Kathryn Joyce, an investigative reporter for Salon, has written a three-part series for Salon about Hillsdale College, the ultra-conservative Christian college that has entered the charter industry. This is first in the series. Hillsdale was originally founded to preserve the classical tradition in education, but it evolved into a far-right incubator of ideas and officials for the Trump administration.
Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has already made a deal with Hillsdale to launch 50 Christian-themed charter schools in his state. The fact that this usurps local control of schools in Tennessee doesn’t bother the governor because the state will supply a politically sanitized, Christian school at public expense.
Hillsdale leaders, Joyce explains, were deeply involved in Trump’s so-called “1776 Commission,” which was supposed to be a call for “patriotic education” as a counter to “The 1619 Project.” The college “has quietly become one of the most influential entities in conservative politics.”
Joyce describes in detail a Hillsdale charter school in Orange County led by a powerful ultra-conservative couple: the wife is president of the Orange County Board of Education and the husband is a physician who opposes COVID vaccines and any effort to combat climate change.
Joyce writes:
In an era of book bans, crusades against teaching about racism, and ever-widening proposals to punish teachers and librarians, Hillsdale is not just a central player, but a ready-made solution for conservatives who seek to reclaim an educational system they believe was ceded decades ago to liberal interests. The college has become a leading force in promoting a conservative and overtly Christian reading of American history and the U.S. Constitution. It opposes progressive education reforms in general and contemporary scholarship on inequality in particular. It has featured lectures describing the Jan. 6 insurrection as a hoax and Vladimir Putin as a “hero to populist conservatives around the world.” [Diane’s note: They got that right!]
If you thought that Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission — a jingoistic alternative to the New York Times’ “1619 Project” that was roundly panned by historians — died with his presidency, that effort is now being amplified and exported, on a massive scale, around the country. If you wonder what conservatives hope to install in place of the books they’re trying to ban, the answer often lies in Hillsdale’s freely-licensed curricula.
And as Republicans move into a new phase of their long-game efforts to privatize public education, Hillsdale has become a key resource. Across the nation, conservative officials from state leaders to insurgent school board members are clamoring to implement Hillsdale’s proudly anti-woke lesson plans, including the “patriotic education” premises of its recently released 1776 Curriculum, or add to its growing network of affiliated classical charter schools.
Please finish reading this excellent and alarming article by opening the link.
The tell on all the charter or private school issues is that the laws are usually written to allow students attending small charter or private schools to still participate in sports, arts, or lab science classes at the local public high school.
In my community, the charters get only state money. The local school levies don’t give them a cent. Parents have to pay outright or citizens donate funds for classes that local districts get. Offering a sports team, music or art class is not asking much. It is a small school with a waiting list but no one seems to be jumping ship.
It’s a charter school so the ed reform “analysis” will consist of 100% lockstep cheerleading – the 50 school charter chain hasn’t even opened yet in Tennessee and I predict it is already a miraculous success! On to the marketing campaign!
A decade or so later some local news reporter will actually look at the schools and we’ll get some real analysis, but by then there will be 1000 of them all over the country.
The real shame is Tennessee public schools and public school students who are once again completely ignored in all this frantic ideologically-driven “reinventing”. No one works for them. The dead last priority in ed reform, as usual.
Tennessee public school students should have someone in state government who does some productive work on their behalf. They’re poorly represented and poorly served.
The state commissioner of education in Tennessee is TFA.
These passages from the Bible describes Hillsdale “NOT A” College.
Matthew 7:15 ESV
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
Matthew 24:24
For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect
Matthew 24:11
And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
usurps local control of schools…
OUCH
Toying with a “sense of control”
seems to take the wind out of the
“community based, locally controlled”
concept.
Then again, what part of “sort and
separate-test and punish” defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part of “information” tracking
and forwarding defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part of “institutional compensation”
defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part of class sizes, defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part of staffing defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part, of all the layers, of
appointed positions, defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
What part of the curriculum defines
“community based, locally controlled”?
NO, I’m NOT pitching charter
or private schools.
Faux “agency” changes nothing…
Katheryn Joyce is also the author of The Child Catchers.
It’s an exposé of how a network of evangelicals exploits adoption in the US. The network was activated under Trump’s administration when children were separated from their families at our southern border.
It seems to be in motion again during the Ukraine crisis. This post on Twitter last night is concerning. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/former-wa-rep-matt-shea-accused-of-domestic-terrorism-working-to-secure-adoptions-for-ukrainian-children-in-poland/
Oliver Bullough Describes How The Hillsdale BIG Donors Acquire Their Cash. It is then “laundered” using Hillsdale Endowment brokers. Hillsdale’s cash flow is as sordid as any London Russian Oligarch Shell Corporation. The Universal aim is to enable unfettered GREED by dismantling Democracy globally. Public School destruction is key to the agenda.
“Begin with a shell company somewhere like BritishVI. Then add a trust in South Dakota. Use a London-based lawyer as the arranger. Stash your $ in a Singapore bank. Taken together you are impregnable. Too many countries, legal systems and protections to unlock and combat.”
Oliver Bullough Author Of MONEYLAND
Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back/2018
Public schools are giving the Right all the ammo they need. CA has now mandated Ethnic Studies for all HS students. Sounds innocuous, but it’s code for “How to Become a Social Justice Warrior”. Even its proponents admit Ethnic Studies is not Multiculturalism (which is already a big part of the CA history and literature curriculum). It’s learning to become a “racially conscious person” and how white supremacy is everywhere, etc. The whole Woke catechism, including CRT. THAT is the content of Ethnic Studies.
You want to talk about radical? THIS is off the charts radical: “But Arnn’s mission went well beyond restoring stability. He was co-founder and later president of the Claremont Institute…” Claremont Institute is the source of so much rightwing political insanity, for a college to have the gall to appoint from Claremont is declaring a very radical political stance.
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/15/how-this-tiny-christian-college-is-driving-the-rights-nationwide-against-public-schools/
“In December, Hillsdale launched a new Washington project, the Academy of Science and Freedom, to highlight the arguments of three prominent COVID-19 skeptics, including Dr. Scott Atlas, Trump’s former pandemic adviser. In recent months Hillsdale has acquired a sizable tract of land outside Sacramento as part of plans to establish an education center in California. It’s adapting its curricula for homeschooling parents and this year will launch a master’s program to train teachers to staff its charter schools.” These people are a minority in the US, and in the states they live in, but an apathetic majority has let them get as far as they have.
And there’s this: “In 2009 Hillsdale hired right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas, to help the college launch a Washington campus on Capitol Hill…” Are we supposed to believe that Clarence Thomas is sort of objective in how he reviews cases? (That’s sarcasm….clearly he isn’t.) Ginni Thomas is the Forrest Gump of insane rightwing religious right politics.
Kathryn Joyce was just on the Thom Hartmann show a few minutes ago detailing all the shenanigans going on with Hillsdale and the pro privatizers. Hillsdale has a one billion dollar endowment that they use to promote charter schools and right wing libertarian ideology. It is associated with libertarian groups like The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society…. in other words, the rightwing/libertarian mafia. Sickening.
4-11-2020
“Converted in College: Hillsdale students find truth of faith on campus…when I came to Hillsdale, I had no idea that I would be Catholic by my senior year.” (National Catholic Register- a service of EWTN News)
8-20-2021
Tim Busch’s “Napa Institute, Koch funding lecture series at Notre Dame …first speaker, Clarence Thomas (His wife-Ginni is a convert to his Catholicism. She was very well paid at the Koch’s Heritage Foundation.) Napa Institute is Catholic.
I spent an afternoon reading through the Hillsdale College nationalist curriculum. My appraisal:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/you-thought-the-scopes-trial-was-something-well-you-aint-seen-nothin-yet/
Pioneer Institute just released a scathing report on civics education; they give Hillsdale courses an A in their grading system; We The People (has stable backing for 2 decades) got only a B. Other civics education programs that have been working to fulfill the 2018 MA legislature requirements for “project” development and inquiry at grade 8 were totally attacked by the “Scholarly” report released by Pioneer. Pioneer in MA has been pushing for charters, vouchers, and taxpayer funding for parochial schools any schemes they can find to destroy public schools. This blatant attack on all of our civics education programs is undeserved.
Jean,
Inquiry is proven to be an extremely inefficient way of learning, yet it is the darling of the left-leaning education establishment. A well-informed citizen requires a large quantity of facts in their head —eg the location of Ukraine, the meaning of the Cold War, tsar, gulag. These are all facts I learned in my 9th grade Soviet history class (at an American HS.). My teacher lectured and we read a textbook together. I would have learned far less, and less well, had we done inquiry. Ditto for an inquiry based civics class. Pioneer is right to criticize inquiry.