Greg Abbott lies about “indoctrination” in public schools while promoting tax-paid vouchers for religious schools
Gov. Greg Abbott now wants to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools, as he and his legislative allies did two years ago in state-supported higher education.
“No taxpayer dollars will be used to fund DEI in our schools,” he said in a recent post on the social media platform X. “Schools must focus on fundamentals of education, not indoctrination.”
What he means by indoctrination, of course, is not indoctrination. What he really is attacking is how our public schools address the cultural differences and historical truths that he and his right-wing followers and admirers find uncomfortable.
They want to forget about slavery, segregation and a host of other undesirable facts that mar our state’s and country’s history, leaving scars that still haunt us today. So, he attacks public schools for teaching these truths, something schools were created to do.
Abbott also panders to many in his political crowd who are fearful, even angry that most of the children in our public school classrooms aren’t white, many aren’t citizens and many are of sexual orientations or gender identities that some people love to bully. Our public schools accept and teach all of them because that also is what public schools are supposed to do. But Abbott turns this diversity into an opportunity to attack and weaken public education, the backbone of our democracy. He does so without an ounce of concern over the harmful impact it may have on the lives of the students and their teachers.
DEI is a fact of life in Texas, America and our public schools. It’s a strength that the governor and his allies (including the new president) have turned into a political target for fear and hate. In this case, Abbott is using it to undermine public schools to try to build more support for a taxpayer-paid voucher plan for private schools
Does Abbott really know what the word, indoctrination, means? I am sure he does, which means his use of it against public schools also makes him a hypocrite.
Over the past couple of years, he has visited many Christian schools to promote his voucher campaign. Christian schools, which could receive hundreds of millions of tax dollars next year if Abbott’s voucher plan becomes law, routinely mix indoctrination (in the real sense of the word) with their education offerings. Some of these schools offer more indoctrination than education, but that’s their business, as long as they don’t use tax dollars to do it. Abbott, however, wants to give them big tax giveaways while underfunding the public schools he apparently would rather attack than adequately support.
Gov, Greg Abbott wants to extend Texas’ DEI ban to K-12 schools