Parents Sue Tennessee Williamson County Schools Over Critical Race Theory
By Carole Hornsby Haynes July 26, 2022
For months the news media have been reporting stories about Critical Race Theory being taught in Tennessee's Williamson County schools with white hatred and white shame drilled so deeply that children are being turned against themselves, their parents, and grandparents.
This raised red flags because I was born and reared in Tennessee and have many family members living throughout the state. Several of them live in Williamson County, a Republican stronghold just south of Democrat-dominated Nashville, that is also home to country music stars including Luke Bryan, Dolly Parton, and the Judd family.
The picturesque county seat, Franklin, has a downtown that is an updated version of Norman Rockwell. The 87 percent white community has a high level of largely conservative, college educated parents with an average income of about $125,000. Both Williamson County and Franklin are experiencing very rapid growth, partially because of their public school system that is considered to be one of the best in the nation.
That is changing. Their school system has joined the far left with Critical Race Theory.
Marxists should have known better than to take on Tennesseans with their rabid, divide-and-conquer, racist agenda. After all, Texas' famous fighters Davy Crockett and Sam Houston were from Tennessee as were several U.S. presidents. These Marxists now have raised the hackles of mama bears who -- so the story goes -- will kill to protect their young."
In 2021, the Williamson County chapter of Moms For Liberty, led by veteran bomber pilot Robin Steenman, filed an official complaint that the Wit & Wisdom K-5 English language arts curriculum violated the new state law (Senate Bill 623) banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. The Tennessee department of education would not investigate their complaint.
On July 8, 2022, Parents’ Choice Tennessee, a parents’ advocacy group founded by Trisha Lucente, filed a lawsuit in Franklin against the Williamson County Board of Education, its superintendent and assistant superintendent, and the state education commissioner. The plaintiffs, James and Patricia Lucente, claim that Wit and Wisdom violates state bans on teaching Critical Race Theory and Common Core. According to the press release notes that the curriculum is age-inappropriate, causing guilt, anguish, and other forms of psychological harm as well as teaching that the United States as an irredeemably racist country. It seeks declaratory judgment to declare the use of this curriculum a violation of state law, and an injunction blocking its further use in the classroom.”
Great Minds, D.C.-based publisher partially funded by the Gates Foundation, denies on its website that Wit & Wisdom teaches Critical Race Theory while claiming that it actually complies with state law. However, a review of the instructional materials and teachers’ manuals shows that the tenets of CRT are being taught -- both explicitly and implicitly.
The pedagogical method of CASEL Social and Emotional Learning – psychological manipulation to change student beliefs and worldviews – is widely used to teach Critical Race Theory tenets and radical sex views to K-12 students. Wit and Wisdom uses SEL to inform teacher instruction to young children on Critical Race Theory, segregation, gender fluidity, racism, violence, brutality, slavery, graphic death, suicide, cannibalism, fear, anti-Christian and anti-American sentiment, gore, and pornographic images.At every level, the lessons are age inappropriate.
Great Minds’ website notes that the 9-week curriculum has “transformed English language arts instruction.” Grammar and literature are fused with history, art, and science.
Wit & Wisdom is dangerous Marxist propaganda found in schools in 23 states, flying under a false flag. It's critical that parents read the lessons and teacher manuals to understand the intention of each lesson and how their children's minds are being warped.
Wit and Wisdom English language arts curriculum is not what we would expect to see in K-5. For nine weeks in 34 daily lessons, the deeply biased curriculum narrowly focuses on dark and divisive aspects of U.S. history. Lessons drill down on negativity, fear, anger, and social justice with students being asked to engage in class discussions and to write their “feelings” about the subject. Students are being "transformed" to hate America and whites.
Despite the myth that 85% of children’s brains develop by the time they are five, the fact is their brains continue to develop until about age 25. Children do not have the maturity or capacity to think critically about a topic. They lack an academic foundation in US. history and critical distance from which to judge the Wit and Wisdom lessons. In public schools, facts no longer matter, only feelings.
Students are being fed a daily diet of propaganda about past injustices but nothing about the progress of our nation in race relations. Using repetition and emotion, public schools are weaponizing generations of students who deeply despise their country, themselves, and each other. A Marxist student army is being created to perpetuate racial division and hostility and to hate America to such an extent that they will go to any length to destroy it.
Numerous examples of the dark Wit and Wisdom English language arts curriculum are presented in the court documents provided by Parents Choice Tennessee and in the Moms for Liberty powerpoint presentation. Moms for Liberty’s website provides reviews of the Wit and Wisdom books and teacher manuals. Following are just a few of the cartoons and stories that children are reading from the twisted Marxist viewpoint.
In Brave Irene (p. 43), first graders consider death by suicide in a story about Irene getting buried in a snowdrift after she left her house to deliver a dress that her mom had made. Hurt and alone in the dark and faced with digging her way out, she considered her options. “Even if she could call for help no one would hear her. Her body shook. Her teeth chattered. Why not freeze to death, she thought, and let all these troubles end. Why not? She was already buried.” Children are instructed to act out the scene and to write down their feelings, further internalizing the idea of death via suicide.
In Amos and Boris (p.74), a third grade book about a mouse and whale, the idea of suicide is again presented when Amos the mouse "began to wonder what it would be like to drown. Would it take very long? Would it feel just awful? Would his soul go to heaven? Would there be other mice there?”
In Seahorse (p.28), first graders see photos of how seahorses mate and how males carry the eggs in their pouches until the young are born. Claiming that“Sea horses are the only male fish to get ‘pregnant’ this way,” the Wit and Wisdom lesson challenges the traditional family and paves the way for further discussions on transgenderism.
In Coming to America (p.56), third graders are conditioned to view illegal immigration as a humanitarian issue without any discussion about why nations limit immigration or the violence and crime perpetrated by drug cartels and some illegals. The book states that many immigrants are “poorly treated by other Americans just because they look or act differently.” In a teacher directed “feelings” discussion, students are told that the immigrant children are very sad because their families are separated. The reason for the separation is not addressed. Children are being sent a subtle message that America is a racist nation, clearly a violation of the state ban on Critical Race Theory.
We can see in the fourth grade lesson about the American Revolution (p.88) and the atrocities of war, why children learn to hate our Founding Fathers. Claiming to study the war from both the British and Colonial viewpoints, the text targets George Washington as a ruthless white general. Discrediting our Founding Fathers is one of the 45 communist goals to destroy America.
In Thunder Rolling In The Mountain (p.107) about wars with the American Indians, fifth graders are exposed to extreme gore, murder, and violence. This story is not appropriate for children at any age -- nor even adults. It's this type of continued exposure to violence and murder that has created mentally destabilized students who commit atrocities on innocent victims -- including shooting up schools.
Segregation is addressed using heavy imagery in the second grade book, Separate Is Never Equal. According to the text and cartoons, Mexicans are segregated because they are inferior to whites in scholastic, hygiene, economic, and social settings (p.123). The lesson notes that “not only were schools segregated but other public places as well, such as pools, parks, and movie theaters.”
A picture shows Mexican children behind bars watching white children play in a swimming pool. A nearby sign warns, “No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed – Public Pool” (p.123). Another cartoon shows Mexican children sitting on the ground outside a run down clapboard school house.
“The children had to eat their lunch outside and flies would land on their food. There was an electric wire that surrounded the pasture to keep the cows in. If you touched it, you received a shock! The school did not have a playground – not even a swing.”
In another lesson from the book (p.124), a Mexican girl named Sylvia attended Westminster School where a young white boy yelled, “Go back to the Mexican school! You don’t belong here!”
This story portrays one race as being inherently superior to another. Young children are experiencing discomfort and psychological distress because of their race. Whites are portrayed as oppressors with Mexicans as the oppressed. Racial division is the goal of this lesson, a clear violation of the state state ban on Critical Race Theory.
In Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington (p.56), third graders are shown black and white photos about violence and discrimination against black and brown children during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Students see photos (p.57) of water fountains with the smaller one labeled “Colored” and the larger one “White.” The question is posed: “Which of these looks nicer to you?”
Pictures of firemen turning fire hoses on blacks are accompanied by graphic descriptions in the present verb tense.The teacher manual requires that the teacher spend several days discussing various points of views about these images.The terms, “slurs” and “mobs,” are discussed. The class is instructed to brainstorm adjectives to describe a mob with suggestions of “angry, scared, mean, and loud.” This conveys a message that whites are mean and racist.
In The Story of Ruby Bridges (p.62), second graders are shown photos of the violence and racial problems during the Civil Right Movement of the 60s. The book portrays whites collectively as oppressors.
“The crowd seemed ready to kill her.”
“...a large crowd of angry white people gathered outside Frantz Elementary School. The people carried signs that said they didn’t want black children in a white school. People called Ruby names; some wanted to hurt her.”
“Men and women and children shouted at her.”
During the grammar lesson on adjectives and adverbs (p.138) connected with this story, the teacher instructs students to use “vicious” and “rudely” to describe whites. This is designed to trigger anger and hostility toward white students.
The Story of Ruby Bridges does not mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor the famous 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King, Jr. By omitting lessons on the progress of race relations since the sixties,Wit and Wisdom deliberately instills the idea that America is fundamentally a racist nation with whites as oppressors and blacks as the oppressed. The lessons promote racial division and resentment, a violation of the Tennessee Critical Race Theory ban.
Wit & Wisdom has been implemented in all 50 states. Although the Great Minds’ website claims they are in compliance with the anti-CRT legislation of states, it’s clear from the review above that this is fake claim. It’s also clear that Wit & American institutions, traditions, and values and to embrace Marxism.
Here in Texas we, too, have a ban (SB3) on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12. However, our Republican lawmakers did not include a mechanism in the bill to force schools and teachers to comply, claiming they did not have the legal right to do so. As expected, Marxist Critical Race Theory is taught widely in Texas with Wit & Wisdom implemented in numerous schools.
Parents across the nation are forming coalitions to educate others and develop strategies to stop the psychological abuse and exploitation of their children. Since public schools are doing just what they were designed to do, they cannot be reformed -- either by flipping school boards and/or protesting. Leaving children in Marxist schools breeds generations of students whose values are antithetical to those principles upon which our nation was founded. Taking back control of the upbringing of their children, many parents have abandoned the Satanic government indoctrination centers for free market education options.