Here’s an after-school routine that’ll shock you some …

Grab ‘em by the ankles … turn ‘em upside down … and give a mighty shake. Do it every day … for a week or two … and see what tumbles out of their little noggins. Have a good stare.

Too many schools aren’t just schools any more. Some are mini-gulags.

Some schools knead mushy minds like clay … and glaze kids with a special finish no one asked for … because too many parents are just too easy to blindside. Easily sucker-punched. Because they expect schools to look like the schools of not-so-long ago … you know, places where kids learned to add and read and make pals. And memories.

They expected wrong. Here’s why.

Some kids are actually “kid”-napped … by gallsy-ballsy social justice evangelists who think it’s their civic duty to baptize children into their hare krishna-ed congregation. They’re the anti-apostles … preferring their brand of not-so-free will to any other adult influence. And parents have no role. And almost no awareness. The true-believers have it all covered.

It’s up to parents to sniff out what’s happening.

And they’d better glare these folks straight in the eye … because they think your kid’s easy to pied-pipe. A cinchy challenge. Because kids trust adults … and in schools … adults are gods.

Ten years ago … before I was vacuumed into this Common Core nightmare … I met an uncanny lady with a mesmerizing sense of sarcasm. A highly credentialed nurse, a road-runner, and as politically aware as they come.

And she was a shield-maiden. A shield-banger. Tough.

She had three kids deep in the high school thing … and a caboose-baby back in elementary school. All in story-book public schools.

But the stories she heard from her kids troubled her. So she troubled herself to find out all she could.

Suppertime was her “deprogramming hour”. Her term, not mine. She dug into her kids’ brains as they dug into her dinners.

She knew everything about every teacher … their reputations, their politics, and their scholarship. And that mattered to her. She kept to that dinner ritual as religiously as teenage schedules would allow … and nothing slipped by her. Nothing.

She knew of every assignment and project … scanned the classroom radar-blips. And when she sensed teachers or administrators crossing her line in the sand, she’d pound her shield and sprinted into battle … armed to the teeth with irrefutable facts and crystal clear logic. Unusual lady.

She’s not so unique anymore.

Vigilant parents sense what’s going on. And lots are now steel-spined … and unafraid to lock horns with any adult that tries to put a top-spin on their kid.

But these social justice pushers are bolder than ever … because they sense a ripe atmosphere for their social sermonizing. And today’s headlines are in-your-face proof of their arrogance.

“Rochester School District Designates ‘Black Lives Matter at School’ Day”

“Copiague Teachers Kneel During Pledge on Trump Inauguration Day, Sparking Probe”

“Philly Teachers Plan Black Lives Matter Week — Not All Are Happy”

“Bassett Unified Declares all Campuses as Safe, Sanctuary Schools”

“Kindergarten Teacher Refuses to Let Boys play with Legos in the Name of Gender Equality”

“’Gender Inclusive’ School District Says Drop ‘boys and girls,’ Call Kids ‘purple penguins’”

“Purple penguins”. I’m not kiddin’. Now that’s a cold-cold gulag, for sure.

These social justice junkies see nothing wrong with this stuff. In fact, they’ll rail about their “higher aspirations” for education … and the “new consciousness” their cultivating for the new world that’s under construction.

They’re real saviors. The saviors lots of you didn’t really ask for at all. Uninvited pests.

And they think you’re unconscious morons for expecting multiplication or writing or some science to dominate the learning landscape. And so those subjects get “refreshed’ … re-glazed, like your kid … so a geography lesson is premised on environmental terrorism and the inhumanity of borders. And the Civil War is a platform for ripping down 100 year old statues … and forbidding certain flags that just don’t jive with their historical bleaching.

They don’t even trouble themselves with subtle anymore.

It’s easy-glib for these guys. And they’re in your face. Replete with corny power salutes, cheapo t-shirts, and jive-epithets … and the ever popular “root cause” pretext. Some schools proudly commit to full-days of hajib-wearing and “white privilege” confessions … set to rap, of course.

And they get snotty-nervy … peeved-off … when someone like my shield-maiden friend calls them out for their own prejudices and intolerance. So they tattoo questioning parents with labels made famous by the angry-class … bigot, racist, intolerant, xenophobe. You know the spew.

This goes on in the schools you pay for … by teachers and school leaders in your employ. And they haven’t a blush about sneering at parents who don’t share their vision of the world … and they snicker with that piggish superiority of “Animal Farm”.

Who recalls a day when these people … paid by us … worked for us and not for some ideology? It wasn’t so long ago that schools were all about kid stuff … untroubled by troubled adults. Unbothered by these ideological hucksters.

But now they’re here … and they’re taking advantage of the chaos in education brought about by a lousy reform … and a society-splitting political moment that allows them some easy slither.

That’s the landscape. This is how your kids get warped. Stay on your toes.

Denis Ian

5/20/16