A new state recommended social studies and history curriculum is being introduced in public schools around California that blatantly promotes a bias perspective on the policy achievements of governor candidate Gavin Newsom. Dubbing him “Champion for People’s Rights,” the first grade textbook teaches kids about “respecting the rights” of others by pointing to Newsom’s advocacy for same-sex marriage, while mayor of San Francisco. The text doesn’t even try to be objective and fails to mention that marriages for same-sex couples were not an established right at the time, but a brand new concept and only legal in a select number of countries.
“This lesson is supposed to be for first grade students, but it reads like a piece of political propaganda put together by the Democrat Party,” said Jonathan Keller, President of California Family Council. “It is both premature and outrageous to list Gavin Newsom alongside universally loved American heroes like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Millions of Californians who voted twice to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman opposed Newsom’s flagrant defiance of our state’s marriage laws and use of the courts to push his personal views of marriage on the population.”
“Just a decade later, California’s Department of Education is promoting the controversial political views of a candidate for governor to six year-olds and blatantly smearing the sincerely held religious beliefs of countless families,” Keller said. “This political puff piece should be removed from any public textbook.”
The first grade lesson pictured below is part of a history and social studies curriculum published by Pearson, that is being piloted right now in the Elk Grove Unified School District as part of a textbook update mandated by the FAIR Education Act passed in 2011. Parents were encouraged to come view the new curriculum on September 10, and asked to give the school district input. Parents will have additional opportunities to view the curriculum over the next several months before the Elk Grove Unified School Board gives their final approval in the early part of next year. Contact the Elk Grove board members and let them know what you think of this new textbook.
Every Californian should call their own school district to see if this new curriculum has been introduced in their school district yet.
