Fix our schools NOW — or Zohran Mamdani is America’s future

Get ready for more candidates like Zohran Mamdani — avowed “socialists” — to surge in popularity across New York and the entire nation.

Young people are buying into a fairytale version of socialism promoted by the left-wing educational establishment that bears no resemblance to what history tells us socialism actually means.

In school district after school district, we have ceded control of education to the far left.

Those activists are teaching our kids a curriculum that never mentions the brutal consequences of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, Latin America and elsewhere — and instead indoctrinates students with a la-la land version of “socialism” devoid of historical context.

Of course young New Yorkers are troubled by the city’s unaffordability, but that alone does not explain the appeal of Mamdani’s socialist promise. 

Socialism is gaining traction among younger voters. 

As Gallup reported Monday, 49% of Americans age 18 to 34 say they have a positive view of socialism, compared with 30% of those over age 55.  

Why? They’ve been brainwashed in our schools.

Our only option is to fight to regain control of what they’re being taught. 

Consider the definitions of different economic systems in a typical lesson plan recommended for New York state social-studies teachers: “In a capitalist society, the goal is for individuals to make profit by earning as much money as they can,” kids are told. 

“In a socialist society, the government directs the wealth so it is more equally spread around to everyone, but there is still private ownership of property and businesses. In a communist society, everyone is equal and given the same amount of resources as determined by the government.” 

Students are instructed to choose one of these economic systems — based on these misleading definitions — and to defend their choice.

It’s an outrage: This lesson includes no discussion of how, in the name of socialism and equality, despots in Russia, Romania, Poland and elsewhere slaughtered innocents, seized property and sank their countries into starvation-level poverty.

Students aren’t told how socialism has plunged Venezuela into chaos since voters opted for Hugo Chavez in 1998 and his promise to establish fairness among the socio-economic classes. 

Sound familiar?

On the campaign trail, Mamdani is promising the same equality that New York’s future voters are hearing about in the classroom.

“There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country,” Mamdani told CNN. 

“There is enough money for a life of dignity for all people,” he said on ABC.

No acknowledgment of socialism’s brutal past.

Nor that socialism’s historical failures derive from its very nature. 

Socialism is inherently coercive, because it violates our rights as individuals to work hard for our own benefit — wiping out our ability to acquire more property than the layabout guy next door.

Yet it has become anathema to suggest that young voters buying Mamdani’s socialist promises are victims of an inadequate education.

When I stated as much last week on a CNN panel, fellow guest Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) demanded an apology, falsely claiming I was “calling Mamdani voters ‘stupid’.”

No, not “stupid” — I said no such thing.

Just that they’re lacking any knowledge of history.

Such knowledge, for example, would help stressed New Yorkers evaluate Mamdani’s housing proposals.

In 2020 Mamdani explained his goal to “decommodify housing.”

“Basically we want to move away from a situation where most people acquire housing by purchasing it on the market,” he said; the goal is “a situation where we guarantee high-quality housing to all as a human right.”

That’s reminiscent of what the despots of Eastern Europe did during the Cold War, building huge concrete apartment blocks with meager square-foot allotments per family.

Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu razed entire villages to herd the populace into his grim state-run high-rises.

Of course, a New York City mayor has far fewer powers. 

But Mamdani promises on his campaign website to build 200,000 new units of “permanently affordable, union-built, rent stabilized homes.”  

Sounds wonderful — unless you’re familiar with the failure of NYCHA housing, which ghettoizes the poor in unlivable circumstances.

NYCHA residents routinely suffer heat and hot-water outages, mold, vermin and other inhumane conditions.

It takes on average 350 to 423 days to prepare a vacant NYCHA apartment for occupancy — a sign of the system’s dysfunction.

We have failed young voters by letting leftist teachers’ unions call the shots.

Union members and their stooges outgun parent groups to control local school-board elections, and unions dominate statewide curriculum choices.  

That has to change fast, or the push for their phony vision of socialism — already dominant in our schools — will soon dominate at the ballot box as well. 

Mamdani is a red flag. Take heed, America.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of SAVENYC.org.