Throughout the history of this country, schools have reproduced the cultural norms, often with the attendant range of social inequities and dominant group privileges found within society at large.In colonial America, few regions mandated the building of schools or the provision of childhood instruction. Schools were constructed only because local citizens decided to pool their resources. Related Karoline Leavitt says the president plans to extort schools into ending gender-affirming care During this time, classroom lessons were tied directly to Protestant religions and the Protestant Bible, which the early settlers (a.k.a. land thieves) brought with them from England. School lessons primarily centered on preaching, catechizing, and prayers calling for freedom from influences of the Devil and from attacks by indigenous native populations.The most frequently used schoolbook wasThe New England Primerto teach both reading and the Protestant catechism. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today Praife [Praise] to GOD for learning to Read.THE Praifes [Praises] of my TongueI offer to the Lord,That I was taught and learnt fo [so] youngTo read his holy Word.That I was brought to knowThe Danger I was in,By Nature and by Practice tooA wretched flave [slave] to Sin:That I was led to fee [see]I can do nothing well ;And whether fhall [shall] a Sinner fleeTo fave [save] himfelf [himself] from Hell.Dear Lord this Book of thine,Informs me where to goFor Grace to pardon all my Sin,And make me holy too.Here I can read and learnHow CHRIST the Son of GODHas undertook our great concern,Our Randfon [Ransom] coft [cost] his Blood.And now he reigns above,He fends [sends] his Spirit downTo fhew [show] the wonders of his Love,And make his Gofpel [Gospel] known.O may the Spirit teach,And make my heart receiveThofe [Those] Truths which all thy Servants preach,And all thy Saints believe !Then fhall [shall] I praife [praise] the LordIn a more cheerful Strain,That I was taught to read his Word,And have not learnt in vain.Several Catholic parishes established parochial or parish schools partly due to the Protestant teachings that pervaded the public-school curriculum. Following the Revolutionary War, leaders such as Thomas Jefferson called for state-supported and mandated public education, believing that the very survival of the new republic depended on an educated populace.Jefferson advocated for a three-year publicly supported education for all white children No such guarantees were to be extended to children of enslaved Africans with advanced education provided to a select few males.As Jeffersonwrote, the schools will reveal a few geniuses raked from the rubbish. The first statewide school system was established in Massachusetts in the 1820s largely because of the efforts of Horace Mann, the first secretary of education of any state. While traveling throughout Massachusetts, Mann found an unequal patchwork of local schools dependent on the tax base of each community. He proposed a new structure, which he called common schools. These schools were to serve all children of all income levels. He hoped they would help to end, or at least reduce, the financial inequities between citizens of the state.Mann and other political and community leaders also supported a homogeneity of opinion and belief. They argued that the main purpose of public education was for the development of good character based on religion, which was itself based on the central teachings of the Protestant Bible.The march toward Christian NationalismOver the course of U.S. history, and quite visibly within approximately the last decade, far-right white Christian cultural soldiers have raided and assaulted public education with their so-called anti-woke and anti-DEI crusade.Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of his self-proclaimed free state of Floridawhere woke goes to die, has banned books, taken over a formerly progressive and successful college and university system and turned it a deep blood red, eliminated advanced placement courses on African American history, and has criminalized gender-affirming care for trans people and the use of public facilities aligning with their gender identities.DeSantis and his cronies have also eliminated discussions of race, sexuality, and gender in schools, revoked reproductive freedoms from Florida residents, and cruelly targeted immigrants for deportation. Oklahoma, one of the deepest of the deep red states, has shot off the next salvo in this patriarchal heteronationalist Christian white supremacist crusade. The right-wing Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, has imposed what he described as the America First state teachers certification test to root out woke indoctrination.Though Walters has exempted pre-service and in-service continuing teachers from Oklahoma and incoming teachers from most other states from having to take the test, he requires teachers applying for positions in Oklahoma from two of the largest blue states, California and New York, to take and pass the test.Assisting in the development of the 50-question multiple-choice test (which paradoxically limits teachers curricular choices) was the conservative media company, PragerU, which is not a bona fide educational institution. Prager University Foundation (PragerU) was co-founded in 2009 by talk show hostDennis Pragerand screenwriterAllen Estrinto create conservative content, including videos used in some public schools, on political, economic, and social topics. The organizations content contains incorrect and misleading information to promote conservative ideals like anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and climate change denial.Walters has targeted incoming teachers from California and New York because he views these states as failing to effectively teach the role that Christianity played in the nations development.Speaking to theNew York Post, Walters claimed: Youre not gonna lie to kids about the influences Christianity had on American history. We want you to teach history appropriately. In addition, Walters said that the purpose of the test is to verify that no one teaches radical woke gender theory that goes against biology and science.A few of the sample questions Walters supplied to theNew York Postinclude, Which chromosome pair indicates a woman? and Why is freedom of religion important to Americas identity?While so-called wokeness is out of bounds anywhere near the schools in Oklahoma, Walters promotes Bible-infused lesson plans and a video of himselfprayingfor Donald Trump and attacking liberals. Promoting conservative Christian evangelicalism in public educationServing as an associate professor at a large Research I public land grant university in the Midwest, I observed the overarching influence of Christian evangelicalism inhabiting the campus community. The largest of all the student organizations, for example, was the SALT Company, the university ministry of the towns Cornerstone Baptist Church.I taught multiculturalism courses in the School of Education there for nine years. Some of the students wrote about the warnings from their pastors and national Christian leaders regarding the dangers attending secular educational institutions posed to their faiths. One student referred to Brannon Howse, president and founder of the Worldview Weekend Foundation, which purports to fight influence from revisionist history, cultural Marxism, and humanist ideologies. Students, faculty, and staff, in addition to members from surrounding communities, have founded numerous campus and community-based Christian student organizations, some to promote their version of faith and to help insulate students from the so-called secular humanist indoctrination of public secular universities. One such organization on our campus and many others throughout the nation includes local chapters of the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI).Student leaders and community advisors set up display tables and distribute flyers announcing their mission to recruit school staff and administrators to serve as Missional Teachers. Missional Teachers are established by the work of Jesus Christ, a brochure states. They are sent out into the mission field of education, connected with the body of Christ to serve His purposes in all things. The organizations goal is to bring the word of Jesus and reintroduce prayer into schools, not just in parochial schools, but also within public education.Among the services they provide are subscriptions to their magazineTeachers of Vision, free Bibles for the classroom, and most tellingly, professional liability insurance: Being a Christian educator has difficult barriers. Fears of saying something illegal often rule in the mind of Christian teachers. Many dont know what their freedoms are.In this regard, the organization also provides Access to advice, consultation, support. Largely on the level of higher education, theInternational Alliance for Christian Education(IACE) is a global education network encompassing a variety of educational institutions and organizations in the evangelical tradition. The emergence and vital kingdom importance of Christian education as a global phenomenon calls for Christian educators in every global region and at all educational levels to affirm and unite around their mutual commitments to Christ-centeredness and confessional solidarity.The International Alliance for Christian Education, through what it refers to as itsNext-Generation LeadershipDevelopment, addresses the complex challenges of a secularized, pluralized, and privatized 21st century world. It publishes a journal:INTEGRATION: A Journal of Faith and Learning.Integration is a journal for educators who are committed to thinking Christianly about higher education, its website states. Our mission is to promote a robust vision for the integration of faith and learning across the academic disciplines from a perspective that is rooted in a biblical worldview and in conversation with the Christian intellectual tradition. On a final course paper at my Midwest institution, one of my students wrote that she enjoyed the course and she felt that both I and my graduate assistant (who had earlier come out to the class as lesbian) were very knowledgeable and good professors with great senses of humor.Nonetheless, she informed us that we will be going to Hell for being so-called practicing homosexuals. Two years later, another student wrote in her course paper that homosexuality and transgender identities are sins in the same category as stealing and murder. This student strongly implied that I would land in Hell if I continued to act on my same-sex attractions.She and several other students through the years went further by insisting that since I am Jewish and I do not accept Jesus as my personal savior, I will go to Hell regardless of my sexual identity and behavior. A few students accused me of killing the Lord. One student told me to my face that anyone who doubts this, only death will tell! She concluded by asserting that the real Christian privilege is to suffer and die in the name of Jesus Christ.Another student in his final paper for the course entirely dismissed the notion of Christian privilege by asserting: [A]s a Christian I am called to not be tolerant. I am not called to be violent, but am called to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28). When I look through all of the information I have been given in my life I come to the conclusion that America was founded as a Christian nation Separation of church and state was created to keep the state out of changing the church, not to keep the church out of the state.While the march toward Christian nationalism starts in the larger society, it is strengthened and enhanced in the schools.Oklahomas so-called anti-woke assessment test further pushes the brown-shirted Christian crusaders takeover of public education.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.