My name is Lynda Gruen. I am a former resident of Loudoun County, Virginia, and I also briefly worked as a teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools.

I’d like to start by noting that I could not find a direct link to the proposed document. Now, why is that? That's not fair to those of us who want to read the document, but are not that familiar with your website. Luckily, a friend of mine helped me find a draft version, I guess; but you guys really need to work on document accessibility here. Why isn't this information readily-available in state and local news media? I mean, it's not like you guys are trying to hide something from the general public, are you? So, this is information that should be sent to every parent and teacher of school-aged kids in the commonwealth, so that they can support or oppose or comment, as they see fit

So, first things first: all these proposed standards will be evaluated through the ideology of equity, as disclosed in the document my friend sent me from Town Hall (p. 5): https://townhall.virginia.gov/L/GetFile.cfm?File=C:%5CTownHall%5Cdocroot%5CGuidanceDocs_Proposed%5C201%5CGDoc_DOE_4780_20210329.pdf .

Well, equity as an ideology promotes discrimination against white Conservatives and potentially subjects them to socio-psychological abuse. Implement this divisive garbage, and Virginia public schools will likely become guilty of both.

I’m limited to 3,000 words per comment and commented once already on the standards in general, but let me tackle the first standard and equity here:

SELF-AWARENESS

• SeA1: Recognize and understand the interaction between one’s own thoughts and emotions. (Critical Thinking)

Being actively trained to “recognize and understand the interaction between one’s own thoughts and emotions” is a thought process in which one reflects on one’s thoughts and related emotions. Well, human thought and emotions are partly universal and partly culturally-defined. It is the latter part that leaves me concerned.

In the past, this practice of reflection has been used in religious communities and in social justice circles, but it has also certainly been abused, even frequently among adults. In fact, it is a practice that can be found in cults.

Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Lifton, author of Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China” (1961), observed reflection being used abusively by the Chinese Communist Party as a part of their efforts to force people to comply with their accepted beliefs and behaviors. Dr. Lifton noted that there were eight characteristics of the authorities’ efforts to force people to change their thoughts and behaviors. Today, we refer to that collection of eight characteristics as the characteristics – or, criteria – for "thought reform", the term Dr. Lifton chose for brainwashing.

Thought reform is socio-psychological abuse. Dr Lifton’s eight criteria are as follows (per chapter 22 of his work, I believe):

• Milieu Control: Control of the environment, communication, relationships and ultimately one’s mind.
• Mystical manipulation: Strong emphasis on the group’s moral superiority over others. Everything the group does is connected to the group’s purpose.
• Cult of confession: Group members must constantly evaluate their thoughts, emotions, actions, and confess known moral failings. It’s not about objective evaluations. It’s about wearing people down over time through nit-picky criticism.
• Demand for purity: Group members have an unreachable ideal that they work constantly to attain. Group members who come closer to reaching the ideal are rewarded; those who don’t fare as well are judged as morally-inferior, subjected to discrimination and / or abuse, and are taught that they earned their mistreatment by not measuring up to the group’s ideal, even though ultimately, no one can measure up to it.
• Sacred science: The group’s beliefs are treated as perfect - non-negotiable.
• Loaded language: The group uses its own terms and definitions to control people’s thoughts. In essence, these would be divisive, politically-charged or controversial terms, being used to try to control the perspective being presented.
• Doctrine over person: The group’s values are more important than an individual’s perspective or personal experience.
• Dispensation of existence: In essence, shunning, or being canceled.

Now, if you consider each of these factors, every one of them ties into equity ideology:

Milieu control: Equity-minded individuals seek to control the social environment, the access to and means of communication, social relationships, and eventually, people’s thoughts.

Mystical manipulation: Equity-minded individuals view equity as a moral imperative, to the point of viewing those who disagree with them as immoral or morally-deficient.

Cult of confession: Equity-minded folks – particularly white anti-racists – devote themselves to constant reflection and re-evaluation of their beliefs and actions. Are they doing enough to promote equity and anti-racism? Their job is never done, and that gets tiring. They've also turned "calling out" people into a sport - one in which the object is to accuse and condemn people publicly, sometimes themselves.

Demand for purity: No one can ever become 100% anti-racist, yet that is the lofty ideal held up, to which group members aspire. Those who do good enough are praised, and those who don’t make the cut, end up vilified, subjected to intimidation, canceled and so on. The folks targeted tend to be whites in general, consistent with the anti-white racist mentality characteristic of proponents of anti-racism and equity. The folks most vilified are white Conservatives, who are basically viewed as a lost cause, or toward whom it is morally-justified to apply intimidation tactics, in the hopes of forcing white Conservatives to change their thinking against their will. It is nothing short of socially-acceptable - and often, state-sanctioned - racism.

Sacred science: This is definitely true of the equity crowd. They don’t believe in diversity of thought and actively work to suppress alternative viewpoints, particularly when such viewpoints challenge the concept of equity.

Loaded language: In the equity crowd, the term “equity” would be an example of a loaded term. “Lived experience” would be another, along with “intersectionality”, “anti-racism”, “systemic racism”, “white fragility”, “gender”, “oppression”, "racist" and similar terms. These terms are used to establish a social pecking order. In other words, the terms are used to keep people in their places. Anyone who challenges their classification - other than redefining self, with regards to sexuality - generally ends up committing a serious infraction.

Doctrine over person: Equity-minded folks will ultimately favor their doctrine over any personal experience of yours that might conflict with their core value of equity.

Dispensation of existence: It’s called Cancel Culture: challenge their ideology, and they condemn or shun you, as if you don't exist.

So, there you have it: the equity crowd would seem to promote thought reform. This does not encourage academic freedom or critical thought; rather, it suppresses both. So we should NOT be framing these standards in light of equity.

Now, for those of you who don’t agree with my assessment of thought reform in the ideology of equity, I’ll use the example of Steven Hassan’s BITE Model. Mr. Hassan is a former Moonie and the author of “Combating Cult Mind Control”. For a little while, he was also a licensed mental health professional. Mr. Hassan’s BITE Model is as follows: behavior control, information control, thought control and emotion control. So, let’s look at equity, and then I’ll circle back to the self-reflection standard, SeA1:

Behavior control: Equity-minded folks do what they can to control the behavior of people who disagree with them. They do this by promoting the ideology of equity in public schools, in the workplace, now even in society more generally. More extreme members resort to online shaming, shunning, rioting and mob intimidation.

Information control: Equity-minded folks are all over social media. They actively report Conservative content; create Leftist content; some of them cyberbully, dox or might even stalk Conservatives or others who detract from their ideology; and they are supportive of biased, Left-leaning alleged “fact checkers”.

Thought control: Equity-minded folks jump at the opportunity to force those who disagree with them into equity programs, where their academic or job performance will be evaluated, depending on how well they change their thoughts to align with the group’s equity goals.

Emotion control: Equity-minded folks support manipulating the emotions of white people to further their cause. They have so little regard for the social and emotional needs of white people that they even use the term “white fragility” to dehumanize white people in the name of furthering their cause.

So, it would seem to me that the BITE Model kinda also points toward a cultish mentality among adherents of the ideology of equity.

Now, the SEL standards are supposed to be about "social emotional learning", correct? Well, why, then, are we basing them on equity? Because as I point out above, adherents to the ideology of equity do not demonstrate sound mental health or even healthy behaviors. So, instead of providing our students with good examples of socialization and mental health, we are deliberately holding up an unhealthy model.

Y'know, I used to be a public school teacher in Virginia. Sometimes the students can do a better job teaching us teachers, than we teachers can do teaching them. I would say that this appears to be one such example.

Whose bright idea was it to base these standards off a socially and mentally unhealthy example? Am I the only one out there who finds that counter-productive?

But getting back to standard SeA1 – personal reflection on thoughts and emotions: given that all of these standards will be evaluated based on the ideology of equity and that adherents of equity seem to support thought reform or cultism, I find it completely inappropriate for this standard to exist at any grade level, except that there be – at the very least- an opt-out option. I would be very worried that students would end up at high risk of having their privacy rights violated – and frankly, at high rate of discrimination if they don’t agree with the school.

These SEL standards.... WHY is there ABSOLUTELY NO EMPHASIS ON BOUNDARIES? ARE WE TRYING TO TURN OUR KIDS INTO ENTITLED SOCIOPATHS?! BECAUSE WE'VE DONE A PRETTY GOOD JOB AT THAT WITH OUR ADULT POPULATION ALREADY.

Man, I don't understand why you people want to make such a mess of Virginia public schools. That's such a shame for the students.