The state of Minnesota’s teacher licensing board is soon set to require all aspiring teachers to teach and promote the core tenets of LGBTQ ideology and critical race theory.
According to updated "Standards of Effective Practice," promulgated by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), educators are required to commit to affirming various and "diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, sexual identity, ability," etc. in the classroom in order to be licensed educators.
The revised standards, hammered out in a hearing last August and affirmed by an administrative judge in December, will go into effect in 2025.
In addition to state schools following these standards, the licensing board provided a requirement that "education departments at colleges and universities also must document their fulfillment of the new standards or else have their program certifications rescinded by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board."
The updated PELSB standards spelled several ways licensed teachers should promote progressive positions in their classrooms. One required that teachers choose "anti-racist, culturally relevant, and responsive instructional strategies, accommodations and resources to differentiate instruction for individuals and groups of learners."
Another stated, "The teacher features, highlights, and uses resources written and developed by traditionally marginalized voices that offer diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, gender, sexual identity, ability, religion, nationality, migrant/refugee status, socioeconomic status, housing status, and other identities traditionally silenced."
Kids will be taught about "power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of the various communities" the Standards of Effective Practice also stipulated.
What’s more is that students' individual identities, to include their race and gender identity will be "historically and socially contextualized, affirmed and incorporated into a learning environment."
The teacher will also help students "recognize and process dehumanizing biases."
Michigan public policy organization Center of the American Experiment condemned these licensing standards last summer, claiming they’re pushing teachers to "demonstrate divisive concepts to obtain" their licenses.
It added, "Teachers should and do celebrate our state’s increasingly diverse student body, but these proposed changes would require teachers to view students as group identities and group cultures, undermining who they are as unique individuals."
In 2021, the think tank warned that the state's K-12 social studies standards would ensure that "the next generation of Minnesota citizens will not only be uninformed–but scandalously misinformed–about our state’s and nation’s history and democratic institutions."
It specifically mentioned how major historical topics, including George Washington, D-Day, Abraham Lincoln and the Battle of Gettysburg had been "omitted" from the standards as well.
