The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is banning a celebrated series of fifth-grade musical plays about American history at a local charter school because, the district says, they are “culturally insensitive.”
For nearly three decades, the fifth-graders at Marquez Charter Elementary in Pacific Palisades have performed musicals about crucial periods in the formation of the United States.
These include Miracle in Philadelphia, about the Constitutional Convention; Hello, Louisiana!, about the voyage of Lewis and Clark; and Water and Power, about the Industrial Revolution. (A fourth-grade play, Gold Dust or Bust, focuses on the history of California.)
The musicals, co-written by Jeff Lantos (with music composed by the late jazz pianist Bill Augustine), are so successful in conveying historical details that Marquez students consistently score off the charts in history assessments.
A 2004 academic study of the Marquez plays observed: “Students who attended Marquez Elementary School scored more than twice as many items correctly [on history tests] as did students from other schools.”
Local ABC affiliate KABC-7 reported in 2015:
UCLA conducted a study of the Marquez students and their ability to retain that historical knowledge. Researchers compared Lantos’ students to other students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds.
The finding? Lantos’ students did extraordinarily well and far outclassed their competition.
Jeanette Mills was a Lantos student 20 years ago and now is a choreographer at UCLA. She goes back to her alma mater to help teach the Lantos students dance routines.
She said many of her colleagues have chosen professions in the performing arts after their experience with Lantos.
A graph from the UCLA study tells the story:
From Stigler, et al. “Performing History: An Evaluation of a Music-Based American History Curriculum.” UCLA Psychology Department
Lantos was also nominated for a Tony Award for K-12 education, and was featured in a documentary:
After the school burned down in the Palisades Fire in January, the students were able to perform on a stage Fox Studios in west Los Angeles.
But now, LAUSD wants to ban the plays, starting in the 2026-7 school year.
District officials have told Marquez teachers and Lantos that the plays are not “culturally relevant” and “not appropriate material for fifth-grade students.”
After the community pushed back, the school was told that it could keep only one play — Miracle in Philadelphia — but was told it had to change the text to be more politically correct.
A deaf character, for example, was apparently to be characterized as “hearing impaired.” Breitbart News was told that the district also said that a female character could not be referred to by a male suitor as “cutie pie.”
Officials also apparently objected to a joke about the Three-Fifths Compromise (for counting the population of slave states toward the allocation of congressional seats) in which an exhausted character says that if he doesn’t eat dinner soon, there won’t be three-fifths of him left.
They also flagged the phrase “cotton-pickin’ minute” as racially offensive in 2025, and objected to a George Washington character saying that he missed his slaves (while at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which had abolished slavery).
Officials also said that framing the struggle over slavery as “North vs. South” risked overlooking the slaves’ humanity. The district also apparently objected to the fact that there were few women portrayed as having attended the Constitutional Convention — a historical truth (though male Framers are often portrayed by female students, in costume).
Lantos told Breitbart News that it was possible that a parent had complained about a scene in which an African-American slave becomes free after crossing the Mississippi and performs a dance number with Native American women.
The scene, he said, had been presented for “28 years running” without incident or complaint.
Soon, he said, he was summoned to “a Star Chamber of four or five DEI experts down at LAUSD.”
He said he had offered to rewrite the plays to satisfy complaints, but said he had not heard from the district in 15 months since then.
A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told Breitbart News: “No decision has been made at this time. We understand the value that participating in a play holds for student engagement, creative expression, and growth, and we are committed to our students having these experiences.”
“I feel like they’re looking at five percent of the shows,” Lantos said. “They’re not feeling any of the magic that people feel when they walk into that auditorium.”
Lantos says that the principal won’t allow him on campus until the issue is resolved, which he described as heartbreaking.
“We’re essentially doing Hamilton three times a year for fifth graders — it’s hard to imagine anyone would object to this.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
