The Revolutionist Playbook in America’s Schools

How schools are weaponizing ‘social-emotional learning’ to indoctrinate children

Alvin Lui, president of Courage Is A Habit. (Fei Meng)

“My great-grandfather ran from communism,” Alvin Lui says. “The people that dragged him out of his little bakery shop and beat him weren’t soldiers. They were college kids—the Red Guard. And that’s what they’re creating now with these kids, this revolutionist thinking: to hate America and American values, and to drive a wedge into the family.”

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek speaks with Lui, president of Courage Is A Habit, which creates resources for parents to help protect their children from ideological indoctrination masquerading as education, from pronoun ideology to “social-emotional learning.”

Jan Jekielek: Give me a sense of how this began. When did you realize something was amiss?

Alvin Lui: I was born and raised in California, and I moved my young family from California to Indiana in April 2020. The Midwest is wonderful, and we couldn’t have been happier.

But then, I saw the same seeds growing in schools that ruined California, and everybody reacted the way we did 20 years earlier in California. “Oh, it’s not that bad. It’ll never happen here.”

Mr. Jekielek: What exactly is being taught?

Mr. Lui: Instead of teaching children rigorous academics so that they can be independent, successful people, they’re teaching a certain brand of politics. It isn’t, “Here’s the left, here’s the right.” It’s, “Here’s the ‘woke’ ideology, and the other side is bad.”

When I saw these seeds being planted in Indiana, it was like watching the same movie again, except I knew the ending, and there was nowhere left to run. I live in Carmel, a nice city. Even there, the school board and schools already have the transgender ideology and critical race theory. At that moment, I realized that if I didn’t do something, then I can’t complain. But then I realized this is going to blanket the entire country. It’s not a red-state, blue-state thing. It’s an attack on children’s innocence and separates children from families. Some of my tools on the site explain that.

My great-grandfather ran from communism. The people that dragged him out of his little bakery shop and beat him weren’t soldiers. They were college kids—the Red Guard. That’s how my father got here, and my siblings and I were born here as well. And that’s what they’re creating now with these kids, this revolutionist thinking: to hate America and American values, and to drive a wedge into the family. You have to drive a wedge between the parents and children before you can get them to be revolutionists.

Mr. Jekielek: How is that wedge being driven?

Mr. Lui: In K–12 today, they’re using race and gender. It’s coming through a mental health program called social-emotional learning, which sounds great. They use terms all parents love, like empathy, personal responsibility, and responsible decision making, but they’re doing what we call language contamination. They’re weaponizing kindness, for example, and empathy. They’re not using them in the way we think of them.

We did a big exposé on school counselors and social workers, who are redefining safety and abuse. We’ve always believed that if a child is unsafe, they’re being neglected at home, beaten, or starved. Today, they’re not safe if parents don’t succumb to the transgender ideology—if you don’t use their pronouns, if you don’t let them have breast binders, if you don’t let them take puberty blockers. Then, the schools say: “The parents are unsafe. They’re causing the suicides. They’re neglectful and abusive, but we’re the safe space.”

With social-emotional learning, all these arrogant teachers, school board members, and counselors want to push their idea of what good parenting is onto everybody else.

Mr. Jekielek: We hear about social-emotional learning as a multifaceted tool to bring people into this way of thinking, but it’s just a survey. What’s wrong with a survey?

Mr. Lui: The survey is how they manufacture a self-fulfilling prophecy. But before we talk about the survey, let’s talk about why social-emotional learning is so deceptive. I mentioned empathy. Let’s take another example of social-emotional learning—responsible decision making.

Mr. Jekielek: Who would disagree with that?

Mr. Lui: Right. What parent doesn’t want their children to have responsible decision-making skills? But this is responsible decision making through the lens of a critical race theorist. It means that if you’re white, when you become voting age, you need to vote for things like reparations. That’s your responsible decision. You need to give up certain things because of white privilege.

And if you’re not white, you need to be taking down the systems that are oppressing you. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, you’re being oppressed. That’s your responsible decision making.

Mr. Jekielek: Why are school counselors so significant?

Mr. Lui: The American School Counselor Association is the largest organization that trains school counselors and social workers in K–12. They have chapters in all 50 states. They drive the mission and the training and the objectives for school counselors and social workers.

They had an annual conference in Austin last July, and we made sure we went. We picked up their videos, speeches, and handouts, because we knew that parents didn’t understand that counselors are complete ideologues today.

We decided to use their own words to expose who they are. We found so much. Some of it was online, some was in that conference. Since then, we created Behind Closed Doors. If anybody wants to see this, you can go to CourageIsAHabit.org, and under “School Counselors,” you’ll see our Behind Closed Doors exposé.

Mr. Jekielek: I want to go back to these surveys, because you describe the social-emotional learning process, of which the survey is a key feature. How is it brainwashing?

Mr. Lui: When parents push back against these radical policies, oftentimes, the answer is, “This is data driven. It’s evidence based.” They never tell you from where, but what they’re alluding to are these social-emotional learning surveys they give in class that the parents never see. This data is manipulated to justify more social-emotional learning and more radical policies.

These surveys often ask innocuous questions that most parents won’t find offensive. Here’s an actual social-emotional learning question: “What is your level of confidence that you can complete the work assigned to you in school?” Instead of using that to help the child do more work, they’ll use the answer, “There’s too much work.”

Or they’ll say, “Certain students of color cannot complete their work because the school isn’t inclusive enough.” So they use that answer to include more LGBT books, more Black Lives Matter flags, or GSA clubs. But of course, when you bring that stuff in, it destroys academics.

Mr. Jekielek: Several people who have appeared on this show were told by counselors, “If you don’t participate in social transitioning at the beginning for your child, there’s a high likelihood they’ll commit suicide.”

Mr. Lui: We teach parents how to fire back at that, to say something like: “So if I don’t call them by the right pronoun, they’ll kill themselves? Are you going to say that when they do the breast binders? If they don’t get puberty blockers and hormones, they’re going to kill themselves?”

One of the tools we put out is the Safety and Inclusion Express, which you can download on CourageIsAHabit.org. It takes parents through what we call the train stops. And changing the pronoun is the ticket. It’s the stamping of that ticket that gets the children on the train.

The Safety and Inclusion Express shows parents that the best chance of winning this fight is at the pronoun level. Once you allow them that pronoun ideology, the chances of them moving to the next level is higher, and at each step, it’s harder for the parents to pull them out.

What we don’t focus on enough is the addictiveness of social value. A lot of these kids, especially autistic kids, don’t feel socially accepted. So you get this group that says, “If you join us, you have instant social value.” You are heard. You are seen. You are celebrated. You get the enormous love bombs. “You’re so brave. You’re so stunning. You’re so beautiful.” That’s very addictive. And with each step they take, the cult rewards them.

There are two things every parent can do. First, get your children out of the data mining because that’s the bloodline to a lot of this. On our website, you can find an opt-out form. Some schools, depending on how extreme they are, might ignore you. But the point is, now you’ve got some leverage legally, because you’ve got them on record as ignoring it.

The second thing is to go to Behind Closed Doors, where there’s a form putting the school and the counselors on notice that they’re not to meet with your child formally or informally without your consent.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.