Frank McCormick was a guest on my national talk show the other day. The Illinois history teacher said parents are being lied to and he’s decided to put his career on the line by exposing academia’s radical agenda. He told of the day that teachers were ordered to remove controversial books from their classrooms. Administrators went door to door demanding they turn over copies of Dr. Seuss books. In today’s woke society — Green Eggs and Ham is treated like adult bookstore smut. CLICK HERE to subscribe to Todd’s FREE newsletter for conservative news.
Following is a rush transcript of Todd’s interview with Frank McCormick on the Todd Starnes Radio Show. Listen to the entire interview below:
TODD: Welcome back to the Todd Starnes Radio Show. We are honored. Yes, I said, honored to have you with us. So earlier today I was I was on Twitter, getting ready for the show this morning, just seeing what was out there trending. And there’s there’s a video from a public school teacher, a history teacher, a guy by the name of Frank McCormick. And he has. He is. He’s just tired. He has reached the breaking point on this issue of critical race theory, and he posted a video where he he says a very matter of fact terms that that schools are lying to parents about critical race theory. So I reached out to Frank this morning and he agreed to come on. The program on the Patriot mobile newsmaker line is Frank McCormick. Hey, Frank, good to have you with us today.
MCCORMICK: [01:00:12] Hey, Todd, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
TODD: 01:00:14] So now you’re you’re a school teacher in the state of Illinois. Do you want to tell folks what the school district is or do you want to keep that quiet?
MCCORMICK: [01:00:22] Oh no, that’s fine. It’s Waukegan. Public schools were about 45 minutes north of Chicago.
TODD: [01:00:28] And how long have you been a schoolteacher, frank?
MCCORMICK: [01:00:31] About 11 years.
TODD: [01:00:33] And when did you notice that there was a change or something was going on, something might be afoot?
I’m a #teacher. I am SICK of schools lying to parents. #CriticalRaceTheory is in your schools! I’ll show you by exposing it in my school district and confronting the board member that accused me of spreading misinformation. pic.twitter.com/nD0afNrMHP
— Frank McCormick | Chalkboard Heresy (@CBHeresy) November 15, 2021
MCCORMICK: [01:00:41] Well, I I think there’d always been an agenda in public education specifically, you know, teachers seemed to be mostly liberal 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and then again in 2020 with George Floyd served as kind of catalysts for this movement to really politicize education. And in 2020, it went beyond just individual teachers choosing to do this in their classrooms, and it became really an institutional mission. And so our district, for example, formed the Department of Equity and Inclusion, which is really a social justice mechanism for the entire district.
TODD: [01:01:23] Now you had mentioned liberal teachers. Where do you fall on the on the political spectrum?
MCCORMICK: [01:01:29] I would say I’m conservative.
TODD: [01:01:30] OK. All right. So did you ever feel comfortable talking about your views or where did that ever come up in conversations with any of your colleagues?
MCCORMICK: [01:01:39] It did. And I learned over the years to become a lot more quiet about it because it resulted in a lot of ostracization. People just decided they didn’t like you and didn’t really want to associate with you. So it’s something as a teacher, you learn to be quiet about and be very conscientious of.
TODD: [01:01:58] So I’m curious why you decided to speak out so publicly, because I have to imagine you. You’re going to be getting blowback over this.
MCCORMICK: [01:02:07] Sure. Absolutely. You know, I think it was in 2020 when I saw kind of teachers becoming overtly. Political in their classrooms. And, you know, we have been locked out of school for a year. You’ve got the George Floyd riots going on and our school district kind of takes it upon themselves to have the social justice mantle. And it was a combination of that and everything else I’d witnessed in a decade in teaching and public education, the dysfunction inherent in the system and what I felt it did to me and kind of robbed me of my, my love of teaching for a lot of reasons. And I just had enough. I said to myself, You know what? I can, I can go the next 25 years and be quiet and collect the pension. And you know, that would. That’s one option, I said. Or I can just take a stand right now, and I decided to take a stand, and sometimes I ask myself what I was thinking because it was really uncharted territory. But but in the end, I’m glad I did it because, you know, I think people needed to know what was going on and that they weren’t crazy. I saw parents being lied to. I know, you know, you’re there’s no critical race theory in education. There’s no agenda. And I said, You know what? I’m going to speak on their behalf because someone asked if someone, you know, teachers have to come out and voice and that was what started it.
TODD: [01:03:35] I mean, Frank, it is. It’s just it’s evil to tell a little child and they’re doing this in some places in kindergarten. Now that that, you know, they’re there’s something wrong with them because they were born white at its essence. That’s really an attack on God, in my estimation, because we’re all made in God’s image and they’re saying that God made a mistake.
MCCORMICK: [01:03:57] Oh, I was just going to say it’s what you’re describing yet it’s racialized children. It’s bringing race to the forefront of their their worldview, which I think has terrible consequences long term as they become adults.
TODD: [01:04:15] On the PATRIOT MOBILE NEWSMAKER LINE is Frank McCormick, a history teacher speaking out against critical race theory in the classroom. Frank, I’m wondering what has been the response from poor moms and dads and then from your colleagues?
MCCORMICK: [01:04:31] Well, parents across the country have been very supportive and you know, I try to speak to them. I’ve gotten teachers reaching out to me who feel the same way, who’ve noticed the same things. Colleagues, it’s an entirely different story. It’s they, you know, you are. You are a pariah when you do this. They don’t want or have anything to do with me. They, you know, some some nastiness, some kind of thinly veiled threats. They try to make things very personal. It’s funny. They never attack your arguments. They never tell you why they disagree with you. They want to attack you and some vulnerability to get you to stop. And so that’s been disappointing. But I’ve been overwhelmed by the support from, you know, a lot of, you know, average Americans across the country, parents that needed someone to tell them, Hey, you’re not crazy. And yes, there is an agenda in your children’s schools. And so that’s been very rewarding.
TODD: [01:05:24] Now you’re still in the classroom. Have you faced any repercussions?
MCCORMICK: [01:05:29] Yeah, there’s there’s definitely some ongoing things, and I’m in consultation with an attorney. You know, for my own protection, they they’re being very cautious about what they tell me. So I’ve sent Freedom of Information Act requests to try and see what’s going on behind the scenes through emails. There’s definitely conversations happening, but you know, they block a lot of it out because it’s lawyers. I think it’s a matter of time before, you know, I’m pulled in for disciplinary hearing. I think they’re just trying to decide how to approach this because they’re not used to someone being so out there in open and vocal and they know if they do something, I’m not going to, you know, I’m not scared anymore. I’m going to go out and tell people this is what happened and this is what’s going on. So they’re they’re treading carefully. And so am I.
TODD: [01:06:17] Frank? Was there one moment and or was this a culmination of events that led you to finally speak out?
MCCORMICK: [01:06:26] I think there were certainly moments that really stood out to me in combination with kind of a, you know, the decade long experience in public.
TODD: [01:06:35] Give me an example.
MCCORMICK: [01:06:37] Sure. When our school sent an email out notifying us that all the banned the Dr. Seuss books were going to be collected from classrooms and from libraries across the school district, that really kind of startled me, and I had sent an email back and saying, Look, I’m a history teacher. I think there’s value in preserving these and I’d like to have them in my classroom and they can be teaching tools, and they wouldn’t even do that. Even my question, just asking if I could have the box got administration notified. There were, you know, emails went up and this teacher wants these books. And that really alarmed me that even the idea of possessing a box forget that they were going to disappear. That’s scary on a child, but that, you know, it was troublesome to them that I even had an interest in possessing them. That was something that really stood out to me as as a warning sign and also noticing trends in students over the years. As their language started to reflect the social justice movement. You know, they started using words like white privilege and oppression. And I asked them aloud, You know, where’s this coming from? And a lot of them were talking about it in classrooms throughout the school. I said, This is a problem. This is a real problem.