An open letter to Superintendent Schroeder

Submitted by Jim McEvoy
Posted 2/24/22

Dear Mr. Schroeder:

Recently, Gov. Mark Gordon appointed you as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction. Your nomination was controversial but the governor’s commitment to …

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An open letter to Superintendent Schroeder

Posted

Dear Mr. Schroeder:

Recently, Gov. Mark Gordon appointed you as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction. Your nomination was controversial but the governor’s commitment to “ensuring that parents are intricately involved in their children’s education” resulted in your selection. Congratulations.

I note that your academic credentials include a B.A. in pastoral studies, theology and speech from Maranatha Baptist University and a M.A. in family and youth counseling from Liberty University. Your teaching experience includes 15 years in various private schools, the most recent being the Christian Veritas Academy in Cody. 

Edu.wyoming.gov stated that you are constitutionally entrusted with general supervision of Wyoming’s public education system and that you believe that the purpose of education is using the arts and sciences to learn to think for oneself and to cultivating the “heart” for virtue and character.  You also said that school boards are the agents of public schools owned by the community and they need to be accountable to parents. 

In an October 2021 article entitled “The Divided States of America,” you stated that as a history teacher, you were ultrasensitive to the fact that history is “not so much about what happened as it is about who told you what happened.” You labeled “multiculturalism and its latest offspring, Critical Race Theory,” as a form of social engineering with a political agenda that indicts the roots of America with its “unmitigated revision of history and cancel culture” that “keeps the racist pot stirred up” and results in the destruction of intellectual freedom and the “reprogramming” of our future teachers.

There is nothing in your credentials that indicates formal training in education or expertise in U. S. history. What gives you the necessary skills to teach this subject in school, much less make comments on the writing of history textbooks?

Your last place of employment has a “mission” to teach a “classical education” with the goal of developing a “Biblical world view” stating that “God is the Author of all knowledge and wisdom.”  They provide students with “a comprehensive application of Scripture in all disciplines.”

Your undergraduate alma mater holds the same philosophy. Biology students are taught to use scientific knowledge to “declare the glory of God as the Creator as revealed in the Bible.” This implies “intelligent design.”

Liberty University goes further by saying that education “occurs most effectively when both instructor and student are properly related to God and each other through Christ.” Does this mean that non-Christian teachers are inferior? Liberty blends academic knowledge with a “Christian world view” that emphasizes the inerrancy of the Bible and God’s condemnation of “sinful acts” including “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender,” sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality. Is human sexuality strictly a choice? Are LGBTQ people pathological?  Can you “cure” them? 

You are now responsible for 568 schools, of which 388 are public, and therefore secular. Your background raises a number of questions.

What is a biblical world view? Should it be taught in public schools?

Are LGBTQ students entitled to be treated with dignity and respect in our schools? 

How are school boards accountable to parents? Should certain books on sex, LGBTQ issues, racism, slavery, etc. be banned because some parents object to them?

Is the Theory of Evolution correct? Is “intelligent design” equally valid?

What is critical race theory? Who developed it? At what academic level is it taught?

Please answer these questions factually. I will forward your answers to the Powell Tribune. Thank you for your time.

Jim McEvoy

Powell

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