The cultural advocate of a nonprofit Christian organization is accusing some Illinois schools of unfairly focusing on progressive views and not giving students any chance at considering other perspectives.
Most recently, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute criticized the New Trier all-day school seminar "Understanding Today's Struggle for Racial Civil Rights."
“The content of the sessions offered, the speakers invited, the materials used were all from a progressive viewpoint,” Higgins told the North County News. “The issue is should these seminars be relatively balanced between conservative perspectives and progressive perspectives.”
In an article posted on the group's website before the event, Higgins urged parents to keep their children home and demand changes for future seminars.
“I would argue in a public school, using taxpayer funded resources, the perspectives should be relatively balanced and they clearly were not," Higgins said. “The issue is should conservative kids be able to have their views reinforced by the voices of experts -- that is to say, reading essays or books or articles from conservatives -- as well as challenged by the materials, and should progressive kids also have their views reinforced and challenged?”
She said a similar situation took place while she was employed in District 113 and discovered that some teachers were giving politically charged information to some of the students.
“[They] were presenting kids with resources that confirm leftist assumptions about homosexuality," Higgins said. "I didn’t argue against that. I simply said, ‘If you are going to expose them to these resources, you are obliged as teachers -- I would say ethically obliged -- to present resources from conservative perspectives.'"
Higgins also questioned the hiring of Glenn Singleton to improve students’ test performances. Singleton is a controversial speaker billed as a "diversity consultant."
“I asked then-superintendent George Fornero why we were hiring Singleton and was told it was due to Highland Park High School’s failure to make 'adequate yearly progress' under the No Child Left Behind Act," Higgins said. "The district had received federal money to help the Hispanic students perform better on standardized tests, and Fornero used it to hire Singleton."
She said she asked how Singleton could benefit students.
“I had asked the board how even in theory does that work?" Higgins said. "How [does] Glenn Singleton talking to us about systemic institutional racism and whiteness improve the test scores for the Hispanic kids? My view would have been one-on-one tutoring would have been a better use of our money to help those kids.”
Higgins said she did not receive an answer to her questions.
“It should be very easy if you are going to hire, let’s say 38 speakers, to have 19 conservatives and 19 liberals,” she said. “It should be easy to construct a relatively balanced seminar on whatever topic they want to do next year.”
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