Katherine Kersten warns us that, as governor, Tim Walz is bringing to Minnesota a K-12 ethnic-studies requirement infused with critical race theory (“Tim Walz Brings ‘Liberated’ Ethnic Studies to Minnesota,” op-ed Aug. 22). One of the available curricula, California’s “liberated” ethnic studies, likewise promises to critique “cisheteropatriarchy” and “anti-Indigeneity.” This curriculum endeavors to turn students into members of the social-justice “resistance.” Some school districts have used this approach also to deliver one-sided lessons on Israel and the Palestinians.

In California’s Hayward and Pajaro Valley, for example, school boards and community groups have pushed back against the “liberated” curriculum. A nonprofit has sued the Berkeley Unified, Mountain View-Los Altos Union, and Hayward Unified School District to obtain background materials on its proposed ethnic-studies course. In Palo Alto, parents have gathered 1,400 signatures. They are concerned that too much of the “liberated” curriculum will be adopted and have requested a pause. Their story made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Because the “liberated” curriculum is so far to the left, some parents want to use instead the curriculum approved by the state board of education. Yet this official curriculum also follows critical race theory. It wants students to adopt and use the woke concept of “intersectionality.” It attacks the ideal of equal opportunity and hard work as an oppressive “dominant narrative.” It specifically attacks Asians-Americans’ work ethic and stress on education.

Neither of these curricula should be used in public school classrooms. Both are unbalanced and hopelessly full of indoctrination.