Dear DOGE – Why Is The U.S. Government Funding “Media Literacy” Informers And Indoctrination?
Does the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is funding “media literacy” programs to teach students and the community to snitch on each other under the guise of fighting “disinformation”? Does Kristie Noem, the recently confirmed Secretary of DHS, know? Other funders of such programs include the Department of Defense and Department of State. Do Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio know about this?
If they had read my prior writings and seen my prior media apperances on the DHS program, they would know.
Courageous RI
I laid it all out one year ago in my February 19, 2024, post at Legal Insurrection, DHS Is Training Teachers To Develop Student ‘Disinformation’ Informers – I Know, I Took The Training:
I’m a Providence, Rhode Island, high school teacher. You may remember me from when I blew the whistle in July 2021 on how a new Critical Race Curriculum was creating racial hostility in the Middle School where I taught at the time, and the subsequent retaliation and harassment.I’m blowing the whistle again, this time as to Department of Homeland Security funding for training of teachers on combatting so-called “disinformation” as part of supposed “media literacy” programming through the University of Rhode Island, called Courageous RI. The training is not what it purports to be. It’s all about training teachers to teach students to become “disinformation” informers. I know. I took the training.Starting in September 2023, I attended a twelve week online training through “Courageous Rhode Island” at the University of Rhode Island, funded by a DHS grant of over $700,000. The program is for K-12 teachers and is promoted as “media literacy.” But it’s so much more than media literacy, and the impact of the training turned to teacher interaction with students and how students could be utilized as reporting sources.I’m about to tell you what I witnessed and what this taxpayer-funded “disinformation” training is all about. What follows are a lot of details. But the bottom line is that the is a direct track from media literacy theory to DHS goals and objectives to URI training to teachers to students, and back again up the chain in a feedback loop. It’s dangerous to our society, and shows how something claimed to protect freedom has the potential to damage freedom.What follows is background on media literacy and “disinformation” ideology, how it is a DHS focus, and some of what I experienced in the course. It’s long, but necessary.
K-12 Media Literacy programs for teachers and librarians are springing-up across the nation. These programs use millions of dollars in taxpayer funded grants and awards from DHS, The CARES Act, State funds, and (NGOs) non-government organizations with leftwing political affiliations. The goals of media literacy training are to advance radical leftist propaganda like anti-American sentiment, pro-gender-cult sentiment, pro-United Nations politics; and to create a student- informer network.
Every single parent in America needs to be very concerned. Why? Because media literacy aims to create an army of child activists and snitches. Media literacy aims to create a network of radical leftist teachers while indoctrinating children with ambiguous made-up authoritarian language and curricula to control what children think and what children believe to be true about their American/Western heritage.
Embedded in the K-12 media literacy curriculum materials are lessons that dismiss human biology and geography; there are lessons that teach children United Nations political vocabulary, anti fracking sentiment, climate change ideology and more. There are lessons that break down the family, erase gender and subtly promote communism over capitalism. Most alarming is that media literacy training programs are funded by federal agencies and state agencies that allocate millions of taxpayer funds to media literacy programs across the nation.
I know, I’ve taken the training. Twice.
Connecting Media Literacy
In addition to the Courageous RI 12-week course I previously wrote about, recently I participated in a teacher/librarian media literacy training, and frankly I was shocked by the content and by the massive amounts of taxpayer funds allotted to media literacy teacher training cohorts.
Otherwise known as Project Look Sharp, ML3 Initiative, or Connecting Media Literacy Across Rhode Island, this training and the many other similar programs are popping up around the country. They provide teachers and students with government funded resources, curriculum, grants and more. These media literacy cohorts believe students can be politically manipulated by the media to commit acts of “violent extremism” and therefore these programs seek to use teachers to detect and re-educate students who may be “extremists” and express dangerous thoughts and actions.
Connecting Media Literacy across Rhode Island’s program differed from Courageous Rhode Island. This program focused on K-12 media literacy lesson-plans and “media decoding” strategies that aimed to identify student bias or alleged prejudice against leftist ideology. Teachers and librarians in this training were given classroom strategies to identify and redirect students whose opinions reflected conservative values. Oddly, we were given strange made-up vocabulary to use like “danger clucking”, “conflict entrepreneur”, “divergent thinkers”, misinformation and disinformation and more. While Courageous RI focused on a broader student network, this media literacy program focused on the classroom as a leftist indoctrination camp.
The list of taxpayer funded sources include additional federal agencies, such as The Department of Defense, and Department of State. Do Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio know about this?
There are additional non-federal sources, such as The Institute of Museum and Library Services, The New York State Department of Education, New York State BOCES, and funds from Ithaca City Schools grant money to“Project Looksharp Media Literacy” the remaining funding sources are from NGOs.
It will come as no surprise that media literacy does not contribute to improved academic outcomes, but rather it seeks to establish a K-12 surveillance culture that singles out conservative voices in K-12 education.
Yet, training modules like Connecting Media Literacy Across Rhode Island created by Project Look Sharp in Ithaca New York, and other programs across the nation continue to receive tax dollars to advance media literacy in K-12 schools.
These teacher training modules should be looked at closely by DOGE and DHS, as they do not serve American children in any way. In fact, media literacy is filled with anti-American propaganda!
After surveying two media literacy trainings here in Rhode Island and curating hundreds of pages of resources and videos, the picture is clear. Our children are being groomed to embrace ideals set forth by the United Nations and to abandon the Constitution and freedom in exchange for a “collectivist mindset” and Cultural Marxism. Hard to believe, and yet this is in fact what is happening across the nation.
Going back as far as 2021 when I sounded the alarm on a harmful, divisive curriculum that concerned me while teaching in the Providence School system, I now see that media literacy is equally divisive and filled with the same propaganda I witnessed back then. After four years, I am realizing the full extent of K-12 indoctrination.
The very lessons your children are exposed to in media literacy lessons are astounding. The lesson plans reflect anti-Christian, anti-Western, pro-Collectivism, and in the name of “DEI inclusion”, there is forced LGBTQ gender language compliance, anti-male, anti-female, anti-family content, and more alarming leftist propaganda provided by the United Nations!
From the onset, I was honest and transparent with the facilitators. I questioned the contention that media literacy is a necessary teaching and learning platform, I truly wanted to understand their rationale. Needless to say, I was quickly singled out and not allowed to co-mingle with my colleagues. In fact, I was isolated in private break-out rooms with all three facilitators who tried to challenge my professional point-of-view that media literacy is a government funded leftist propaganda and surveillance K-12 propaganda machine.
You can see for yourself how political the lesson plans are when you go to the public platform Project Look Sharp. The lessons are free, and can be accessed publicly through Ithaca College Media Literacy curriculum platform resource page. Here is just one example of hundreds that will show the subtle manner in which media literacy lessons reflect leftist ideology and are intended on indoctrinating children to radicalism and anti-Western ideals.
My hope is that with President Trump’s Executive Orders related to K-12 education and with oversight from DOGE, we can reverse course and restore K-12 classrooms to politically neutral zones where all children are respected as free independent thinkers and not enslaved by Marxist ideology and activist teachers.
Conclusion – Stop Funding “Media Literacy” Training
“Media Literacy” has become the gateway drug to manipulating society in the name of fighting supposed disinformation. We don’t need it. The federal government should not be funding it.
Dear @DOGE, Why Is Federal Government Funding “Media Literacy”?
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