At the center of politicized classrooms is a single idea: society is permanently divided into two fixed categories — oppressors and oppressed — based on race, gender, ethnicity, and other identity categories.
This framework grew out of academic theories, such as critical theory and postmodernism, that question objectivity and truth. These frameworks interpret society through the lens of power, identity, and oppression. Over time, these ideas moved from universities into schools of education, teacher training programs, curriculum standards, and K-12 classrooms. Similar practices now appear in schools across the country: what looks like an individual teacher’s decision is often part of a much larger system.
Under this worldview, students are encouraged to see people primarily through identity categories instead of as individuals. Disagreement with this sorting is treated as moral failure rather than legitimate perspective. Major institutions — laws, free markets, cultural traditions — are often described as “systems of oppression.” Unequal outcomes among identity groups are treated as evidence that the system itself is unjust.
In classrooms, this approach can narrow discussion, discourage dissent, and push students toward predetermined political conclusions instead of independent thinking. Students often feel pressure to agree with certain viewpoints rather than ask questions or challenge ideas.
These ideas usually do not enter schools through one teacher alone. They spread through state teacher licensing rules, curriculum standards, consultant training programs, and professional development requirements. This section explains how these ideas appear in curriculum, school policies, and classroom practices.
Ethnic studies sounds like the neutral study of the different cultures that make up our diverse nation. However, it is actually an explicitly politicized discipline rooted in the oppressor/oppressed framework. This curriculum declares that only “oppressed” ethnic groups may be studied, while European ethnicities are excluded explicitly because of “white supremacy.” Ethnic studies often treats activism, rather than learning, as the goal of education.
Many states have adopted ethnic studies standards or requirements that can open the door to highly politicized versions. One of the most explicit is Liberated Ethnic Studies (LES), an activist framework that advances teaching through the lens of identity, power, oppression, resistance, and “critical consciousness.” LES is sometimes associated with or described as Critical Ethnic Studies.
LES explicitly calls for “acts of resistance” to “dismantle” Western institutions. It promotes “decolonization,” which interprets history and current events through a binary of colonizer and colonized and calls for resisting “racialized” structures and hierarchies. It also embraces “settler-colonialism,” a theory describing societies in which settlers displace an indigenous population. Activists apply this framework to the United States and frequently to Israel, despite the Jewish people’s deep historical ties to the land.
Ethnic studies claims to “challenge the white supremacy in our curriculum.” In this context, however, the term “white supremacy” does not refer to the explicitly racist belief that people of European descent are superior. The term is instead applied to Western societies themselves and to cultural norms such as objectivity, individualism, and merit-based systems. Even mainstream organizations have adopted this re-definition; for example, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, has promoted this view, racializing neutral values that diverse societies recognize as helpful for promoting fairness and accountability.
Liberated ethnic studies presents an oversimplified narrative that frames our nation as inherently oppressive in order to promote political agendas. It teaches our nation’s history with a predetermined political conclusion and normalizes the politicized classroom.
Learn more with NAVI’s Ethnic Studies Primer and Decolonization Primer.
Culturally responsive education (CRE) is often presented as a way to help students feel seen and included in the classroom by connecting lessons to their cultural backgrounds and personal identities. On the surface, that can sound positive and reasonable. Parents generally support teaching that respects students and exposes them to different cultures and perspectives.
CRE, however, often goes far beyond cultural awareness. One of CRE’s main goals is to develop “sociopolitical consciousness.” CRE programs encourage teachers to organize lessons around identity, power, privilege, and oppression. Students are taught to view society through categories such as race, gender, and “marginalized” or “privileged” status. Classrooms shift away from academics and toward political and ideological interpretations of social issues.
In other words, CRE is not only about helping students succeed academically. It also encourages students to critique society and existing institutions through a political lens. In practice, this can lead students to see themselves and others primarily as members of identity groups instead of as individuals. It can also pressure students to adopt specific viewpoints about race, inequality, power, and American society rather than encouraging open discussion and independent thinking.
CRE is deeply embedded into state education policy. Many states and districts now include “culturally responsive” teaching requirements in teacher training, curriculum standards, professional evaluations, and school policies. As a result, these ideas increasingly shape how schools approach instruction across subjects and grade levels. The concern is not that students learn about different cultures or historical injustices; those are important parts of education. The concern is that CRE often presents one ideological interpretation of society as settled truth and pushes classrooms toward political and social activism.
Learn more about culturally responsive education in The Hidden Curriculum: How Culturally Responsive Education Was Built into Public Education.
Learn what you can do in Action Guide: How CRE Is Politicizing Our Schools — and What You Can Do About It.
SEL originally focused on building skills such as self-control, resilience, and interpersonal awareness. As it expanded, it became embedded in state standards, district policies, teacher training, and classroom practice across the nation.
In recent years, leading organizations such as Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) have reframed SEL as a “lever for equity,” expanding its scope beyond individual development to include concepts related to identity, power, and social change. It explicitly identifies “equity” as one of the “fundamentals” of SEL and works to advance “equity and excellence in education through social and emotional learning.” In other words, equity is not peripheral to SEL; it has become embedded in the field’s core framing.
In practice, this shift brings social and political frameworks into classrooms through discussions of emotional development. Lessons framed around empathy, belonging, or wellness may also introduce politicized concepts such as systemic oppression, identity hierarchies, and activism.
Teachers unions have embraced SEL for structural social change. Some advocates go further and claim that SEL perpetuates “white supremacy.” Under this view, “neutral” SEL is a form of harm that protects “white comfort” if detached from explicit discussions of race and power.
Learn more about politicized SEL in SEL: A Tool for “Redistributing Power.”
Learn what you can do in Action Guide: How SEL Is Politicizing Our Schools — and What You Can Do About It
Some school boards adopt broad “equity” policies that require all curricula, programs, hiring practices, and professional development to align with a specific political worldview. These policies often claim to dismantle systems of “oppression” and mandate ideological training for all staff. These statements encourage staff to interpret student outcomes through a specific political lens.
Use this sample email to your child’s school regarding district equity policies.
“Equitable grading” frameworks restructure how teachers assess learning and often prohibit traditional academic expectations. These systems remove accountability, discourage achievement, and obscure whether students have actually mastered material.
Because of the curricular standards and instructional frameworks adopted at the state level, districts often implement curricula and teacher training that import politicized content into the classroom. This section highlights some of the identity-focused classroom practices that reflect politicized frameworks in schools.
Many schools now use activities that ask students to evaluate themselves based on identity traits such as race, sex, sexuality, religion, or family income. In “privilege walks” and similar exercises, students are often asked to step forward or backward depending on whether they are considered more “privileged” or more “oppressed.”
These lessons teach students to see themselves and their classmates primarily through group identity categories rather than as individuals with unique experiences, strengths, and challenges. Students may come away believing that certain groups are naturally advantaged while others are naturally disadvantaged, regardless of personal agency, circumstances, or experiences.
“Intersectionality” expands this idea by teaching that people experience society differently depending on how their identities overlap. Under this approach, students are often encouraged to rank identity categories according to power and oppression.
Supporters argue that these exercises build awareness and empathy. Critics argue that they oversimplify people, divide students into social categories, and pressure children to see themselves through a political lens instead of as individuals. In schools, these activities can discourage open discussion and make students hesitant to express disagreement or independent viewpoints.
Schools that promote identity-based programs may also require students and staff to make statements about their personal identity or affirm specific viewpoints. These activities may include required identity disclosures or pronoun declarations. Such practices raise concerns about compelled speech, as they pressure individuals to express beliefs or share personal information they may not wish to disclose, rather than allowing for voluntary expression.
Use this sample email to your child’s school regarding privilege walks and intersectionality exercises.
Identity-based affinity groups in K-12 settings organize and sort students and teachers by immutable traits – primarily race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. While voluntary groups are a matter of choice, schools that mandate or promote affinity groups foster division and engage in discrimination. They often instruct those in the “privileged” group — such as male, white, straight individuals -– that they need to accept their privilege and act as “allies,” while those in marginalized groups are encouraged to unite for “abolition” or “liberation” from white supremacist systems of power. In practice, this reinforces an oppressor/oppressed framework, reduces individuals to group categories, and can lead to self-censorship among students and teachers who do not share or wish to express the viewpoint expected of their assigned group.
Use this sample email to your child’s school regarding affinity groups.
Some books for young readers that focus on identity may seem well-intentioned, but they promote the idea that a person’s group identity is the most important feature of one’s life. By underscoring identity as a first principle, books can have a profound impact on the way young people view others and themselves.
We are not suggesting that these books should be banned. Rather, when such books are assigned to the exclusion of other texts that take a contrary point of view, they serve to advance a single perspective and undermine critical inquiry and discussion. They can give children a one-sided and politicized account of complex questions instead of encouraging them to observe and think critically about the world around them. Some examples:
Use these sample emails to your child’s school regarding activist books.
Programs labeled “anti-racist” are often presented as efforts to promote fairness and inclusion, but many are grounded in a framework that treats disparate outcomes between racial groups as evidence of systemic racism. Under this view, race-neutral policies are seen as insufficient to achieve equal outcomes across groups.
This term is closely associated with Ibram X. Kendi, who argues that policies are either “racist” or “antiracist” depending on whether they produce equal outcomes. His writing advocates for active government intervention to correct disparities, including policies that institutionalize racial discrimination in order to produce equality of outcomes between groups. In his opinion, “[t]he only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Institutions, programs, teachers, and advocates who call themselves “anti-racist” may not be aware of the deep politicization inherent in the term. They may be trying to signal that they are welcoming and working toward greater equality and justice.
But in practice, the “anti-racism” framework often leads students to accept a specific diagnosis of the problem of racism, and a specific solution. It leaves little room for reasonable disagreement about the causes of racial disparities or the best ways to address them. And, in this framework, students are taught that some forms of discrimination are acceptable, as long as the discrimination is directed at people from historically “oppressive” groups.
Learn more in NAVI’s guide, DEI Is Not The Cute Puppy In The Window.
Use this sample email to your child’s school regarding anti-racism programs.
According to the widely-used definition developed by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, anti-Palestinian racism occurs when someone rejects the Palestinian narrative of the “Nakba” or catastrophe of Israel’s founding, rejects the notion that Israel is a “settler colonial” state, assigns responsibility to the “oppressed” (the Palestinians) rather than their oppressors (Israel), and justifies any violence against Palestinians. When applied in the K-12 setting, this framework can limit the ability to teach the Israel–Palestinian conflict in a balanced and historically grounded way. By casting certain perspectives — such as describing Israel as the Jewish homeland — as racist, it can chill classroom instruction and create a hostile environment.
Learn more in NAVI’s report, A Growing Threat: “Anti-Palestinian Racism” in K-12 Education.
Use this sample email to your child’s school regarding anti-Palestinian racism.
