Empower Wisconsin  | April 25, 2022

MADISON — In The Shawshank Redemption, one of the greatest movies of…ever, wrongfully convicted prisoner Andy Dufresne begs the warden to investigate the claims of a fellow inmate who can prove Andy’s innocence  — that he did not murder his wife. When the warden refuses (because he wants to cover up his own illegal schemes) Andy asks him, “How could you be so obtuse?” 

The warden doesn’t care for the question. He gives Andy 60 days in the hole.

The warden isn’t obtuse. He’s corrupt.

Jill Underly, Wisconsin’s superintendent of Public Instruction, may be corrupt but she’s definitely obtuse.

In a defense of the racism that is critical race theory (CRT), Underly expectedly serves as apologist for the radical left. She begins her op-ed with a lie. She insists that CRT is “an academic lens used in higher education to examine history and law; as such, is not a subject being taught in K-12 schools.” Educators teaching CRT and its offshoots, the people paid with tax dollars to train them, and educrats have all openly admitted that they are pushing the injurious theories on students of all ages.

In another op-ed, Underly lashes out against the politicians, the parents, school board members, educators and children who don’t agree with her woke agenda. She self-righteously accuses them of attacking Wisconsin’s youth.

“When the adults in charge – those who make policy, or run for office, or serve on boards – speak negatively and encourage harassment of students with disabilities, or of students because of their gender, immigration status, race, sexuality or gender identity, it makes life harder for students. These are children!” Underly accuses, without the benefit of evidence, of course. “And when adults sit passively without calling out these harmful behaviors, they are no different than the bystander who does nothing or says nothing when someone is being bullied or harmed.”

In the superintendent’s screed, there is no mention of the many kids who are made to feel bad by radically indoctrinated educators simply because of the color of their skin, because of their “white privilege.” She fails to note the bullying that goes on in classrooms that teach that children as young as 5 years old are white supremacists, and so are their mommies and daddies, and their brothers and sisters, too. And she’s silent on the unwelcome reception kids from conservative homes, families of faith, receive from their brainwashed peers and teachers.

Underly prattles on about “the need for all students to feel supported, with welcome and with belonging.” Not all students, though. And while she asserts that this is a time of “reckoning,” a time for “uncomfortable conversations,” she and the rest of her painfully woke ilk have done everything they can to silence ideas that make them uncomfortable.

The state’s top education official can’t possibly be this obtuse, can she?

She can. She is.

First and foremost, she fails to recognize the parent revolution that is already here, poised to take back their schools from people peddling hate disguised as “anti-racism.”

But more so, she is another tool of the radical left. Unfortunately, she is in a position of power over our children, over our future.

Jill Underly is deservedly Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.