Elon Musk and the Woke Institutional Virus of Private Schools

I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day weekend and had a great summer. I wanted to share an op-ed I was asked to write last week for the NY Post.

In an excerpt from a new biography of Musk by acclaimed author Walter Isaacson, it was revealed that one of the motivations for Musk’s purchase of Twitter was his own child’s indoctrination at her fancy, progressive Los Angeles private school. It seems that being the richest man in the world doesn’t make one immune from the cancer of woke schools.

Elon Musk is not alone in feeling betrayed — every school has instituted a woke indoctrination program

Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, but he is dealing with a problem common to families all across America: woke schools.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming Musk biography published in The Wall Street Journal Thursday, Walter Isaacson revealed a bombshell. 

Not only does Musk blame his transgender daughter’s progressive Los Angeles school for their estrangement, but her experiences being infected by the “woke mind virus” at the school led to his purchase of Twitter (now X), which Musk believed “had become infected by a similar mindset that suppressed right-wing and anti-establishment voices.”

Isaacson reported Musk was “generally sanguine” when he found out his oldest child, Xavier, was transgender and wanted to be called Jenna. But then Jenna became a fervent Marxist and broke off all relations. 

Musk’s diagnosis is correct. Our nation’s K-12 schools, and especially its elite private schools, have in recent years utterly changed their missions. They have abandoned academic excellence and classical liberalism, become hostile to free speech and open discourse and adopted a political education of training progressive activists.

Here’s a quotation from the website of Musk’s daughter’s school: “Social justice is woven throughout every student’s experience at Crossroads, informing the lens through which they see the world. The K-12 curriculum provides students with a progressively nuanced exploration of historical and current-day inequities: locally, nationally and internationally.”

Indoctrination

My own daughter experienced the same kind of progressive indoctrination at her former school in New York City, the Brearley School, which I exposed in a letter I mailed to every Brearley family in the spring of 2021 — a letter that unexpectedly went viral and helped ignite what became the national parent’s movement.

The foundation of every school’s woke indoctrination program is its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion — words that have completely different meanings to what schools claim. 

Diversity is not a celebration of our differences but how schools segregate society into victims and oppressors by race, gender and identity. Today, the identity group receiving the most attention is transgender children. Here we see the roots of the social contagion of transgenderism that indoctrinated Musk’s oldest child.

For a school to be “inclusive” everyone must feel a sense of belonging. Children must see their own identity in every book, every project, every homework assignment. Even more important, school must be a “safe space,” totally free from harm. These are code words for shutting down free speech, as Musk correctly intimated.

Finally, there is equity. The left’s Orwellian co-option of words has made equity, equality, justice, democracy and human rights all mean the same thing — a world of equal outcomes. Or in other words, a world hostile to capitalism and freedom and embracing of Marxism, as Musk intuits.

I disagree with Musk on only one point. Woke is not simply a “mind virus.” It is more accurately an “institutional virus.” Although many young people have indeed been infected and indoctrinated through their schools and social media, most Americans have not. Instead they have been bullied into silence by our country’s institutions. This is how woke has taken over our society. Not by taking over minds but by taking over institutions.

I write this op-ed not in my former home of New York City or my new home in Florida but out of a hotel room in England. Why? Because Sunday we drop our daughter off at a British boarding school. I wish I could have found a suitable school in the United States, but I couldn’t. 

Going abroad

I don’t believe there is a single strong academic school in America unaffected by the woke virus — a terrifying thought. Truth be told, I’m not certain there is one anywhere in the English-speaking world as elite British schools are heading down the same woke path as American schools. But at least some UK schools still value free speech and teach Shakespeare. 

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was one of the few optimistic moments in the fight against illiberal wokeness and the fight to preserve free speech. I am cheering him on. But Musk has identified a much more dangerous threat to society — our nation’s schools. If we don’t quickly find a way to stop the Marxist indoctrination of our children, I fear we will lose not just America but all of Western civilization.

Andrew Gutmann is a Republican congressional candidate for Florida’s 22nd district.

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In case you missed them, here are some of the latest episodes of my podcast, Take Back Our Schools, available on all major podcast outlets, including Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher. 

Black History v Black Studies

On this episode, Beth and I speak with educator Donique Rolle on this week’s episode. Rolle tells her story of what led her to become a teacher of African American history and how she realized that her own college courses in African American studies were highly politicized. She explains the difference between African American history courses which focus on truth, facts and research, and African American studies courses which views history through a victim-based ideology.

She also shares her views about the recent controversy of the state of Florida rejecting the AP African American Studies curriculum for high school students.

Donique Rolle is an experienced educator in Florida with a 17-year career. For four years, she taught African American History in a predominantly Black public high school. Currently, Rolle teaches Learning Strategies and trains other educators on incorporating Black History into their curriculum and implementing effective teaching practices. Her commitment to empowering students and promoting inclusivity has made her a respected figure in education. Rolle is also the Executive Director of Putting the Pieces Together, a non-profit organization for special needs families.

Loudoun Clear

On this episode I speaks with Loudoun County (VA) parent activist Ian Prior about how his local school system became the epicenter of the national parent’s movement in 2021, leading to the surprise election of Glenn Youngkin as governor.

Prior shares stories from contentious school board meetings that got national media coverage, including the story of father Scott Smith, whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a school bathroom as a direct result of the Board’s transgender bathroom policies.

We also discuss why the movement is dominated by “Mama Bears” and why there aren’t more dads involved, and where the parent’s movement goes from here.

Ian Prior is senior advisor at America First Legal and founder and executive director of the organization, Fight for Schools. He is the author of the recently published, “Parents of the World Unite: How to Save Our Schools From the Left’s Radical Agenda.” Prior is featured often on Fox News and other media outlets.

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I hope you enjoy these episodes of Take Back Our Schools. As always, please subscribe and share any ideas or suggestions, including for podcast guests. You can contact me through the website: speakupforeducation.org or email me at andrew@speakupforeducation.org. I am also on Twitter @AndrewGutmann. My campaign website is andrewgutmann.com. Support for the campaign is always appreciated!