Candidates promise to 'take wokeness' out of education

SHERIDAN — Wyoming is a state blessed with bountiful natural resources ranging from coal to natural gas, Wyoming governor candidate Brent Bien said Tuesday, but “our children are our greatest natural resource.”

That might be why several of the governor and superintendent of public instruction candidates speaking at the second night of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce’s candidate forum Tuesday emphasized the importance of protecting children from potentially dangerous world views that could invade the public school classroom, from critical race theory to LGBTQ issues.

“We need to re-baseline our education and get back to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic and really make an effort to take this woke-ism out of our school system,” Bien said. “…We need to take a stand and say no.”

Governor candidates speaking at the forum were Republican Gov. Mark Gordon of Buffalo and Bien, a Sheridan Republican. 

Republican candidates James Quick of Douglas and Rex Rammell of Rock Springs were not in attendance. Neither were Democratic candidates Rex Wilde of Cheyenne or Theresa Livingston of Worland.

Superintendent of public instruction candidates speaking at the forum included current Superintendent Brian Schroeder, a Cheyenne Republican; Republican candidates Megan Degenfelder of Laramie, Jennifer Zerba of Casper and Thomas Kelly of Sheridan; and Democratic candidate Sergio Maldonado of Lander. Republican Robert White of Rock Springs was not in attendance.

Kelly said he was deeply concerned by an education system he described as being “addicted to federal dollars” to the point that schools were willing to sacrifice traditional Wyoming values in order to receive funding.

“I’m running to protect our school system so we are not undercut by our own children being raised in neo-Marxist and anti-American ideals,” Kelly said. “…As long as we’re addicted to federal money, the way of life here is at risk.”

Schroeder said schools have become a cultural “battleground,” and he has done his best to fight back. Schroeder touted his recent decision to withdraw Wyoming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s federally funded school lunch program as a result of a new USDA requirement that all state and local agencies funded through the Food and Nutrition Services program must update their nondiscrimination policies to include “prohibitions against discriminations based on gender identity and sexual orientation.” 

“The response I got (from my staff) was ‘I disagree with that’ and I said, ‘That’s OK,’” Schroeder said. “They said ‘I think you’re going to lose the election’ and I said, ‘So be it.’ This has to be bigger than us. We have to be willing to make the right decisions whether we get reelected or not. That’s where I’m at.”

Later in the forums, Martha Wright, a Democratic candidate for House District 29, wondered whether the rejection of more than $40 million in federal dollars was really something for Schroeder to be proud of.

“I do not understand why Mr. Schroeder is saying…he is going to turn down thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for food that would feed our children,” Wright said.

Gordon argued it was time for local communities — not the federal government — to come together and take control of their children’s education.

“In education, we have far too much meddling from the federal government,” Gordon said. “That’s why we started the RIDE (Reimagining and Innovating the Delivery of Education) initiative, which starts with parents and works through communities and industries and really finds out what the people of Wyoming want kids to learn.”

Schroeder said it was time to reclaim the purpose of education and get back to basics.

“The purpose of education can be summed up in four words: to learn to think,” Schroeder said. “That’s been the purpose of education for over a thousand years. It’s just been in the last hundred years that a progressive mindset has shifted the paradigm to where they are experimenting on our kids. And I want to recover the purpose of education in our state and protect our kids.”

 

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