Kerby Anderson
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a recent column, he asks, “Are Schools Really Politicized?” Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. But many progressive writers don’t agree.
One of those writers is James Traub who has a book coming out next year on civil education. In an article in New Republic that he wrote previewing his book, he declared: “I Visited Dozens of Civics Classrooms. The Right’s Attacks Are Wrong.”
Who is right? Stanley Kurtz believes left-wing partisanship is a serious problem and has put out model legislation to take partisanship out of civics education. James Traub visited many classrooms and found them to be viewpoint neutral.
Both individuals concede that much of the civic curriculum today is written from a liberal viewpoint. Traub, for example, “acknowledges that the academic literature on teaching, statements from educational administrators, and social-studies standards in blue states are all pervasively leftist.” But then we are to suppose that none of that makes its way into the classroom.
Stanley Kurtz doubts whether “putting a famed reporter in a classroom is the best way to expose politicization. Teachers facing a reporter are bound to be on their best behavior. And highly politicized teachers are unlikely to host such an observer at all.”
By contrast, Stanley Kurtz provides numerous examples of what he describes as K-12 politicization. It may be difficult to detect because many teachers work to hide it from parents and administrators.
There surely are teachers who try to be politically neutral in civics classes. But you aren’t going to find those who are politically biased by sending in a notable author.

Kerby Anderson
President Trump is always full of surprises, but the biggest surprise so far was his bombshell announcement that the U.S. would take over the rebuilding of Gaza. This is not going to happen for many reasons. You can’t just evacuate two million resident Palestinians. First, because nearby countries don’t want them. And second, a forced evacuation would likely be a violation of international law.
The U.S. won’t implement Trump’s suggestion, but the proposed policy provides an important teaching opportunity. This policy rests upon a flawed view of human nature. It is an “outer-inner theory” of human behavior. If I can improve the environment around someone, I can improve their behavior. Build nice public housing, and the crime rate will go down. Rebuild Gaza, and problems in the Middle East will be solved.
By contrast, the gospel is an “inner-outer theory.” You change human behavior from the inside out. And we also understand that changing a person’s environment doesn’t change their sin nature.
The problem is even worse in Gaza because we are dealing with radical Muslims. Andrew McCarthy refers to their view as “sharia supremacist Islam.” This view has been around for 1,400 years. It is also worth mentioning that the people of Gaza voted to have Hamas rule them. They didn’t do that so their leaders could turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Nearly every American president naively believes that Muslims share “our common humanity” and just want a better life for themselves and their children. Most Muslims have a different goal: eradicate Israel from the region and implement sharia law in the land.
You would think we would have learned that “nation building” in the Middle East hasn’t worked. It is very difficult to grow a democracy on Muslim soil.