Editorial: MN Ethnic Studies - Propaganda with Glitter
I’ve taught for 15 years. I know what a classroom should feel like: welcoming, with whiteboard markers, curiosity, a little chaos, and a whole lot of learning. What it should not feel like is a pulpit. Yet that’s precisely where Minnesota seems to be steering our schools with its new ethnic-studies mandate.
By Don Allen, Ed.S., M.A.Ed., MAT (ABD)
Abstract
The new requirements for Ethnic Studies in Minnesota, which are slated to go live during the 2026-27 school year, come with a liberationist pedigree that all too often reads like empty pedagogy that substitutes slogans for scholarship. This is a call to “disrupt,” “dismantle,” and “challenge systems,” but it never answers the most fundamental question every teacher must pose to every lesson plan: does this help kids read, write, compute, reason, and flourish? As Frantz Fanon cautioned, “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” This mandate forces politicized ideas into a school system already struggling with literacy deficits, discipline, and a lack of support regarding mental health resources. Rather than providing capacity, such as critical reading of primary sources, evidence-based argumentation, historical veracity, and civic literacy, too often examples meander into a quagmire of outrage and performance. The dichotomy could not be more obvious: students are exhorted to “disrupt systems” they are beholden to because they never learned to succeed within them. Additionally, the policy approaches experiential trauma as if it were curriculum content without addressing the inequities in the structural framework. It suggests justice without providing all the necessary building blocks to freedom: numeracy skills, strong written output, literacy skills, and civic literacy. Ethnic studies can and should critically and adventurously illuminate Tulsa, redlining, and LGBTQ history. However, when ideology precedes scholarship, schools prioritize mastery over learning, and students receive static instead.
On paper, it sounds bold: teach kids to “disrupt systems,” “challenge privilege,” and “reimagine structures.” In practice, it looks more like turning classrooms into activist workshops, starting as early as kindergarten.
We’re talking about kindergartners chanting political slogans, middle schoolers dissecting “cisgender privilege,” and high schoolers being told to “disrupt the nuclear family.”
Sounds revolutionary, until you remember who actually lives here.
Let’s call it what it is: propaganda with glitter.
When adults decide “protest” is a curriculum unit, we’re not teaching students to read court documents, understand traffic tickets, apply for college, manage money, or even spell the words they’re shouting. We’re teaching slogans. And slogans rot fast.
I had a seventh grader, a smart kid, who read Vonnegut, tell me he was going to “dismantle the patriarchy” by skipping class. Great. And who hires a dropout whose main skill is skipping third period in the name of activism?
Meanwhile, this mandate treats Black pain like a field trip.
You cannot drop “ethnic studies” into a system that still suspends Black boys at twice the rate of white boys for the exact same behavior, then pretend you’re liberating anyone. Fix that first. Then talk about justice.
Instead, we’re handing out worksheets about “gender affirmation” while the same kids keep getting pushed down the school-to-prison pipeline. We’re marching students past the algebra classroom to chant in the hallway, while they read 30 points below the state average.
In North Minneapolis, kids are struggling to read at grade level. But we’re prioritizing “dismantling cisgender privilege.”
Those are our priorities?
And the family piece, let’s stop pretending that telling students to “question the nuclear family” is somehow empowering. I’m from a disrupted family myself. My mom raised me after my dad remarried. My uncle helped. My aunts fed us.
Was it perfect? No. Was it still family? Yes.
When a curriculum tells kids to disrupt what’s left of the only structure holding them together, that’s not radical. That’s reckless. It’s like telling a shipwreck survivor to burn the plank they’re clinging to because “the plank represents oppressive systems.”
Then there’s the guilt economy. White progressives love this stuff. It lets them feel righteous while Black teachers like me mop up the consequences.
I’ve heard kids chant “defund the police” like it’s scripture, then ask why the cops don’t show up when their cousin gets shot. Or why nobody arrested the man who broke into their house.
Ethnic studies won’t fix that. Trauma-informed counseling might. Real civics, the kind that explains budgets, public safety, and governance, might.
But chanting is easier. So we hand them megaphones instead of mastery.
And here’s the worst part: we’re confusing education with indoctrination.
Real ethnic studies matters. But it teaches:
Right now, our kids are walking past shooting scenes to get to school. Families are praying bullets don’t hit the kitchen window. These students don’t need ideology. They need literacy, numeracy, and the confidence that comes from knowing they can compete, thrive, and navigate systems.
Real power isn’t shouting “dismantle.”
Real power is:
Teach students to spot bias, without becoming biased themselves. Teach debate, without scripts.
Sounds revolutionary, until you remember who actually lives here.
- Black and brown kids in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
- Kids whose moms work two jobs.
- Kids whose dads might be incarcerated.
- Kids are being raised by grandmothers who already carried more than any system ever acknowledged.
Let’s call it what it is: propaganda with glitter.
When adults decide “protest” is a curriculum unit, we’re not teaching students to read court documents, understand traffic tickets, apply for college, manage money, or even spell the words they’re shouting. We’re teaching slogans. And slogans rot fast.
I had a seventh grader, a smart kid, who read Vonnegut, tell me he was going to “dismantle the patriarchy” by skipping class. Great. And who hires a dropout whose main skill is skipping third period in the name of activism?
Meanwhile, this mandate treats Black pain like a field trip.
You cannot drop “ethnic studies” into a system that still suspends Black boys at twice the rate of white boys for the exact same behavior, then pretend you’re liberating anyone. Fix that first. Then talk about justice.
Instead, we’re handing out worksheets about “gender affirmation” while the same kids keep getting pushed down the school-to-prison pipeline. We’re marching students past the algebra classroom to chant in the hallway, while they read 30 points below the state average.
In North Minneapolis, kids are struggling to read at grade level. But we’re prioritizing “dismantling cisgender privilege.”
Those are our priorities?
And the family piece, let’s stop pretending that telling students to “question the nuclear family” is somehow empowering. I’m from a disrupted family myself. My mom raised me after my dad remarried. My uncle helped. My aunts fed us.
Was it perfect? No. Was it still family? Yes.
When a curriculum tells kids to disrupt what’s left of the only structure holding them together, that’s not radical. That’s reckless. It’s like telling a shipwreck survivor to burn the plank they’re clinging to because “the plank represents oppressive systems.”
Then there’s the guilt economy. White progressives love this stuff. It lets them feel righteous while Black teachers like me mop up the consequences.
I’ve heard kids chant “defund the police” like it’s scripture, then ask why the cops don’t show up when their cousin gets shot. Or why nobody arrested the man who broke into their house.
Ethnic studies won’t fix that. Trauma-informed counseling might. Real civics, the kind that explains budgets, public safety, and governance, might.
But chanting is easier. So we hand them megaphones instead of mastery.
And here’s the worst part: we’re confusing education with indoctrination.
Real ethnic studies matters. But it teaches:
- Tulsa Massacre: with primary sources.
- Redlining: with maps and census data.
- Queer history: with respect, discussion, and inquiry.
Right now, our kids are walking past shooting scenes to get to school. Families are praying bullets don’t hit the kitchen window. These students don’t need ideology. They need literacy, numeracy, and the confidence that comes from knowing they can compete, thrive, and navigate systems.
Real power isn’t shouting “dismantle.”
Real power is:
- knowing your rights,
- filing a data request,
- reading contracts,
- understanding history accurately,
- coding an app,
- running a meeting,
- building something that lasts.
Teach students to spot bias, without becoming biased themselves. Teach debate, without scripts.
Let them love their messy, patchwork families, instead of shaming them into “disrupting” what little they have left.
Because if we keep going this direction, we won’t be raising activists. We’ll be raising kids with slogans instead of skills, and no safety net when the power goes out.
Because if we keep going this direction, we won’t be raising activists. We’ll be raising kids with slogans instead of skills, and no safety net when the power goes out.
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