perpetuating those inequalities.”
Michigan State University spokesperson Amber McCann told The College Fix its courses align “with national teacher preparation standards” and that “curriculum is reviewed through well-established academic governance processes at the department, college, and institutional level.”
The MSU student newspaper reported that “Multiple students interviewed by The State News also pushed back against Republicans’ characterization, saying they haven’t observed their professors teaching with a bias or silencing conservative opinions.”
But one educator watchdog said he is not surprised by the revelations.
Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, told The College Fix the “teacher training curriculum at Michigan State University is far from unique.”
He said via email “this brainwashing has been going on for a long time,” citing a 2001 report he co-authored, “Facing the Classroom Challenge.”
Izumi stated there is a “long history of far-left indoctrination in university schools of education that has been going on decades before MSU’s course ‘Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education.’”
“Indoctrinating teachers in woke far-left ideology… explains why the teachers unions, from the American Federation of Teachers to the National Education Association, have become hotbeds of radical leftism. The university schools of education have produced the shock troops for the far left,” Izumi told The Fix.
