Education Chaos movements are organizations and efforts designed to weaponize parent's real concern and use it in a coordinated campaign to dismantle our public education system.
Powerful opposition to the idea of free public education available to all Americans is not new. Former Confederates opposed the education of free blacks after the Civil war. Gilded age industrialists preferred for children to work 6o hour weeks in their factories than go to school. Desegregation triggered a private school movement across the American south.
Today, we have a combination of interests aligned against public education. Religious fundamentalists resent the separation of Church and State in our schools and would prefer to run the schools according to their ideology. Political operatives are dismayed that an educated population is difficult to fool and, as a result, their messages are losing public appeal. Wealthy Investors see the $794.7 billion spent by Federal, State and local governments on education and they want that money in their pockets through private schools and charters.
For each of these interests to achieve their goals, Public education would have to fail.
These groups have several well designed and studied strategies to sabotage public education.
An "Astroturf" movement is one that is disguised as a people focused, bottom-up "grassroots" movement, but is, in fact directed from the top down. Astroturf movements have access to large reservoirs of resources, either in the form of funding or professionally produced content. Astroturf movements grow faster than authentic movements because they have corporate money and professional recruiting at work, often before the movement is even announced. Astroturf movements are also not directed by "boots on the ground" rather they take direction from someone "higher up"
Did you hear the story about the classroom litterbox? Or the one about the false flag school shooting? Maybe you heard about the class that had to write a paper about why white people were bad? All of these were disinformation stories, spread through complex layered media resources and disguised to look like the real thing. All of these had the goal of eroding the public trust in public education.
Recently Christian Ziegler, one of the founders of the hate group "Moms 4 Liberty" stated that the media was lazy and uninformed. She encouraged members to openly lie to the press to advance their agenda. Often they release a news story that seems to back up their claims with references to studies and other stories. The funny thing is that, frequently the primary sources they site state the opposit of what they claim. They simply bank on the fact that most readers will not drill down and check the data
Do you remember the PMRC Senate hearing when Tipper Gore was trying to censor rock music? A few years earlier we had the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s where 20/20 did devastating exposes of the danger of the new game "Dungeons and Dragons." Before that, we had the Comic Book code, the Red Scare, the Salem Witch Trials and dozens of others.
Authoritarians keep using Moral Panics because Moral Panics work!
A Moral Panic is when a legitimate concern is intentionally amplified way beyond the context of the concern causing a wide spread outcry which triggers more concern, creating an active feedback loop. Once this is done a "moral savior" will appear and offer a solution to the issue. Once adopted, the artificial inflation of the importance of the concern will cease, causing the concern to fade once more into the background while the people who generated the panic claim credit for it's solution.
All of these tools are designed to appeal to the emotions of parents who are genuinely concerned about their kids. It is a form of manipulation, but be assured, the result will not benefit the parents, the kids or the community. In the end, this effort is designed to benefit the Billionaires, and the Politicians.
Before you engage with one of these angry parent movements, ask yourself
The links between these chaos movements and their dark money sources are complex and can be hard to follow. Some of the groups that come up again and again are the "Heritage," "Leadership Institute," and "Independent Women's Forum."
These groups are activist organizations acting on behalf of Billionaire interests. The most active among these is; Charles Koch, the DeVos family and the Uihlein family.
If you are a parent concerned about your school, start by learning what is going on. The Media reports sensation, your eyes will report the truth. Volunteer in the building, in the classroom or in the office. I guarantee that you will learn a lot more than you ever will from a news story or activist pamphlet.
Talk to the faculty. See what they are actualy teaching. Engage with your teacher as a partner. You are your child's first and most important teacher, see the faculty of your kid's school as part of your team and work together to win.
Talk to your student. Our children our not our posessions, they are human beings with thoughts and needs of their own. We should listen to what they have to say and help them become the best version of themselves.