The AIM Parent’s Guide to One Seriously Misleading Classroom Resource
September 12, 2022
New media outlets and social media are frequent offenders when it comes to misleading young readers. Posts get shared over and over, with little context, and readers are left with only what those outlets have chosen to present.
Those can be avoided, or looked at with more scrutiny as issues arise. But misinformation is happening in the classroom even without the help of social media.
That’s where Newsela comes in. Newsela provides schools with resources for teachers. The platform has more than 37 million registered students and 2.5 million registered teachers – by their numbers, is used in 90 percent of schools in the U.S.
So the platform has tremendous reach and is already in schools. But the founder and CEO of Newsela, Matthew Gross, has been clear about how he hopes the platform will work – primarily by addressing Critical Race Theory.
“We must address two awful truths: that many Black students and educators are in pain, and that institutional and individual racism is pervasive within our schools,” Matthew Gross, founder and CEO of Newsela, wrote on the platform’s website.
“Now, more than ever, it is our moral obligation to support those experiencing trauma, and to cut racism at the root before it spreads outside the walls of our schools into larger society,” Gross said.
Newsela has partnered with radical content providers such as the Zinn Education Project, the 1619 Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with more mainstream news sources, to provide Critical Race Theory content in the classroom. CRT, as we have reported previously, promotes Marxist ideas like “equity” and “social justice” that “educates [children] on the issues, alongside the tools to discuss and take action,” according to Gross.
Parents in several states were relieved when the controversial 1619 Project was banned from classrooms. However, that same content can still be shared with students, albeit under the banner of “Newsela” rather than The New York Times. That Newsela functionality extends to many other topics parents and school boards have found objectionable.
And this is the heart of the newest, most innovative, teaching platform in your kids’ schools — a daily textbook that will teach them about the world and how it works, and determine what kind of citizens they will become.
This piece is part of the AIM Parent’s Guide, a back-to-school series detailing the dangers today’s students face. In part one, we detailed how new media is taking advantage of young Americans — click here to read it.