Trump signs an executive order to end “radical indoctrination”
On Wednesday 29 January 2025, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on school funding to fulfill what he had promised during his campaign.
The first one goes over school choice and makes it easier for families to spend taxpayer funds on private education. The second order provides for stopping what the White House calls “radical indoctrination” in the K-12 schooling and ending the funding of the schools that don’t respect the order.
His executive order titled “Ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” is divided into six sections that explain purpose and the policy, define terms and provide the strategy sought by the government.
President Trump explains in the order that “parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies” and that “innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics”. He also adds that “young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed”.
During the first week of his presidency, Trump has issued different executive orders attacking the DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion—programs. Since his first presidency in 2016, Trump and his allies have been saying that the DEI programs unfairly discriminates against other Americans, including white people and men, and weakens the importance of merit in job hiring or promotion.
Furthermore, Donald Trump says in the executive order that “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation—referring to gender “transition”—without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal Laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA)”.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that affords parents until the student is 18 years old the right to have access to their children’s educational records, the right to seek to have the records amended, and the right to have some control over personal information from the education records.
The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) is a federal law that provides certain rights for parents of students regarding, among other things, student participation in surveys; the inspection of instructional material; certain physical exams; and the collection or use of personal information.
In the definition of the order, Trump talks about “discriminatory equity ideology” that he defines as an ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations. What he means by that is that people should not treat individuals according to the stereotypes of the group they are in. To clarify his term “immoral generalizations”, he adds some examples that refer to “discriminatory equity ideology” including that saying a race or a sex is inherently superior to another or that individuals by virtue of their race or sex are inherently racist or sexist. In other words, saying that all white people are racist or that black people are inferior to white people is discrimination.
To support his wish to end “indoctrination”, he provides his strategies that will be applied within 90 days of the date of the order. His plan consists of eliminating Federal fundings or support for illegal and discriminatory treatement and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.
Further in the order, the President addresses his wish to reestablish the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and promote patriotic education. The purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commision declares is to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union”. Moreover, the section includes that within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education will establish the 1776 Commission in the Department of Education.
In summary, once this order will go into effect, the K-12 schools that promote “indoctrination” based on gender ideology and “discriminatory equity ideology” will see their Federal fundings stopped. A 1776 Commission will also be added to the Department of Education which will promote a patriotic education in the schools and in public places, and will recognize student knowledge of the American founding, including the Founders, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional Convention, and the soldiers and battles of the American Revolutionary War.
While this order has been receiving criticism and also support over the past few days, a question remains in everyone’s mind : could this order bring something good in the education of our children? Will this order help schools focus more on teaching the fundamental knowledge to the students? Or is this order an attack on freedom of speech considering that Trump will not prohibit talking about gender theories or critical race theories but will just not give money to the schools that do it?