Maryland Public School Teachers Adopt VOC Curriculum

Dr. Murray Bessette introduces VOC curriculum to 75 public school teachers at a workshop in Harford County, MD in March on how to reach students effectively.

On March 29, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) Director of Academic Programs Dr. Murray Bessette joined Dr. Guy Burnett of Hampden-Sydney College to deliver our first in-service professional development workshops to 76 teachers in Harford County Public Schools in Maryland.

Modeled on our National Seminar offering, the sessions drew on materials from our curriculum Communism: Its Ideology, Its History, and Its Legacy aimed at educating young students. The presenters taught on subjects such as free market vs. communist political economy, the Cold War, and communism as ideology, sending off a cohort of teachers equipped to bring the truth about communism to America’s youth.

The need for this is clear. Last year, VOC’s widely-respected Annual Report on US Attitudes Toward Socialism by polling firm YouGov showed more Americans under age 35 would prefer to live in a socialist country (44%) or even a communist one (7%) than in a capitalist one (42%). The share of Millennials who prefer socialism to free enterprise is a full ten points higher than in the general population. Yet six-in-ten Americans were unfamiliar with socialist dictators like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

Such news is alarming, but not hopeless. Young Americans simply have not been taught in the classroom the history of communist enslavement and the horrible bloodshed perpetrated by this deadly ideology.