NYC Students to Receive Lessons on Reparations, Abolishing the Police

Public school students in New York City will receive lessons critical of capitalism and asserting that Black Americans should receive reparations, that student loans are equivalent to “debt peonage,” the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement and arguments for abolishing the police.

The 520-page Black Studies Curriculum, which is being implemented by New York City Public Schools this fall, provides lesson plan outlines for teachers on controversial topics like the case for reparations, voter ID laws and the difference between defunding, reforming and abolishing the police.

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Included in the document for 11th-grade students are lesson objectives focused on reparations for Black Americans and the different arguments for reforming, defunding and abolishing the police.

“Students will be able to understand the need for reparations through the historical system of debt peonage, and its resurfaced form via student loan debt,” a Grade 11 plan overview objective reads.

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The curriculum defines debt peonage as the system that replaced slavery in the American South which “exploited Black labor, families, and the attainment of wealth by keeping Black families/people in a continual state of debt – unable to catch up and close the wealth gap.”

That system is still in effect today, the curriculum asserts.

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In another lesson, the curriculum requires teachers to explain to 11th graders the differences between reforming, defunding and abolishing police departments.

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Students are directed to visit three different stations related to the article “Station #1: Reforming the Police,” “Station #2: Defunding the Police,” and “Station #3: The Abolition Vision.” Students are directed to support one of the methods for police reform or an article explaining why they would not choose to reform the police.

Some of the lessons seem to take positions that would establish which political party students should emulate.

Back-to-back lessons for 12th-grade students call Vice President Kamala Harris a “Black Sheroe” in the “Fight for American Democracy” while using former President Donald Trump’s tweets as the basis for a lesson on voter suppression.

In the first lesson, students are directed to create biographies for Black Women in Politics, including Harris. Students were then told to have a “role play mixer,” where they would talk with other students to learn more about the historical and current “Black Sheroes.”

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