By Chris Powell
No one who closely follows “public” education — with its secrecy, deception, political correctness, pretension, contempt for parents, unaccountability, declining standards, financial excess, and steadily worsening performance — can be surprised by the confession of Greenwich elementary school vice principal Jeremy Boland, surreptitiously video-recorded by a seductress working for Project Veritas.
Boland’s confession, posted on the internet this week, was so candid and brutal that even leading Democrats in Connecticut, including Governor Lamont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and state legislators, had to profess to be appalled by it, though the political indoctrination of students described by Boland is only what the Democrats preside over.
The Democrats’ criticism of Boland’s confession emphasized instead his determination not to hire Catholics as teachers. If applicants are Catholics, he says, “You don’t hire them. … Honestly, I don’t want to.”
But Boland’s bias against hiring Catholics isn’t religious but political, and it is perfectly rational in pursuit of his objective, which he describes as indoctrinating students with liberalism so that they are more likely to vote Democratic when they grow up. Boland notes that Catholics and applicants older than 30, whom he also refuses to hire, are more likely to be conservative.
That is, Boland isn’t against Catholics as teachers because of their religion itself but because of the conservative leanings their faith may give them.
Of course religious and age discrimination in employment long have been illegal, and surely Boland knows this. But he sees political indoctrination of students as his patriotic duty.
Boland stresses that he must be “subtle” as he injects politics into the curriculum. He explains that while he cannot explicitly put political issues to applicants for teaching jobs, he has developed questions that are likely to elicit indications of an applicant’s political incorrectness.
For example, Boland says, if applicants say they would side with parents on a curriculum question, “They don’t get the job.” And if applicants say students are not informed enough to make their own decisions about their gender identity, they will be disqualified too.
If applicants “were raised hardcore Catholic,” Boland explains, “it’s like they’re brainwashed. You can never change their mindset. … They’re just stuck real rigid.”
Maybe so, but then, oblivious to the irony thundering around him, Boland himself aims to “brainwash” his students so they will be just as “rigid” in a different political direction.
“The open-minded, more progressive teachers,” Boland says, “are actually more savvy about delivering a Democratic message without really ever having to mention their politics.”
His interviewer asks: “So it’s like you present everything in a way that’s subconsciously influencing the kids to vote liberal but not doing it in such an explicit way where the parents can actually get mad at you for it?”
Boland replies: “Right.”
While his perversion of the teacher hiring process may have put Greenwich in legal jeopardy, Boland probably hasn’t done much actual damage. He indicates that he has hired only four or five teachers, and since, upon disclosure of his comments, he was immediately placed on leave pending investigation, he is unlikely to do more hiring any time soon.
The much bigger question is how much the administration of the rest of public education reflects Boland’s outlook and pursues his objective. While there are some conservative school systems in the South, Midwest, and mountain West, in Connecticut and the rest of the country it is hard to find a school system that isn’t already pressing students with “social-emotional learning,” invitations to transgenderism, and various degrees of political propaganda.
After all, there is a reason why teacher union members always constitute the biggest bloc of delegates at Democratic conventions and a reason why Connecticut law exempts teacher performance evaluations from disclosure, alone among all performance evaluations of government employees.
This reason is not a desire for impartiality and accountability. It is the effectiveness of schools for propagandizing. Even if he is fired Boland will deserve a medal for making this plain.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 