perrinelson

“Social Justice” is a phrase I've been seeing a lot lately. One of David's (not so) recent comments led me to go look at Woody Guthrie's song This Land Is Your Land again. And that led me to the Woody Guthrie Foundation web site. There I saw a teacher's curriculum aimed at second through fourth grade children that is designed to indoctrinate children into the concept of “social justice.”

Children will love the positive, happy melody but be challenged by the harsh reality of the chorus. Let students write their thoughts in their journals or have them write letters to the editor pretending it's 1939 and they are migrants from Oklahoma. Then, examine issues confronting farm workers today in California. What has changed? What remains the same? Write letters to the editor right now regarding rights of Mexican farm workers who pick grapes in California wine country.

How manipulative can you get? Indoctrinate the children to support “social justice” for people that break our laws. After all, there's a significant difference between the illegal immigrants that “come here to pick the lettuce that American's won't” and the Oklahoma migrant's of the 1930s. That difference is lost on the Woody Guthry foundation though.

You see, the Oklahoma migrants were citizens of the United States. They didn't have to cross borders under cover of darkness to move about, because they had every right to live here. But the “Mexiacan farm workers who pick grapes in California wine country” did, because they aren't citizens, and many of them didn't come here legally.

So the Woody Guthry Foundation wants to teach our children that breaking the law is the way to achieve “social justice.” Funny thing is, it's just another way to perpetrate injustice.