Issue: Parenting

This op-ed was written by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a mother in Fairfax County, an author, and a member of Independent Women’s Network. Originally appeared in The Daily Signal.

America’s public high schools are strange places to find displays of the alphabet. Perhaps with plummeting standardized test scores and a substantial increase in English-as-a-second-language students in sanctuary districts, high school educators feel the need to review kindergarten basics. In Fairfax County, Virginia’s West Springfield High School, located just 17 miles from the White House, school administrators and teachers have decorated the history hallway this month with a special, leftist rendition of the alphabet.

The display, titled “The ABCs to ME,” is decorated with the school’s colors: a blue background lined with an orange border. Featured in the display is a sign that reads, “A is for Abortion” with an image of a coat hanger with a positive pregnancy test.

A description of the display says that it is being posted for Women’s History Month, which is March, and that “the Women’s History class in celebrating and bringing awareness to what it means to be a young woman today at West Springfield High School and in the world.”

“This is horrible even by Fairfax County Public Schools’ standards,” said a mother with a child who attends the school.

If the alphabet display ended with “A,” it would still be awful. Not surprisingly though, the activist public educators involved in decorating the taxpayer-funded school’s hallway with propaganda didn’t stop there.

Walking through the hallway, students are alerted that “H is for Hope” and, somehow, Kamala Harris is the image representing “hope” on the sign. This one is particularly confusing. I’m not sure that she ever truly represented hope for anyone, even Democrats.

The alphabet display further informs that “J is for Justice.” The accompanying image is of the Statue of Liberty holding a female sign in place of a torch, with her other fist in the air. Lady Liberty is surrounded by the Palestinian flag, Ukrainian flag, and transgender flag.

Who could argue with “L is for Leadership”? That is, until you see its associated image featuring Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Michelle Obama.

In honor of Women’s History Month, the high school’s teachers and staff seem to try their best to alienate male students. To that end, “M is for Mansplain,” a derogatory term to indicate when men try to explain things to women.

“N is for NOW,” the National Organization for Women, which is such a silly name for an organization that supports males in women’s sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms.

“Q is for Queer.” The “Queer” in LGBTQ seems to be an umbrella letter to boost numbers and make more people feel as though their identity is special when they don’t think they fit under the L, G, B, or T categories. I guess in the leftist alphabet display, you can’t really make it through without throwing plenty of pork to the alphabet people.

To that end, West Springfield’s students cannot escape the notoriously liberal history corridor without noting that “T is for Trans Women.” The sign displays a transgender flag heart inside the circle of the symbol for a female.

School district policy continues to compel speech by mandating preferred pronouns in the code of conduct, despite such mandates being under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Fairfax County’s leaders, along with many others across the country, seem to believe their local jurisdictions are not subject to state and national laws or the Constitution.

And to cap it all off, “Z is for male gaZe,” just proving to us once again, in case the poor test scores are not enough, that leftist education is more about indoctrination.

There is simply no defense for this display, which would be expected in the Democratic Party’s National Headquarters but not in a taxpayer-funded public school. It is highly inappropriate, ideologically homogenous, and sadly, representative of our K-12 public education system. This display clearly encapsulates the pervasive rot in the public education system and the pressing need for school choice in America.