RALEIGH, N.C. — When North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson spoke on education at a round-table event Tuesday night in downtown Durham, he didn’t publicly broach a topic likely to have been on many attendees’ minds: a call in his upcoming book for eliminating science and history from the first- through fifth-grade curriculum and shuttering the State Board of Education.
In the book, set to be published Sept. 13, Robinson writes that schools should “demand proficiency in reading, writing and math in grades one through five. In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to talk about equity and social justice.”
Following the public panel, The News & Observer asked him about that stance. Robinson said he didn’t want to discuss the book at the event and that he or his representatives would talk separately. But shortly afterward, in comments to WNCN-TV at the event, he appeared to backtrack from at least one statement in the book. He told the station he was not saying that science, at least, should be eliminated from the curriculum, but instead that efficiency in reading and mathematics should be the priority.
“We’re not talking about not teaching science to elementary schoolchildren,” he said Tuesday. “What we’re talking about is putting reading, writing and arithmetic – making that paramount in elementary school.”
Robinson, who is the top Republican in North Carolina’s executive branch, has a reputation for making incendiary and controversial comments. A viral 2018 speech on gun rights started his political career, and just two years later he was elected by voters as the state’s first Black lieutenant governor.
He shared an advance copy of his book, “We Are the Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot,” with the News & Observer. In the book, which drew attention after excerpts were published by WRAL-TV, Robinson expressed an array of opinions and ideas on education. He also indicated he may seek to become North Carolina’s governor in 2024, writing that while he had not yet declared for that race as he had to consider his health, his wife’s opinion and more, “we are making plans to make a strong run should I decide to.”
“We have had a leader who has taken us a long way in the wrong direction over the course of his two terms,” he wrote of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. “Somebody’s got to right this ship before it sinks.”
Efforts to reach Robinson’s spokesperson in his role as lieutenant governor by email before and after the event were unsuccessful.
In the panel discussion, which lasted almost two hours, speakers addressed a range of topics: homeschooling, broadband and interconnectivity issues in the state, barriers to accessing education by Hispanic families, expanding access to school voucher programs and providing alternatives to public school and four-year college and university.
The event, attended by approximately 100 people, was hosted by Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina, the state chapter of the conservative advocacy organization, and The LIBRE Initiative-North Carolina, the state chapter of the advocacy group focused on the Hispanic community. These organizations support limited government intervention and spending and generally back Republican candidates.
On the panel, Robinson said he believes learning happens with collaboration between parents, teachers and students.
But, he said, “It’s not going to happen the way a lot of these bureaucrats hoped that it would happen, through standardized tests or trying to force agendas on people. It happens when we have a classroom that is built on the premise of just their own education, not any type of indoctrination, not any type of ideology, but simply on the methods, tried and true methods that we know that work, to teach children the things that they need to know.”
Here is a look at some other of Robinson’s stances in his book on education and more:
—On the State Board of Education
In his upcoming book, Robinson writes that the biggest problem with public education in America for him is “the sheer ineptitude and incomprehensibility embodied in our pedagogical philosophy.”
“I sit in North Carolina State Education Board meetings, listen to them yammer, yammer, yammer, and think every time, ‘What the hell does any of this mean?’”
His solution? Eliminate the board, he writes.
“We need to have one entity, one person, where the buck stops. Right now we have at least three: the school boards, the state superintendent of education, and the local school systems — and none are truly answerable to the others.”
The state board of education sets policy for public schools, the Department of Public Instruction is charged with implementation of the state’s public school laws, and North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction oversees the implementation. Local boards of education, in turn, control “all matters pertaining to the public schools in their respective administrative units and they shall enforce the school law in their respective units,” according to state laws.
As lieutenant governor, Robinson is a voting member of the State Board of Education, which is mostly appointed by the governor.
—On race and history
Robinson has often spoken out on race. In his book, he writes that he hates “the attempt to racialize history and education with the so-called 1619 Project and critical race theory. For all conservatives ... this is the embodiment of things we’ve been warning about, screaming from the rafters about, for years.”
The 1619 Project is an award-winning project published by The New York Times, composed of books and resources which reframe American history by placing slavery at the center of its narrative. CRT is a scholarly framework that holds that systemic racism has been and continues to be a part of the nation’s history.
Robinson also writes that it’s not possible to teach history without teaching the bad parts and looking at the impact of slavery, but that it is necessary to stop “demonizing people based on their color, and we need to stop telling people that they are victims based on the color of their skin.”
—On higher education and loans
“We give out so much money in student aid and subsidized loans, but the one thing we don’t ask is if the students have a plan concerning what they will do when they graduate and how they are going to pay that loan money back,” Robinson writes.
“How will the student get through school? What goals are they going to set to get to where they want to be on the other side? How are they going to pay the loan back? Can’t show any of this? They don’t get the money.”
—On same-sex marriage and sex education
Robinson writes that he supports same-sex couples having the same legal rights as married heterosexual couples but that he is not “personally going to call it marriage,” because he believes “marriage is ordained between a man and a woman.”
He writes that he doesn’t believe in teaching “kids about what you do in the bedroom, as if your sexual preferences and practices ought to be celebrated and given government approval and even support.”
There should not be sexual education, regardless of sexual identity or orientation, he wrote.
“Reading, writing, math – those belong in the classroom,” he writes. “Arts, music, sports? Maybe. They are adjuncts that lead to better outcomes in reading, writing, and math. Sex education does not. Kids don’t have sex.”
—On vouchers, charter schools, ‘exodus’ from public schools
“We need voucher programs to get students into the best schools possible,” he writes. “We need more charter schools replicating the one that people are lined up to get into. We need to build more, not limit them.”
Voucher programs in North Carolina include the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program, which helps fund private schooling for some low-income families, and the Education Student Accounts (ESA+) Program, which helps some families cover expenses related to educating a child with a disability.
Charter schools, by contrast, are public schools that operate independent of school districts and are exempted from many state regulations.
“If we find success along the way, we should bring it into the system,” Robinson writes. “We might adopt charter school methods throughout the system. We might see a mass exodus from the public schools entirely, and before you know it, traditional public schools might be a thing of the past.”
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