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Last week, administrators at Department of Defense Education Activity Schools received a memo directing them to pull certain lessons and materials from their curriculum pending review. Materials include books that are out of alignment with the new administration’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” executive orders. This order comes after the Department of Defense signaled they would be following the Pentagon’s January 31 directive to end all celebrations related to identity and race.
The Department of Defense Education Activity includes 161 schools across seven states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and 11 countries. It serves approximately 67,000 students in military families.
Among the curriculum being reviewed are:
- A chapter on gender and sexuality taught in Advanced Placement Psychology courses (something that Stars and Stripes points out the College Board did not allow when the Florida Department of Education tried to do the same)
- A lesson on Albert Cashier, a trans Union solider in the Civil War
- An entire unit on Black history month for sixth graders
- Comprehensive health skills courses
- Readings and lessons on immigration for fifth graders
- Becoming Nicole, a book about a trans activist and her family that sits on a list of independent reading options for a strategic literacy course.
In addition to curriculum reviews, library workers were directed to remove any materials from their school libraries that might contain anything related to “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.” Books must be removed from the library and set aside into a staff collection for review. Teachers are also required to do the same culling from classroom collections.
Schools have until February 18 to comply with the directive. There is no information about where or how reviews will occur or whether or not books will eventually return to shelves following said reviews.
This is federally-sanctioned book censorship, coming on the heels of claims by the Department of Education that book banning is “a hoax.” It is a targeted attack on the voices, perspectives, and lives of every student and educator who falls outside the narrow box of cisgender, heterosexual, white, Christian, able-bodied, and male.
The memo Department of Defense Education Activity Europe received made its way across social media. In addition to the book banning and curriculum restrictions, several other directives require removal of pronouns from email signatures, updated signage for facilities within the schools, removal of posters from school facilities showcasing historical women and people of color, and more.
At least one Department of Defense Education Activity school will be shutting down access to the entire facility as staff work to meet compliance deadline. The principal of Weisbaden Middle School, located in Weisbaden, Germany, informed educators in an email that no books shall be borrowed from the library as they begin the process of removal.
What books might fall under either the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” or “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” remains to be seen. But chances are, like we’ve witnessed since the unfettered rise in book censorship in US public schools since early 2021, the interpretation will be broad and wide-ranging. This will likely include any books about history about marginalized people, books about sexual assault and rape, books by or about LGBTQ+ people, and books about puberty and sexuality.
This is the first directive from the new administration specifically calling for the removal of curriculum and of books from educational institutions. It will be far from the last. Going through the Department of Defense Education Activity schools was likely a far faster process–perhaps with a little more legality–than going through the Department of Education and targeting public schools nationwide.
But this will lay the groundwork for the federal government to amplify their demands for removal of books and curriculum throughout public institutions nationwide.
