The problem with China-backed programs in schools is twofold
Parents need to be in charge of education, not woke teachers' unions: Ryan Walters
Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters on taking on teachers' unions and the need to prioritize parents and students in education
It is an age-old adage that he who pays the piper picks the tune, and it is as obviously true in business as it is in education. Right now in my state of Oklahoma, the Chinese government is paying the piper in our public schools, and its chosen tune is propaganda aimed at Sooner State kids.
The issue at hand are so-called "Confucius Institutes." While some apologists for the regime in Beijing have tried to explain these programs away as mere efforts to educate students about Chinese history and culture, or "professional development" for teachers, the harsh truth is that they are little more than government-funded PR operations that set up shop in American educational institutions with the purpose of warping American students’ minds about Xi Jinping’s repressive, anti-American regime.
The problem with these China-backed programs, which began in 2004, is twofold. On the one hand, they create a platform for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to promote its propaganda under the guise of good-faith international education efforts, according to the National Association of Scholars. On the other, they have been criticized for steering student’s away from "topics likely to offend the Chinese communist Party," according to the left-leaning magazine, The New Republic. Of course, this all flows downstream from the same impulse: to coopt American institutions into doing the bidding of the CCP.
Why many of these programs were shuttered in response to policies put forward during the Trump administration, many have indeed started to return under new names and in altered forms. According to a more recent report from the NAS, some 28 educational institutions have replaced old Confucius Institutes "with a similar program," while many K-12 "Confucius Classrooms" have continued operations in the United States despite the closure of the Confucius Institute sponsoring them, and many of the staff have simply "migrated" to other replacement programs.
COMMUNIST-BACKED CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES RENEW BID TO SHAPE AMERICAN MINDS
I came under fire a few days ago for raising the alarm about these programs in Oklahoma, and I stand by what I said. Chinese propaganda has no place in Oklahoma schools, or any schools in the United States for that matter. Just as no student should be indoctrinated with radical theories about race, sex, or gender at school, neither should any student at any level of education be brainwashed by the propaganda efforts of a foreign adversary. Just as no teacher should be silenced or censored by a woke mob of students or college administrators, no American institution should be importing the censorship of a repressive, anti-American regime.
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The Trump administration was right to force American Colleges and Universities to disclose their relationship with these communist propaganda offices — a move which the Biden administration quietly rescinded soon after taking power in 2021. But more can still be done at the federal and state level to combat this pernicious presence in our education system. The next Republican president will have the opportunity not only to reinstate the Trump-era transparency policy, but to go even further in withholding federal funds from those institutions who choose to continue these corrosive partnerships with Beijing. Likewise, Congress has the power to push for such policies in the interim over bills that fund the federal Department of Education and all of its related school funding programs. At the state level, it is time for legislators to take serious action to address the threat these programs pose to our ideals and our national security and take measures necessary to extricate Confucius Classrooms and all similar programs from their public schools.
UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 26: A plaque and a flag hang outside the China Institute, home of the Confucius Institute, at 125 E 65th Street in New York, U.S., on Monday, Nov. 26, 2007. The Chinese government's Office of the Chinese Language Council International, which has established 135 Confucius Institutes worldwide, is part of a broad campaign involving investment, aid and diplomacy as well as cultural outreach, all aimed at smoothing China's path to great-power status. (Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This should not be a controversial topic, and to anyone with a clear-eyed view of the threat posed by Communist China and its aspirations to undermine our freedoms, our prosperity and our way of life, it is not. If the Kremlin had been trying to set up Soviet-funded "education programs" in American schoolrooms fifty years ago, we as a country would have put a stop to it — albeit with a great deal of complaints from a few hardcore communist sympathizers embedded in colleges and universities. It is time that we approached the current efforts of the Chinese Communist Party with the same seriousness, earnestness, and unity as a people.
American public schools should serve the educational and societal needs of our country and its students, not the global aspirations of foreign tyrants. As long as I hold the honor of serving the parents, students, and teachers of the great state of Oklahoma, that is exactly what I intend to do.
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Ryan Walters serves as Oklahoma's secretary of education.
