This is the final comment made on behalf of the Oregon Education Project at the Jan. 23 Medford School Board meeting:

In Monday’s inaugural speech, President Trump — reciting our nation’s current failings — said that “we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves, in many cases to hate our country, despite the love that we try so desperately to provide …”

He was talking about Woke Education: the transforming influence of Marxist-inspired Critical Race Theory in our schools, now extended beyond race to other “marginalized” groups in what is called Intersectionality.

It’s a profoundly cynical view of America. It reflects founder Derrick Bell’s deeply-held grievance as a Black man on the receiving end of the worst kind of racial discrimination. It sees our nation through a singular lens: as systemically racist, with no redemption in sight.

That’s a stark contrast to the view of Martin Luther King Jr., whom we celebrated the same day. Dr. King would firmly reject Woke Education were he alive today. In fact, his last book, “Where Do We Go From Here,” written months before he was assassinated, expressed his personal *resistance* to the similarly Marxist-inspired Black Power initiative led by his former colleague Stokely Carmichael. It had divided the Civil Rights Movement.

In that book, Dr. King urges the forces of grievance to redirect their energy back toward his unifying vision. He writes:

“The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who many of you know through “The Anxious Generation,” writes that there are two differing ways to pursue social justice: one is the “Common humanity way Dr. King expressed in his “beloved community.” The other is a “common enemy approach” — that of the Marxist Stokely Carmichael. Woke Education is built on that latter way: It encourages students to look at the world as a conflict between white oppressors and oppressed people of color. It is inherently divisive.

We urge the Medford School District to resist the divisive politics of Woke Education and embrace Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community, united across race, for the sake of our kids’ success.

The Oregon Education Project will be sponsoring a Community Talk about “Woke Education” at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, at the Medford library, 205 S. Central Ave. More information at http://oregoned.info