Individual upset that the program is teaches” college students to use kids as political tools.”
The Youth Development programme at Rhode Island College is criticized for including a group on “anti-racist” practices in its curriculum.
Nevertheless, the public school has not responded to numerous requests for comment regarding the software and the criticism it is receiving.
Parental rights activist Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island mom who was sued by a teacher’s union after asking to see her mother’s school curriculum, recently criticized the school’s degree plan on X.
Solas thinks the college should lose its federal funding as a result of the program, which she described as” the professional indoctrination of kids.”
” Rhode Island College is a common school that distributes false “masters levels” in political education of children, which is diametrically opposed to the Trump administration’s @usdoegov” priorities,” she wrote.
Solas claimed in an interview with The College Fix that the so-called “youth development” curriculum is certainly education; rather, it is a child advocate education system pipelining college students to a democratic patronage network of non-profits.
In an email, she wrote that” this “youth development” system is finally a social movement acting under the guise of “higher learning,” where children in school and after-school programs are used as resources for democratic political action.
Kids” perfect 15 to 30 hours of research within an organization that serves kids and/or children,” she said, for instance, in the YDEV 353 Field Experience in Youth Development.
According to the college’s website, students who complete the program may go on to work as” Childcare Workers,”” Youth Minister,”” Camp Director,” or” Social Service Manager” as jobs.
Solas claimed that the college is actually educating students to become political activists.
She said,” Using children for political activism does not serve children; it only serves the interests of the adults who use them.”
Higher education does not include teaching college students to use children as political tools. It’s a political stumbling block, Solas told The Fix,” It’s a political grift co-opting public money for legitimate academic endeavors.” I should not be forced to fund my political opposition as a taxpayer under the pretext of “higher education.”
The Youth Development program is intended for “individuals working within youth development and/or youth-oriented social service organizations,” according to the college. According to its website, classes will “equip” students with the skills to lead, design, research, and innovate in youth settings.
According to the master’s program webpage, the program includes learning outcomes like” Advocacy &, Social Justice” as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees offered by RIC’s Department of Educational Studies.
The learning outcome description reads,” Explore programming and policy through the lenses of power and difference in order to better understand how to build, sustain, and lead positive communities with youth.”
According to The Fix‘s review of previous course catalogs, the first courses offered for the Youth Development program were the 2014-2015 school year’s opening.  , For 2017-2018, the program added an introductory course. The Fix discovered that the master’s degree was introduced for the 2019-2020 school year, and that 10 more courses had been developed.
The” Youth Development Community Retreat” course, which teaches students to “develop skills and frameworks for community building and anti-racist youth development practice,” was offered during the academic year of 2024-2025.
Another RIC course,” Youth Development Community Retreat,” focuses on “anti-racist youth development practice.”
A DEI cult training seminar on Rhode Island children’s anti-racist indoctrination. 4/6 pic. twitter.com/YHmy1zhTE7
— Nicole Solas, Sued by the Teachers Union ( @Nicoletta0602 ) April 10, 2025
Another course in the program,” Youth Social Policy and Action,” will “learn how youth have engaged activist tools to develop, impact, and reform public policy,” will be explored in detail.
Students must be enrolled in” Youth Social Policy In The Field” while simultaneously enrolled in” Youth Social Policy In The Field,” where they “work with a local]Youth Development ] organization to understand their policy/activist agenda and collaborate on a youth social policy research project.
The Youth Development program’s directors and professors, as well as program coordinator Rachel Clemons, and Victoria Restler and Leslie Bogad, both from The Fix, have sent comments about the program and the criticisms it is receiving. No one responded.
The Fix also emailed the media relations office and college spokesperson John Taraborelli frequently over the course of the past two weeks to inquire about the program, but neither of them responded.
In a recent interview with The Fix, Jonathan Butcher, senior fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation, made similar remarks.  ,
The Youth Development degree was described by Butcher as” an additional grievance studies-style program that is frequently found at institutions nationwide.”
According to him,” the program description uses radical buzzwords with ambiguous definitions like” social justice” and” culturally relevant,” which draw attention to Marxist philosophy, which calls for repeated cycles of revolution against existing social and political structures.
He said,” This program is particularly troubling because it’s a training program for young people, teaching these hollow ideas to teenagers and youth.”
According to Butcher,” State lawmakers should defund programs like this that focus on racial favoritism and evaluate the school’s compliance with state and federal civil rights laws.”
MORE: Florida University offers a “hip-hop” course on “black ratchet imagination.”
A photo of the Rhode Island College campus is encircled in the course description for a youth development course. Rhode Island College
Follow The College Fix on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
