On Tuesday, the Minnesota House Education Policy Committee passed a bill that would suspend the implementation of the controversial 2021 K-12 social studies standards and repeal the ethnic studies mandates enacted in 2023. Districts would continue teaching the social studies standards they currently are using that were adopted in 2012 until scheduled revisions set for 2030.
HF 29, sponsored by Rep. Ron Kresha (R-Little Falls), was sent to the House Education Finance Committee on a 7-6 party-line vote. Oral testifiers included American Experiment’s Katherine Kersten, who has well documented over the years how this version of ethnic studies — “liberated” ethnic studies — is rooted in identity-based ideology and race essentialist curricula. There were a number of other powerful testifiers in support of the bill, including attorney and mom-of-three Kofi Montzka.
Those opposed to the bill include Education for Liberation Minnesota, or EdLib MN, a group that aims to “be a political force” in Minnesota and “contend with the status quo of colonial education that prioritizes Eurocentric curricula.”
Its written testimony opposing HF 29 stated that the social studies standards and ethnic studies requirements “were not created out of thin air by a small special interest group.”
Yet, the group’s website specifically states that in 2020 “the decision was made to pack the MN social studies revision committee, led by the MN Department of Education (MDE)” and “hav[e] EdLibMN members on the state social studies revision committee” to “demand that Ethnic Studies be included in social studies curricula.”
Starting in 2020, Education for Liberation Minnesota and its ideological allies, who dominated the state’s social studies standards drafting committee, made liberated ethnic studies a top priority.
EdLib MN is the only state chapter of its national arm, the Education for Liberation Network. The name and concept of “Education for Liberation” are drawn from the ideology of Brazilian Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed published in 1968. As my colleague Katherine Kersten explains:
Freire maintained that education’s purpose is not to pass on knowledge, but to build revolutionary consciousness among the “oppressed” to achieve “liberation” by overthrowing the system. For decades, his book has been one of the most widely assigned texts in many colleges of education.
Brian Lozenski — a Minnesota professor, founding organizer of EdLib MN, board member of the Education for Liberation Network, and key leader on the Minnesota ethnic studies initiatives — has also called for overthrowing the system, the U.S. government.
So, yes, the social studies standards and ethnic studies requirements were created by special interests, and these efforts were largely driven by EdLib MN themselves with the backing of MDE.
And who empowered these political advocacy groups and gave them the platform to get these products entrenched throughout our K-12 education system? The Minnesota Legislature.
Minnesota policymakers carried the legislation laced with critical social justice ideology, authorized statewide regulation to impose these ideologically-driven ideas, and included funding, contracts, and grants to aligned third parties.
They have an obligation to fix it, and it starts with HF 29.