To the Editor:

Parents in Newtown and across America are questioning what is taught in the classroom. Recent valid news reporting of questionable teacher initiatives are only raising concerns about the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DEI] program in Newtown schools. Students and parents now realize that their children have had to submit to classroom experiments which had serious impact on their emotional and psychological well-being.

The current [DEI] program already implemented is another experiment that imposes an ideology on children’s minds and hearts. As an internationally recognized researcher in the field of cognitive development, I find this program very problematic.

Parents need to be concerned for the significant decline in student test scores.

Children are born with a curiosity to learn in order to stimulate their minds with their own visual designs. They cherish their freedom to create at home and in elementary education. As they enter the higher grades their enthusiasm wanes when they are obliged to accept established mindsets that Stanford professor Dr Carol Dweck criticized in her book, The Psychology of Growth Mindsets. This very interesting publication should be a must read for every parent.

Considering all the additional requirements that children have had to follow as a result of the pandemic, recent neurological research shows that students have suffered emotional and cognitive decline. Their mental decline was never considered, nor the loss of enthusiasm they initially had as young students.

Students’ cognitive development declined as a result of virtual learning and their inability to facially interact with fellow students while wearing masks in and out of the classroom.

Now students will be subjected to this new program of diversity and inclusion organized to impose a curriculum that is organized not to raise their cognitive functioning but to indoctrinate them with ideas that will question their identity and values that their parents believed important in their socialization. Children should not be exposed to further psychological experimentation.

Their parents should ignore what they are being told about the benefits of this indoctrination. What students really need is successful curriculum and instruction that develops mental processing skills to think critically and creatively. You cannot succeed in a new creative paradigm unless you have achieved these survival skills.

Dr Rudy Magnan

Sandy Hook