Lifewise Academy Students = Good, Others = Bad
The Lifewise Academy curriculum and promotional videos express the ideas that "good"kids attend Lifewise and "bad" kids don't.
Lifewise Academy - Patrick Henry created a promotional video to display during presentations and events. This video was shot in the Lifewise classroom and on school property and featured interviews with Lifewise teachers and volunteers. It was polished and then used by two board members at a local church presentation. To say that the content was curated, reviewed, and approved would be an understatement.
In this video, the clear message that every person who does not attend church is unkind and incapable of compassion is stated. This is the message that Lifewise Patrick Henry chose to create and share with the community.
Not all of these kids belong to homes that go to church every week.
But in having this program, they have the opportunity to come here.
They’re going to see that they can be kind, they can be generous, they can be compassionate
They don’t have to be like the others around them.
Abbigail Johnstone, Lifewise Academy Teacher
The worst part is, it’s not shocking at all. The Lifewise curriculum includes lessons that instruct teachers to role-play and to demonstrate that kids who don’t attend church are “bad”. The idea that homes that do not attend a church that Lifewise Academy approves of are not kind, compassionate, or generous is gross.
This video was on-brand for Lifewise. The goal of Lifewise is to create evangelists who will return to the schools. The COO of Lifewise has repeated this in recent interviews. The public schools have become Lifewise Academy's playground.
Lifewise is conditioning students to believe that those who do not attend are bad and incapable of kindness. Understanding that public school staff are on the Lifewise board, approving the messaging, and supporting the idea that students who attend Lifewise are kind and compassionate, while other students are not, is disgusting. And it’s even worse that these comments are not off-the-cuff or taken out of context; they were curated and edited specifically for a promotional video.
If you think community is built on calling people who have a different religious view than you bad people, then you are putting hatred into the world.
Read more at https://respectpublicschools.com/