North Dakota GOP endorses Christian theocrat to run the state's public schools

Jim Bartlett, who wants to push Christianity on all students, could become the state's next superintendent of public instruction.

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North Dakota Republicans have officially endorsed a Christian Nationalist and opponent of public schools to be the state’s next education leader.

We’ve already seen what happens when someone like that acquires power. In Oklahoma, where an identical role is filled by theocrat Ryan Walters, the education office has lost 130 staffers, missed out on grants provided by the federal government worth millions of dollars, and become a haven for right-wing lunatics.

Republicans in North Dakota are now eager to replicate that failure.

Earlier this month, during the GOP’s state convention, delegates voted 967 to 426 to endorse Jim Bartlett as the next superintendent of public instruction—the highest ranking elected official who oversees education across the state. (It’s only an endorsement. The official primary takes place on June 11.)

Jim Bartlett (screenshot via YouTube)

It’s a bizarre decision for two reasons.

First, the current superintendent is an experienced educator, Kirsten Baesler, who has served in that role since 2013. Baesler may be a Republican serving in that (technically) non-partisan position but there’s no denying she has longstanding experience in the world of public education, having served on school boards and possessing an extensive résumé.

Second, Bartlett is an open enemy of public education.

He wants to eliminate the very office he’s running for in order to make sure all decisions are made at the local level (an idea which could end very badly if local leaders don’t have children’s best interests at heart).

He’s also the sort of person who believes public education needs a strong dose of Jesus. His campaign website is downright frightening both for it’s decades-old graphic design as well as its blatant push for Christian Nationalism, including making the Ten Commandments the centerpiece of his agenda.

Elsewhere on his site, he says one of his goals is to make sure “Special education [is] handled like homeschooling or with private tutors”… which would be a disaster for special needs students, who would apparently be deprived of social workers or other district employees with expertise in those areas.

He adds that, when it comes to education, “The keys are recognizing God's legitimate authority (Fifth Commandment) and socialism (Sixth Commandment) in education administration.” The Sixth Commandment, according to his own damn list, is “No Murder.” Good luck connecting those dots. In an interview he gave a couple of weeks ago, he made the baseless claim that North Dakota “is teaching 15,000 children how to be Socialist right now.”

At the convention, his acceptance speech consisted of claiming that the state’s constitution “has a Christian moral context,” saying that kids needed to return to Christian morals (“a.k.a. Ten Commandments”), and leading delegates “in the singing of Psalm 44.”

In response to the Fargo Public Schools releasing a manual meant to help people be more inclusive of LGBTQ students, Bartlett insisted, “Fargo schools are an example of a modern Sodom and Gomorra, which is destroying minds, hearts, bodies and budgets.”

Any person or organization involved in or enabling this radical transgender agenda should be identified and removed from the schools. This is child abuse, evil and against the ND Constitution. God is judging this evil, and it would be safer to stay out of the way!

Since the 1980s, Christian parents have been exhorted to take their children out of the public schools by groups like Focus on the Family.  The conditions today are making the reasons more obvious.

Once the evil philosophies are purged, and a Christian context is returned under parental control, then the schools will be safer physically and psychologically. 

He also claims the state’s constitution “prevents sectarian control by the secular humanists,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing he said so far, though, came during an interview with radio host Joel Heitkamp, who asked Bartlett if, under his Christian-centric leadership, a Muslim person would be allowed to be a school teacher.

The correct answer would have been: “Yes, of course.”

Bartlett did not give that answer.

That's a good question. Um, I think, at that point, it would be the looking at the teacher. So imagine a classroom full of parents, without teachers, without administrators, and then those parents are all Muslims, for instance.

And me or somebody else could be at the front of the board… write on the top of the board “complete parental control.” Left side of the board, write [a] vision statement for that school, objectives, and then start using lean accounting methods.

So, basically, putting the value and numbers to what the parents actually want. Then, if they want, you know, so much of this religion, or they want to put social/emotional learning in there, or CRT [Critical Race Theory], or transgender, let's put a number on the balance sheet and profit and loss statement for each thing that they want.

Then we can actually get the value that that group of parents actually want.

What. The. Hell.

He seems to be saying the hiring of a non-Christian teacher would be a local decision because parents should be able to control how much of any particular religion they want in their system. That assumes a Muslim teacher at a public school would attempt to indoctrinate students in Islam, which is not a fair assumption at all. It also implies that teaching kids that LGBTQ people exist, that African American history is American history, and that someone’s life experiences may affect their ability to learn in school are all optional at best.

In short, though, he would be fine with a local school district refusing to hire non-Christian teachers.

This guy isn’t just a deranged tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist who wants to lead the public schools in order to destroy the public schools and replace them with lesser Christian alternatives.

He’s also a giant flurry of lawsuits just waiting to be dropped upon the state.

And this is the guy North Dakota Republicans believe should be in charge.

The North Dakota Monitor reported that Bartlett’s ascendancy was a sign that the state’s GOP was “shifting away from traditional candidates in favor of those who are more conservative,” which is a hell of an understatement, He’s wholly unqualified to do this job.

For what it’s worth, Baesler didn’t seem too concerned about how this will affect the June primary, where the top two candidates will make it on the November ballot.

“Our convention process is flawed — it disenfranchises the tens of thousands of Republican voters who can’t afford to take a Friday off from work or school so they can spend a couple thousand dollars to vote in these contests,” Baesler said in the statement. 

Even if she’s not worried, it’s appalling that someone this awful has a stamp of approval from a major political party.

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