On January 29, 2025, President Trump and the White House proposed an executive order called “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” which entails American schools need to start promoting and teaching a “patriotic” education– essentially erasing any history or general information about America that showcases the country in a negative light. 

Many points include transgender rights in school, what parents are allowed to know about what their kids are learning, and what students should be taught in school.

One of the main concerns Trump has addressed by the executive order is the idea of LGBTQ+ individuals  in schools. He states that many students are being coerced or encouraged by their teachers to change their genders or be gay without parental consent. He specifically has concerns regarding transgender students, saying that students are being allowed to change their genders or hide the fact that they are a different gender from their parents.

Teachers, in most cases, do keep the personal identification of students secret from parents so that they don’t expose potential danger to students. However, Trump took this to another level. He believes that students are doing gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent, which isn’t even legal or ethical.

Trump continues with this narrative as he states that parents have witnessed “schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” meaning that he doesn’t want schools to teach anything that illuminates America in a bad light. That includes topics such as slavery, colonization, or anything else that could possibly make a student think that America is a bad country. Additionally, he wants parents to oversee and approve anything that a child is doing at school. 

His administration states, “Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates long standing anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority,”.  He asserts that students (specifically white American students) should not come out of class feeling guilty about anything that America has done in the past or that white people should not be taught that they are inherently racist.  

While a somewhat valid point, no one is going to feel guilty about something that they learned in class, most people just recognize it as a dent in America’s history. Everyone is inherently racist based on human DNA and the origins of survival, but no one is teaching that only white people are racist. 

What Trump is trying to implement into schools will cause a downfall in the education level and decrease the impact school has on children. People will lack crucial information that helps them grow and see new perspectives, as history is one of the most important subjects that a student can learn. This order aligns with Project 2025 in that it promotes the idea of extracting certain books that have topics in them such as sexuality, gender, racism, etc. 

According to Mississippi Free Press, “Research has shown that most book bans seek to eliminate books focused on oppression and important historical contexts, such as slavery, racism or white supremacy. Other banned books touch on issues of race, sexuality and gender.” Along with that, social studies classes like Government and US History will have their entire curriculum changed. As for Sociology, the class will most likely be terminated. 

It is important that students understand America’s history- as oppression and discrimination are prevalent- or else America is doomed to repeat these acts of injustice.  America is a melting pot of many different people. Given that we live among all these different backgrounds, we should know about them. Having books regarding these topics and background adds to American history rather than the “anti-American” ideology that Trump believes is being implemented. 

To conclude, what Trump is trying to implement shows just how much he cares about the American people and education in general. He would rather conceal all this information from children than admit that America has its faults, just like any other country. Likewise, it proves that he doesn’t care for the different kinds of people that our country holds and how they have a role in America’s culture and history.