THE KITCHEN MILITIA – THE RENEWED LINE OF DEFENSE FOR EDUCATION
By Tom DeWeese
The alarm sounds throughout the countryside. As the alert is heard, one by one, two by two, the patriots respond. They are a loosely organized, ragtag band, without official leaders or official orders. Some gather in small groups, others work alone. But, armed with an overpowering idea of truth and an urgency to protect their children, they are determined to expose and drive back their foe.
They are not the Minute Men of 1775, turning out to keep the King’s men from ransacking their supplies. These are mothers of 2022 answering the call against the federal assault on their children’s local schoolhouses. A proper name for them should be the “Kitchen Militia” and their targets are Common Core, Equity Collaborative, Social Emotional learning (SEL), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and any other federal education program that threatens to dumb down their children or subject them to behavior modification.
For several years individual mothers have been fighting alone to get to the bottom of an education crisis that seems to grow unabated. It’s getting worse, even as the education establishment and politicians talk of education “reform” and pour money into a system that continues to turn out children who can’t read or perform simple math.
These are the children they nurtured for the first five years of their lives. Yet, once those children are released into the public education system, something begins to happen. Some become rebellious and angry. Some of those once-happy children become quiet and withdrawn. Where once they showed quick ability to learn, now they seemed unable to grasp even the simple basics of knowledge.
When the moms try to help with homework assignments, they’re told by the children that moms aren’t allowed to help. Then, when those moms go to the school to get to the bottom of the problem, they are turned away or casually disregarded. Said the co-founder of Equity Collaborative, “Adults are in the way…kids change much faster.” And the crisis continues to grow.
This attack on parents and their values is not new. During the 1973 International Education Seminar, Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, speaking as an expert in public education, said: “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well by creating the international child of the future.” And thus began the drive to change the American education system away from teaching academics, into one that focuses on behavior modification of attitudes, values, and beliefs usually instilled from parents.
This scenario is classic throughout the nation. New generations of moms continue to ask the same questions. In each case somewhere a mom begins to get angry and starts researching this new education system that no longer teaches real math or the ability to write in cursive, discourages literature, and focuses, instead, on “feelings!” At the beginning they are just concerned and want to understand. In each case as they uncover more of the corrupted material they are not only horrified by what they find, but, one by one, they discover each other – more moms in the same crusade, nationwide.
With the help of the home computer and social media, they begin sharing information and research. Today, school board meetings have become the battle ground.
But the politicians, including school board members, who used to encourage parental involvement, now openly oppose their right to question education policy. Federal intrusion grows with more programs that don’t seem to make sense. The children are spending less and less time learning basic skills and more time with the school psychologist or in group sessions openly discussing personal family business. SAT test have been dumbed down to make it appear the education “reform” programs are working. California is now taking steps to remove “Ds” and “Fs” from the grading system as basic skills continue to diminish. In reality, kids can’t read beyond a fourth-grade level or figure out what 9 percent of 100 might be. It’s now more important for teachers to help students identify their differences instead of their common American identity.
Meanwhile, the moms who used to keep the household running and keep the kids in crisply ironed clean clothes, now sit in front of their terminals or on the phone diving ever deeper into the underbelly of an education system gone mad.
The moms have begun to find a new language of terms like “higher order thinking skills”, “gender norming,” “classroom facilitator”, “site-based management”, “career education” and “life role competencies”. This is the language of Outcome-based Education. What does all of this mean? The moms are finding out fast.
They’ve learned that their kids are no longer considered to be children or students but “human resources.” Schools are no longer places of education but are becoming “one stop social centers.” Racial identity has become more important than math. Above all, they’ve learned that the world of “education reform” is a dark and smelly place. One thing is clear, it is no place for their children.
A lesson that the education establishment is about to learn is that they should never ignore or anger a concerned mom. Tired of being ignored, tired of doing the politician’s job, tired of fearing for their children’s futures, the moms have begun to strike back with all the force they can muster – and their punch may be strong. Many brave moms are sounding the alarm at school board meetings, even under the outrageous threat of arrest by the FBI for simply expressing their concerns.
In truth, the Mom’s fight, while now getting headlines over the Critical Race Theory issue, is not new. Back in 1996 it began in earnest as moms began to notice troubles in the classrooms. One of the leaders at that time was Chey Simonton who headed up a group called the National Citizens Alliance. She is the one who originally made up the term “Kitchen Militia.”
At the time, Simonton issued a declaration for the moms, which needs to be rekindled today. It stated simply: We are thousands of mothers and grandmothers-cum-researchers located in every state of this country. We have micro-researched every facet of the so-called “restructuring” and in the process have become experts on the United Nations, the US-Soviet Education, Technology and Cultural Exchange Agreements, federal and state legislation (past and present), philosophy, sociology, psychology, and pedagogy. In short, if there is any program or agenda we perceive as a threat to our families, somewhere there is a Kitchen Militia mother who tracks it down and gets the word out on the grapevine: radio call-in shows, fax networks, audio cassette, video tape or any other jungle drum available.
We’re not armed with guns! Guns are so messy…we’ve got Congressional records, legislation, and official documents. We document whatever we say and hoard quotes from air-head politicians like a miser hoards his gold…
We are the most dangerous threat to the “restructuring” of this nation. Remember the old slogan, “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” This is fair warning. The fastest growing militia group in this country is the Kitchen Militia. Our numbers swell every day, every time some new piece of socialist garbage is introduced that threatens our families.
Time has passed, but the battle has now grown fierce. For over thirty years the educrats have controlled the field of battle as children suffered and mothers tried to make sense of it all. Today, the true purpose of education “reform” is clear and the moms have all the knowledge they need to take direct action for their children. Now is the time for the moms to renew Chey Simonton’s battle cry and to organize into a lean, mean, effective effort, taking direct action in every school board meeting. Let that be fair warning to any politician who thinks “business as usual” will continue.
The Kitchen Militia is finally becoming a true grassroots movement of angry moms. There are thousands of them – too many to name. But every time another mom finds her child to be a victim of education “reform”, every time she takes those few minutes to just “check into the situation”, that mom finds herself unknowingly heading down a road of no return – down the road that leads straight to the camp of the Kitchen Militia.
Now, as they wage their valiant fight, those moms are all headed down another road as well – the one that leads straight to the camp of Freedom’s Heroes.
TOM DEWEESE
Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence.
Published with Permission of americanpolicy.org