MANCHESTER, Conn.

Maybe that assistant principal in Greenwich who was recently caught admitting that he hires only young liberals as teachers, the better to propagandize students into voting Democratic, wasn't such an outlier. The more recent incident at Southington High School, where an English teacher was caught inflicting political propaganda on students, suggests that Connecticut may actually be the center of the campaign to dump education for indoctrination.

The teacher distributed to students a packet titled "Vocabulary for Conversations about Race, Gender, Equality and Inclusivity." It contained a glossary of terms involving transgenderism and racism, topics with which public schools are increasingly obsessed to the detriment of education. The glossary had no relation to material being taught in the teacher's English classes but supposedly was meant to help if discussion ever turned to the glossary's subjects.

Another section of the packet revealed that its objective indeed was to turn discussion to those subjects for indoctrination purposes. It said: "You can know in your heart that you don't hate anyone but still contribute to their oppression. No individual is personally responsible for what white people have done or the historical decisions of the American government, but you are responsible for whether you are upholding the systems that elevate white people over people of color."

That is: You kids may be oppressors too without even knowing it -- yet.

While Southington School Superintendent Steven Madancy told a Board of Education meeting that he supports his teachers, in an open letter to the town he admitted that the English teacher had gone too far. "As a result of our comprehensive review," the superintendent wrote, "the teacher now realizes that the sources utilized to develop these supplemental materials may not have been neutral in nature and recognizes the bias and controversial statements that some took issue with."

So the teacher had been counseled not to do stuff like this again, which ordinarily might be enough. But instead things got worse.

The school board's chairwoman, Colleen Clark, chided those who complained about the propagandizing. "I resent that a personnel matter regarding one of our teachers and our schools has been turned into a political platform by those who have noneducational agendas," Clark said.

But those who complained about the English teacher's manifesto weren't the ones injecting politics into the schools; that was done by the teacher. (Since this is "public" education, despite the misconduct involved, the teacher has not been identified.)

Besides, since nearly everything in public education is to some degree a personnel matter, democracy inevitably makes public education political.

The situation got still worse with an open letter to the Southington board from 60 members of the faculty of Southern Connecticut State University, who called the board's review of the teacher's conduct "a politically motivated attack on free speech."

But the teacher's freedom of speech wasn't attacked. The teacher was faulted for commandeering the school curriculum, which is for the school administration, the school board, and, ultimately, the public to determine.

That is exactly what the Southern professors meant to deny. They continued: "We strongly support parental rights in the home. But few parents are experts in education. … Parents … should not determine which texts are read and what language is introduced in order to make sense of those texts.

“To permit parents -- or students -- to object to what they perceive as ‘divisive' texts is to descend down the slippery slope of allowing a relatively small but vocal group of parents and students to circumscribe and dictate the nature of public education.”

That is, the public has no right to review "public" education, which should be left to those who suppose themselves to be experts.

Instantly the Southern professors had turned from purported defenders of free speech to resentful opponents. For the critics of the teacher's manifesto didn't "circumscribe and dictate the nature of public education." They exercised free speech in pursuit of their equally constitutional right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Once again those who dominate "public" education in Connecticut have revealed that they don't think it should be public at all.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester. CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)