The Mind Polluters-Film of Falsehoods??
It depends on who you ask. Be your own judge.
by Bob Sullivan
You may have read an alarming article in your local newspaper a few weeks ago. In my local paper the headline on page 8 was: “New film making rounds is filled with falsehoods, experts say”. It was authored by Carson Vaughan. The piece portrayed a film titled The Mind Polluters as anti-teacher, anti-education, and baseless in its accusations. I am writing this piece to clarify the claims in the Vaughan piece.
After reading Mr. Vaughan’s piece, I watched the film. I found that the film was not the propaganda it was purported to be. In fact, it was the newspaper article which concerned me because it was little more than an opinion piece, which was then picked up by numerous papers around the state. It is one thing to have an opinion and a message, and to voice it to friends or to produce your own social media post, blog, or film, but it is another thing altogether when numerous newspapers and media outlets take an opinion and post it as though it is news. The public should expect a news item to be accurately sourced and/or present a variety of opinions. When the biased opinions passed off as news stories contain incomplete information or misinformation, it becomes either a sloppy waste of time or propaganda. In this case, news outlets in Nebraska have failed in their duty to not waste the reader’s time.
However, since Mr. Vaughan’s opinion was published as news, it is important to consider the three questions it begs:
1. What is the film?
2. Who are the experts?
3. What are the falsehoods?
The film, as I already mentioned, is The Mind Polluters. It is about an apparent effort to sexualize children as young as four years old.
The experts cited by Vaughan are a retired teacher who is also the mother of one of ACLU of Nebraska’s former Executive Directors, some insiders in Nebraska’s public education hierarchy, and a college professor who teaches a class on gender. This is most definitely a group who are pre-disposed to have a negative opinion.
Vaughan claims that the main falsehood is that some public-school systems and teachers are intentionally grooming their students for sexual activity. That is an oversimplification of the message of The Mind Polluters.
I watched Mind Polluters with an eye toward the criticisms that Vaughan enumerated in his article. I found that the film draws on examples and facts from all over the country which do not claim to describe the consistent mission and vision of Nebraska’s public schools. The whole point of the documentary is to emphasize the evidence that there are people who want to sexualize children, and that these people are working very hard to introduce flawed ideas, curriculum, programs, and pedagogy into our K-12 schools. While the people behind the documentary believe these things have been creeping into public education for a very long time, we are just beginning to see the bitter fruits of this creep. The point of The Mind Polluters is, if parents and educators recognize this now, it should be much easier to keep it from taking root everywhere, especially in Nebraska, where we have not seen much of this creep until recently.
Mr. Vaughan’s opinion piece urges you to believe that there is nothing to be concerned about and that all is well. “Nothing to see here folks”.
Although Nebraska’s teachers and school districts are not grooming students for sexual exploitation, all is not well here in The Good Life state. For instance:
1. The Lincoln Public Schools tried to introduce radical curriculum and pedagogy without consulting any parents (the purple penguin incident of 2014/2015).
2. The Omaha Public Schools adopted a very disturbing comprehensive sexual education curriculum a few years later in the face of significant resistance by parents.
3. The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) tried very hard to adopt terribly immoral Health Education Standards in the spring of 2021.
More localized incidents also cause concern, such as when a teacher banned all religious connections to Christmas at an Elkhorn, Nebraska elementary school incident several years ago, or in recent cases where teachers have encouraged students to choose their own pronouns.
In the spring of 2021, parents and grandparents across the state had finally seen enough, and that point they began to speak up. Many people saw for the first time, that the Nebraska Department of Education was laying the groundwork for ideas, curriculum, programs, and pedagogy, which could be used to sexualize Nebraska’s K-12 children statewide.
I doubt any Nebraska teachers want to sexualize children. Teachers are not the villains, nor are Nebraska's school administrators or boards. This film does not suggest that they are. I believe that Nebraska’s teachers still agree that 7th graders do not need to learn about anal sex in our public-school classrooms. This was one of the proposed Health Education Standard guidelines in the 1st draft of the NDE’s 2021 effort. There were troubling health standards all the way down to kindergarten classes.
It is apparent that Mr. Vaughan is unaware that this even alarmed people such as this young teacher who helped draft the proposed Health Education Standards, and later wrote to the NDE stating:
“This is (Name Redacted) and I was part of the writing team for the Health standards. This email is in regards to the first draft of health standards that was released and I just have a couple of things that have been on my mind since.
First, I don’t know that I can support the human growth and development standards. I don’t recall ever talking about these in any of our meetings or getting a clear look at what was going to be involved. I know I worked a lot with the high school level and that may have been why, but I don’t agree that these are age-appropriate, especially knowing that I have kids of my own those ages.
Second, I am having a hard time with my name sitting behind these. I am proud of the work that everyone did within our group and I specifically know that I was part of the Injury Prevention and Safety group and I don’t want to lose those, but this has made me ill since being released. I have had concerned community members contact me and the school about these. I know that it says on the document that some individuals took PART in the writing standards, but a lot of people don't know what that means and they think we were all in agreement on everything. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and look forward to hearing from you.”
Mr. Vaughan may also be unaware that the NDE received a large number of emails from other concerned public-school teachers and school principals in addition to other professionals such as doctors, counselors, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and retired teachers as well as parents and grandparents. The overwhelming majority of comments received by the NDE urged them to stop all efforts to adopt the sexualized Health Education Standards in 2021.
These facts reinforce the claims of Mind Polluters, not the claims of Mr. Vaughan.
I have blogged about the Vaughan article elsewhere, so I’ll close with my main point for this piece, and that is my disgust over the fact that multiple newspapers have published an opinion piece which was inaccurate, and which failed to fully investigate the claims of the documentary it disparaged. In other words, the piece was either very sloppy, or it was propaganda (or both).
I encourage you to avoid assuming that Mr. Vaughan’s opinion is based in fact and sound research . I also encourage you to watch The Mind Polluters and think through and research all of this yourself. Mr. Vaughan’s article encourages you to assume all is well in our educational system, whereas The Mind Polluters encourages us to be vigilant and to reject the lies when someone attempts to make them part of the curriculum for our children. We also need to reject poorly researched opinions we find in the media.
Nebraska’s education system has many good qualities, but it isn’t as good as it can be and it is vulnerable to the efforts and ideas of those who want to corrupt it. Anything and anyone who urges you to think that “all is well” is not being forthright.
Bob Sullivan practices law in Wahoo, Nebraska, and is a board member on the Wahoo Public School Board.