Inside A ‘Social Justice Academy’ Where Third Graders Learn To Be Leftist Activists

A “social justice academy” run by a California school district teaches elementary school kids to disavow “whiteness” and embrace transgender ideology, lesson plans shared with The Daily Wire show.

Every summer since 2021, the New Haven Unified School District in San Francisco has trained rising 3rd-6th graders in leftist gender and racial politics during its annual “social justice academy.” Specific details about the academy’s curriculum were revealed in documents recently obtained from the school by Parents Defending Education through a public records request. 

“Scholars will define and critically think about Social Justice, identify social injustices in the community, and create opportunities for activism through writing, action, art,” according to a plan from 2023 for the academy, which operates in deep blue Alameda County. 

The three-week academy, which costs the district around $20,000, was formed, in part, due to an Alameda County resolution that instructs educators to “help our children understand and react to racial differences, and to teach our youth how to speak up against injustice, racism and inequality.” 

Throughout the three-week course, students are taught the full gambit of leftist positions from “womxn rights” to Black Lives Matter and transgender ideology. The course comes as test scores show that under half of elementary students in the district are proficient in math while only half are proficient in reading. 

A lesson plan from week one shows that the academy focuses on issues of racial and sexual identity while reading from the book “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.” The book says that “whiteness is a bad deal. It always was” and that “you can be white without signing on to whiteness.” 

The students are also taught that it is “white supremacy” that the 10 richest Americans are white and that governors were 96% white based on 2016-era statistics, according to planning materials for the academy from 2024. 

In another exercise, students were taught about stereotypes by being forced to fire people from a list of names, before gradually learning more about them, including their sexual identities and disabilities. 

In week two of the academy, students are taught about Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and taught to compare former President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

The comparison between Trump and Hitler happens during a section on “dehumanizing language,” where students are shown an image of the two men with quotes. However, the quote attributed to Trump is completely fabricated. 

Trump is quoted in the image as saying “Undocumented immigrants are not human; they are animals.” While Trump has referred to violent gang members and murderers as “animals,” he never said all illegal immigrants are animals in a blanket manner. 

The course also takes a pro-Palestinian bent, accusing Israel of being a colonialist power and pointing students to a video from the leftist outlet The Root called “Why Black people should care about Palestinian Liberation.”

Also during the second week, students are taught about “defunding the police,” the history of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “criminalization of BIPOC.” The course materials argue that school disciplinary practices create a “school-to-prison” pipeline that disproportionately impacts black students.  

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During week three of the social justice academy, students read from two books pushing transgender ideology. One book, “I Am Jazz,” is based on Jazz Jennings, a man who identifies as a woman. Jennings’ parents moved him towards “gender-transition” at age 3, and he quickly became the star of a reality TV show that highlighted transgenderism. 

Students are taught that being “transgender is not a choice” and how to be an “LGBTQIA+ Ally.” Course materials list “transgender rights” as things like “access to medical care” and “all gender bathrooms.” 

Students are also taught about a Florida law that prohibited discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation for young children in classrooms. The legislation was derisively referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by the Left. 

New Haven Unified School District did not respond to requests for comment.

Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, said that the academy should be shut down. 

“This summer program should have been advertised as an indoctrination camp where ideologues who spell the word ‘women’ with an x feed students propaganda about defunding the police, transgenderism, and oppression,” she told The Daily Wire. “At the same time that they lie to kids about book bans, the curriculum includes a children’s book that calls whiteness bad and equates it with the devil.”