Exposing communist ideologies in education with author and former public school teacher John Stamper

Marxist, socialist, and communist ideologies are dominating public schools, and John Stamper is fighting back! Rather than continue working in the woke, ideological corridors of the Chicago Public Schools, John quit his job and began developing homeschool materials. He also wrote the book, Conflicted: Pulling Back the Curtain on Public Education, that outlines the indoctrination process through mandatory teacher training. Listen and learn how Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, and other Godless ideas are being presented to students as facts.Show more

Purchase John's book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Pulling-Curtain-Public-Education/dp/1683443241

Check out his podcast The State of State Schools for a recap on some of the most important headlines in education—from a Christian perspective:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2dWKtwhdtVKTkSXACOVO4b?si=bA1LaZGIT3etk5yS8aKS4w&nd=1

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Gerald Ewalt: Welcome to the First Wright Podcast, a weekly conservative new show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm Jerry Ewalt Chief Marketing Officer for Restoration of America, and today we are blessed to have another courageous Christian who is fighting back against our corrupted culture. He's John Stamper, who rather than continue working in the woke ideological corridors of the Chicago schools, quit and began developing homeschool materials and wrote a book about it. John will welcome to the show.

John Stamper: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. It's an honor. Hi, everybody.

Gerald Ewalt: Well, we're gonna jump into your book, but you know, as, as you go throughout the book, I, I realize that your upbringing played a very key role in who you are and gave you the strength to do what you're currently doing. Before we tell the audience more about your book, tell us a little bit about your background.

John Stamper: I appreciate that. Yeah. I grew up in Indiana. I was homeschooled about half of my upbringing. I was a teacher and a coach for 13 years, mostly in public schools. A couple years in private schools. I taught every grade level K through 12 multiple subjects, coached multiple sports. The last few years I've been developing homeschool courses through Master Books Academy and also hosting my own podcast called the State of State Schools. It's an education podcast. My wife, Jenna and I have been married for about four and a half years. She is an attorney in Chicago, and that's where we live.

Gerald Ewalt: I bet that that degree that your wife has is gonna come in handy as we, as we move forward. So, you know, you said 13 years in the public school system, and you love that job. I mean, you talk in, throughout the book, you just talk about the passion you have for kids and teaching kids, and, and you, you love that job. So why, why did you leave

John Stamper: It, right? Yeah, teaching and coaching kind of was always something that came natural to me. But in the fall of 2020, which was my one and only year at Chicago Public Schools, this was also at the height of Covid, probably six months into the pandemic, most schools started virtually, but in the fall, we had to complete mandatory teacher training, which is nothing new. That's common happens every year. And you would think that, you know, during the pandemic virtual SCH school, that we would be given some tips and some strategies, how to manage a virtual classroom. But instead, we were presented with critical race theory and gender theory presented as fact. You know, I, I can give a few examples. We were instructed on, you know, topics such as pronouns and supporting transgender students and intersectionality. One example was the gender unicorn, which was, it's like a character.
It looks like Barney. It's really friendly looking. The video describes it as a cute character your students will love, but the gender unicorn is designed for kindergartner, so five and six year olds, to teach them about their gender identity, whether they can be a boy, a girl, or a different gender altogether. They can be emotionally attracted to a boy, a girl, or an entirely different gender. Another example would be training sessions on always using preferred pronouns. It's always best practice to affirm a student's transgender identity. And then in our own training module, we were presented with a student in the school district who was out as trans at school, but was not out at home. And the teachers, principal counselors were keeping this from the parents. Nobody told the parents out of privacy and safety for the student. You know, there was a another element of critical race theory called intersectionality.
We were presented with a graphic, it's called intersecting Identities, and you can look this up for yourself, created by a group called the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. So in this graphic, it presents nine privileged identities and nine marginalized identities. And everyone is in one of these two groups. So some examples of the privileged identities would be white people, Christians, boys, men, heterosexuals. So some of the marginalized identities would be people of color, non-Christians, LGBTQ population. So wherever these identities meet, like two of these identities, if they meet, they are assigned a tactic of oppression or a way that they would oppress a marginalized individual. I'll give you a few examples. According to this training, if you're a Christian, then your tactic of oppression is you're emotionally abusive toward non-Christians. Another example would be if you are a white boy or a white man, you're emotionally abusive to people of color and females personally, as a Christian and a teacher, I had a real conflict, you know, as a Christian, I, I view these trainings as racist, prejudice, discriminatory.
And I, I wasn't gonna, what I view as lying to my students about affirming a trans identity, or I certainly wasn't gonna keep things from parents. So I had a real conflict, you know, could I be a Christian in teacher? Right? So what I ended up doing after kind of months of prayer and wrestling with this was I filed a formal complaint with the Chicago Public School Board. They have an online portal where, yeah, can you file a formal complaint? And I cited all of these instances in the training, and they did reply back and they, they just said, we're not going to investigate this claim. And that was it. And, but at that point, I resigned.

Gerald Ewalt: So, so I know John, in the book, you, you talk about the option of staying and fighting or, or leaving quitting and leaving you, you chose to leave. And, and walk me through that decision. Why did you choose to leave as opposed to stay?

John Stamper: Right. So this is just my personal experience and, and I'm not gonna tell, you know, a teacher, for example, what they should be doing. That's, I think between you and the Lord. But, you know, one option was to stay and fight the other, like you mentioned, was to kinda leave. So ultimately, after praying and, you know, praying with my wife and discussing with my wife, I felt like the Lord was reminding me of blah, kind of to flee the city before destruction. That was, that was where my head was. That's where my heart was. And that's where I felt the Lord was leading me to file that complaint, you know, try to plead my case and then he'll walk

Gerald Ewalt: Away. They're using marketing techniques to get through to the children like this, this unicorn or that that reminds you of Barney, the purple dinosaur to, to attract kids into this ideology. Can you expand a little bit more on that?

John Stamper: Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, there is an intention to appeal to the youngest of children, which kind of goes to the heart of the trend of undermining parents and kind of separating parents, removing them from the education process.

Gerald Ewalt: You wouldn't even want some of these fringe theories and ideas in the school system anyway, especially at a young age. But they're also being presented as fact. This is known to everyone,

John Stamper: Right? As an adult, I think there's a time and a place to talk about anything. We can discuss critical race theory and gender theory and sex. But when it comes to the most intimate conversations like sexuality, I believe parents should have the final say on when, where, and how those conversations are held.

Gerald Ewalt: So, John, I got a, I got a little test for you here. Hey, John. So I am a white male who's married. I don't have any disabilities that I'm aware of. I have, I have children. And here's the last one. I know this is a big one. I'm also a Christian. So what would your teaching in these public schools say about someone like me?

John Stamper: Well, I'm looking at the exact graphic that was presented in my teaching. So based on your question there, you would be emotionally abusive, economically abusive, intimidating, threatening, using children, blaming and minimizing. And that's not based on your actions or your behaviors, that's just on your race, your religion, your sexuality, income level.

Gerald Ewalt: And one of the things that you talk about in your book that I thought was really interesting is that this is related to Marxism, socialism, communism, and that education is such an important aspect of advancing Marxist causes,

John Stamper: Right? On the money. And I actually think that is, I think the most important chapter in my book is about the rise of Marxism and communism in the 20th century. You know, education is a very powerful tool, and education systems throughout history have been used to accomplish incredibly great things, as well as incredibly terrible things. So we should always try to learn from history, you know, we can use it as a roadmap to see where we've been before, where these ideologies were used before, and then how did they end up, where are we going? So in my book, I point out five major regimes of the 20th century and how they used their education systems to implement political ideologies. And then I draw certain parallels among those regimes and also to our own education system. Now, that's not to label people as Marxist or communists, but the whole point is to say, Hey, these i ideas, ideologies, strategies, they've been used before and it ended up terribly, and we as a society should change course immediately. So it's not meant to divide people, it's meant to just sound an alarm and say, Hey, let's get off of this path right now.

Gerald Ewalt: Well, I think as you walk through, you know, historically of how the school system's been used to advance these Marxist ideologies, what I was surprised to see is how advanced America is in that progression. This isn't just starting that we're far down the line.

John Stamper: No, you're right on the money. Right on the money. So I think just kind of looking back at each regime and just kind of pointing out some of their, you know, the tactics that they use to implement their ideologies, we can see right away parallels to our own education system. I can give a few examples here in a few minutes. The U S S R was the first communist state under Vladimir Lennon. He intentionally made education as political as possible, and the first thing that he did was revisionism changed the, the country's history with new teachers, new curriculum, progressive textbooks. They, their style of education was a social education, not so much reading, writing and arithmetic. Vladimir Lennon famously, famously said that kindergarten classes were the sprouts of communism. So he was going, you know, towards children who were four or five years old, right?
Intentionally in Germany, under Hitler's rule, they focused on racial science, new history, not so much academics. Teachers were trained on how to implement the Nazi ideology in their classroom. And there's a quote from, from Hitler. He said, if the older generations cannot get accustomed to us, then we shall take their children away from them and rear them as needful to the Fatherland. So that's the idea of separating parent from child to use for society's needs. For the government's needs, right? So that, that's a scary, scary thought. So any time, if there's a separation of parents and child in the education system, that's a big, big problem. And that ought to be stopped at gate.

Gerald Ewalt: Yeah, that is actually the battle that we're experiencing right now, right? These school board races, a lot of the division happens between, well, I believe the school has the right to teach the kids versus No, no, they're my kids. I'm the parents. I have the right to know what they're being taught and to kind of guide that. And that's the division we're seeing right now.

John Stamper: Absolutely. I mean, and those, the, the content and the tactics are in line with Marxism or socialism, Marxism, which is an atheist ideology, is all about disrupting institutions like the family or establishments. And they do that by dividing casting one side as the oppressor, and the other side is the oppressed. And we already kind of touched on socialism, the idea that the child's purpose is to serve society that, you know, they're raised by the village and the community, not so much the parents. So we've seen these things happen before the content, you know, the tactics and strategies we should be learning from this, learning from history and making more informed decisions, not repeating the same

Gerald Ewalt: Mistake. Now you advocate for homeschool, right? That's kind of one of your solutions, you advocate for

John Stamper: Sure, as a former homeschooler and also as a public school teacher. I can kind of relate to both sides. I think that's the best scenario is homeschooling children. But of course not every family can do that for whatever reason. I totally understand that. So for those parents who cannot homeschool, I do offer suggestions in my book of, you know, kind of what you can do to ensure that your children aren't indoctrinated, for example, being involved in your school's textbook and curriculum adoption process, maybe even running for a school board seat yourself. And there's a whole list that I give. Yeah. But other than that, you know, I mentioned my weekly podcast, this is what I talk about every week, is kind of notifying parents of what's going on in education and, you know, kind of what it all means and what you can do about it. But there are things that you can do if you have to stay in the school system. But it's an ongoing thing. It's not, it's not a one and done situation. It's, it's gonna take diligence and, but again, what could be more important than the future and the education of your child?

Gerald Ewalt: So, so get involved, get your voice out there. Consider homeschooling. And I think maybe my, my favorite one that you, you actually have in the book is what we really need is a spiritual revival. I mean, it all ends, it begins and ends with God, and if we don't turn back to him, we're not gonna be able to restore our kids and restore this country.

John Stamper: I absolutely agree with that. You know, it's, we need to get back to the shared values that we had one nation under God, you know.

Gerald Ewalt: Well, John, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for all that you're doing. Keep up the good fight and may God continue to bless you on your journey.

John Stamper: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys having me today. Thank you.

Gerald Ewalt: All right, well, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting conservative media, and don't ever forget that by working together and staying diligent, we conservatives can bring our country back to true greatness. Until next week, let's all keep praying that God will continue to bless America

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