Chinese Communist-funded program on Tulsa school board agenda

The Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, at a special meeting tomorrow, Thursday, July 14, 2022, at 1 p.m., will consider accepting a grant from a non-profit funded and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party for a Chinese language learning program at Booker T. Washington High School.

Here is the item on the Tulsa school board agenda for July 14, 2022:

C.4. RECOMMENDATION:

Enter into an agreement with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices through the International Leadership of Texas, a 501(c)(3) organization, an international partnership dedicated to building the field of Chinese language teachers and learning in American schools for the 2022-2023 school year.

FURTHER RECOMMEND:

The attorneys for the school district prepare/approve the appropriate contract document(s) and the proper officers of the Board of Education be authorized to execute the document(s) on behalf of the district.

COST: No cost to the district. The Chinese International Education Foundation will provide funding for operating expenses.

FUND NAME/ACCOUNT:

Confucius Classroom
81-2273-1000-000000-000-07-735

RATIONALE:

This will be Booker T. Washington's ninth year to participate in a Confucius Classroom program. International Leadership of Texas, in partnership with Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices offers a quality program which will allow our students to continue the study of the Chinese language and culture. This item aligns with our high school experience strategy as outlined in Pathways to Opportunity.

This was one of 29 items on the "consent agenda" on the regular Monday, July 11, 2022, school board meeting agenda. The consent agenda is meant to be a list of non-controversial items that are approved en masse and without debate but only if there is unanimous consent from the board. Any items that don't enjoy unanimous support should be removed from the consent agenda for consideration under regular order with public comment and debate.

You may have heard of the Confucius Institute, which established centers for study of Chinese language and culture, funded by the Chinese Communist Party, on dozens of American college campuses, including the University of Oklahoma. Confucius Classroom is the K-12 arm of the same initiative: To plant Chinese Communist agents in schools across America to propagandize on behalf of the butchers of Beijing and shape the rising generation's perspective of the totalitarians that crush political dissent in Tienanmen Square and Hong Kong, enslave Uyghur Muslims, persecute Christians and other religions, and unleashed a deadly virus that shut down the world's economy. A bipartisan chorus of critics said that these "free" programs encouraged recipient schools to refrain from addressing Communist China's human rights abuses and discouraged them from welcoming Chinese dissidents to speak on campus. From a May 2021 column by Lee Edwards:

Meanwhile Confucius Institutes, financed by the Chinese government and supervised by the Chinese Communist Party, are molding attitudes about China, painting an idyllic portrait in which Mao Zedong is a revolutionary hero and the Tiananmen Square massacre never happened. That the Confucius Institutes are instruments of propaganda was confirmed by Li Changchun, the head of propaganda for the CCP, who boasted that the Institutes were "an important part of China's overseas propaganda setup."...

China's dissemination of what amounts to communist propaganda on American campuses has attracted the attention of U.S. senators and congressmen across the political spectrum. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) referred to China's "tentacles of influence," such as the Confucius Institutes, the setting up of CCP cells in U.S. businesses, and espionage targeted at high-tech research. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) expressed concern about the Chinese government's aggressive attempts to use Confucius Institutes to influence critical analysis of "China's past history and present policies."

A bipartisan group of Senators ranging from Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Ted Cruz (R-TX) called out "those that seek to suppress information and undermine democratic institutions and internationally accepted human rights." Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE) asserted that absent full transparency of operations in the U.S. and full reciprocity for U.S. college in China, "Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States."

U.S. intelligence agencies joined the chorus of concern, led by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who revealed that the Bureau was monitoring the activities of the institutes closely. As of this April, there were 47 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., down from a high of just over 100, led by Columbia, Stanford, UCLA, Rutgers, and George Washington University. There were also Confucius Classrooms in seven K-12 school districts. Many of the CI closures occurred in 2018 when Congress passed legislation forbidding schools with Confucius Institutes from receiving language funding from the Defense Department. Almost immediately, 22 schools closed their Confucius Institutes.

The University of Chicago shut down its institute after 100 professors signed a petition citing the "dubious practice of allowing an external institution to staff academic courses within the University." A University of Chicago professor called the Confucius Institutes "academic malware" injected into the university system. In response, Hanban attempted American-style rebranding, changing its name from Hanban to the Ministry of Education Center for Language Exchange and Cooperation. It created a separate organization--the Chinese International Education Foundation--which will fund and oversee Confucius Institutes.

But the raison d'etre remained the same--to present a carefully sanitized story of a powerful aggressive China. The 90 million members of the CCP are dedicated practitioners of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Xi thought as set forth in a recent document of the CCP's Central Committee. It warns officials across the country, including those who manage the Confucius Institutes, to be fully alert to the threat of certain Western ideas, known as the "Seven Don't Speaks": universal ideas; freedom of speech; civil society; civil rights; historical errors of the CCP; official bourgeoise universal ideas; and judicial independence.

As of June 2022, only 18 Confucius Institutes remain on American college campuses, but others have reopened under new names. According to a June 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the University of Oklahoma closed their Confucius Institute in October 2020, but "Maintained relationship with Beijing Normal University, having in 2006 signed agreement with BNU that established not only the CI, but also a number of other partnerships that survive the CI. The university also continues to publish Chinese Literature Today, a journal that originated in a 2016 agreement the university signed with Hanban and Beijing Normal University."

Confucius Classroom programs are not as high-profile as their higher-ed counterparts. According to the CIEF website, "As of the end of 2019, there were 550 Confucius Institutes and 1,172 Confucius Classrooms in 162 countries and regions." 560 Confucius Classrooms were in North America. A press release reported the May 2022 opening of the first Confucius Classroom in Dominica, a small Caribbean island nation.

OCPA's Ray Carter interviewed NAS senior research fellow Rachelle Peterson about the new report on Chinese Communist influence in American education and asked about Confucius Classrooms in Oklahoma:

The University of Oklahoma had a Confucius Institute on campus starting in 2006. In addition to its work at the university level, the OU Confucius Institute provided "teaching materials, funding to support teaching staff, and tools for Chinese language and culture programs" in K-12 schools around the state, including in the Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Edmond, Norman, Putnam City, Enid, Jenks, Bixby, Union, Owasso, Muskogee, Fort Gibson, Crescent, Lawton, and Comanche school districts.

Many K-12 schools still have Confucius Classrooms--effectively K-12 versions of Confucius Institutes--embedded in those districts, but Peterson said it is not known how many K-12 schools are doing so.

"Nobody has a list of Confucius Classrooms in the country," Peterson said. "We don't know how many there are or where they are."

Mentioned in the agenda item, International Leadership of Texas (ILTexas) is a network of 22 charter schools located in and around Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and College Station. ILTexas Facebook pages touted the 2021 "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition sponsored by the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office (CCCO); the event poster encourages students to use the Chinese Communist surveillance app WeChat to contact Confucius Classroom director Helen He.

A February 2022 news release about a Lunar New Year celebration describes the connection between ILTexas and CCCO:

ILTexas rang in the Lunar New Year with a big virtual celebration on Saturday, February 12, as part of their partnership with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office (CCCO), an organization that helps promote Chinese culture and language in K-12 education. The event featured performances from 19 Dallas-Fort Worth area schools including nine from ILTexas.

According to Helen He, director of the Confucius Classroom at ILTexas Global, the CCCO, "serves to provide resources to Confucius Classrooms for Chinese language teaching, offer professional development opportunities to Chinese teachers, organize cultural events and competitions, and more." The organization supports 17 Confucius Classrooms in the DFW area, six of which are in ILTexas.

On May 31, 2022, the Chinese Communist ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, visited ILTexas Garland High School. In his speech, Gang said, "Language learning is critical and fundamental to the mutual understanding and the trust between our two countries. We will do our best to support Chinese language education in America." Gang presented a certificate recognizing ILTexas founder Eddie Conger for his "great contribution and accomplishment to the Chinese learning and teaching in Texas." The event received enthusiastic coverage in Communist Chinese-controlled media outlets, including Xinhua news agency and China Daily's YouTube channel.

According to the TPS agenda item, Confucius Classroom has been in Tulsa Public Schools for the last eight years. The rubber-stamp board members apparently thought it was uncontroversial to allow a program in our schools funded by a hostile Communist government, uncontroversial enough to include on a "consent agenda." Now that there are three board members (Jennettie Marshall, E'lena Ashley, Jerry Griffin) who are not rubber stamps for the superintendent and the foundations, they have objected to the placement of controversial items on the consent agenda. Rubber-stampers John Croisant and Susan Lamkin moved and seconded approval of the July 11 consent agenda, but in the absence of fellow rubber-stamp Judith Barba-Perez, they did not have the majority needed for approval. You can watch the discussion of the consent agenda, which begins about 15 minutes into the July 11, 2022, Tulsa school board meeting video. The vote happens at about 1 hr, 3 minutes, into the video. Croisant, Lamkin, and chairman Stacey Woolley voted yes on all items; Marshall and Ashley voted no on all. Griffin voted for a subset of the items; those he supported passed by a 4-2 vote, those he opposed fell short by a 3-3 vote.

Communist propaganda poster from the Flickr account of James Vaughan; used under Creative Commons license

UPDATE: Newly elected conservative school board member E'Lena Ashley raised concern about the source of the money, Gist gave a non-answer, and the final vote was 6-1 to accept Red China's blood money, with only E'Lena Ashley voting against. You can watch the full July 14, 2022, Tulsa school board meeting here.

MORE: In March 2021, Dan Currell and Mick Zais, who both served in the U. S. Department of Education in the Trump Administration, wrote a column for Newsweek addressing the problems with Confucius Classrooms:

China's authoritarian government works hard to dampen any criticism of the CCP, and reaching children with colorful, positive messages about China is a well-worn propaganda tactic. Preventing criticism and promoting praise for China is especially important to the CCP right now in light of its violent, anti-democratic actions in Hong Kong, intensified ethnic repression in Tibet, militarization of the South China Sea and actions in Xinjiang that the Canadian Parliament recently voted unanimously to declare a genocide....

First and most obviously, the programs lack reciprocity. The CCP does not allow other countries, and certainly not free democracies, to establish anything like Confucius Classrooms in China. The asymmetry is telling: the CCP jealously guards the thoughts of Chinese children. As it turns out, they care what American kids think, too.

A primary goal of the Confucius Classrooms program is to normalize the CCP. It does this by creating positive feelings about China and then equating China with the CCP. It's an effective tactic. China is an amazing place, so encouraging children's positive feelings about it is pretty easy to do, and never distinguishing between party and country is a core dogma for the CCP. Those positive feelings should rub off on the party--at least enough to dampen the worst criticisms.

But there are still many critics of China. Confucius Classrooms are intended to silence or, at least, distract from them. Teachers are trained to steer classroom discussions away from an ever-expanding list of issues: Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the South China Sea and more. The problem isn't what is being said in Confucius lessons; the problem is what is not being said. Especially in U.S. high schools, this silence accomplishes important "thought work" for the CCP.

Beijing's most effective critics are Chinese dissidents, many of whom have settled in other countries to get away from the CCP. When the party plants its flag in a U.S. school, most Americans likely see it as an exotic international artifact. To a Chinese dissident, however, it is a message: do not criticize the party. Recent protests at Tufts University--which,
to its credit, closed its Confucius Institute last week--express exactly this concern.

The authors encourage Chinese language and culture programs, but independent of the CCP. Thanks to Neil Mavis for alerting me to this article.