Hat tip The College Fix
"In that meeting, a teacher says educators who don’t get with schools’ anti-racism programs are looking to get terminated from their positions: “If you’re going to come with those old views of colonialism, it’s going to lead to being fired, because you’re going to be doing damage to our children—trauma.”
I am cross-posting an article running in The College Fix. The National Education Association (NEA) has declared its total support for the teaching of Critical Race Theory in all the nation's schools.
Let me be clear: There is nothing wrong in teaching what is a historical fact to our children when it comes to issues like slavery and segregation. Just as Germany has a moral obligation to teach its youth about Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust, we must teach our youth about the bad chapters in our history.
Why?
So it won't happen again. The reason should not be to teach our children that America and white people are inherently racist today. That is a matter of opinion, and it is an opinion I do not share. That is the crux of CRT, that our country is still just as racist as it was 50 years ago.
Our children deserve to be taught facts, not opinions, especially those that are designed to divide our people and eventually destroy this country.
I also object to aspects of CRT (especially the California version that is awaiting the governor's signature) that classify Jewish people as just a bunch of super privileged whites. The California version also takes the side of the Palestinians vis-a-vis Israel, a position that has caused a dramatic rise in campus anti-Semitism already.
Our teachers' job is not to instill their personal view of the world upon our children. That includes K-12 and the universities. The NEA's support for CRT marks it as a despicable organization. That is not to condemn every teacher in the country because I worked for 20 years as a teacher myself. (I have never belonged to the NEA or any other union.) Teachers should reconsider their membership.
One thing has become abundantly clear when it comes to Critical Race Theory.
ReplyDeleteThose who are so vocally against it haven't actually taken the time to learn anything about it.
Because the way you describe it?
That's not what it is.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThen I would appreciate it if you explained what it is and where I am wrong.
The problem starts with the fact that we don't really have a clear and simple definition of it to begin with. This should concern you whether you're left, right, centrist, whatever. Because when we get situations like this, it turns into meaning whatever anybody wants it to mean.
ReplyDeleteThe Wikipedia page is actually a pretty good place to start though, and it attempts a definition here: "While critical race theorists do not all share the same beliefs, the basic tenets of CRT include that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics rather than explicit and intentional prejudices on the part of individuals. CRT scholars also view race and white supremacy as an intersectional social construction which serves to uphold the interests of white people[11] against those of marginalized communities at large. In the field of legal studies, CRT emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways. A key CRT concept is intersectionality, which emphasizes that race can intersect with other identities (such as gender and class) to produce complex combinations of power and disadvantage."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
I realize that Wikipedia is often a questionable source, but you'll see that this particular article is pretty good about citing and linking its sources.
I don't know about you, but that's pretty wide open to interpretation (as the "not all scholars agree" hints at). I don't know how anybody could look at that and make a declarative statement one way or the other as to whether it's good or bad. I'd need to take a closer look at individual lessons and how they're being taught.
The thing that I find disturbing in the articles that you share is that people are calling whatever they want "critical race theory" in an attempt to censor ideas that they don't like. Is talking about anti-racism, inclusion, tolerance, bias, etc. all part of Critical Race Theory? From what I can tell, the answer is "maybe, depending on who you ask".
Simply attacking it as a bad thing (or praising it as a good thing) is problematic. If somebody is teaching it, we should look at what that means. If they're teaching parts of history that have often been ignored (like the Tulsa massacre of 1921, redlining, the genocidal policies of Christopher Columbus) then trying to shut it down means nothing more than trying to shield students from uncomfortable truths.
If somebody claims to be teaching it, and their interpretation is telling all the white kids that they need to feel bad about the racism in the past and that none of them are any better the Nazis, then yes, that person is doing a disservice.
It's neither the answer to all our problems nor the boogeyman that your sources are making it out to be.
Okay, I stopped reading your response when you got to "CRT buffs basically want to argue that we have made no progress."
ReplyDeleteI provided you a definition and a link that offers multiple sources from the people who are actually advocating it, and you can only get out of it are the same talking points that right-wing media has been repeating ad nauseum.
Ignorance isn't only what you don't know. It's what you WON'T know.
You clearly have no interest in learning about anything that falls outside of your ideology. You'd rather get mad at things that aren't happening.
Anonymous,
ReplyDelete"Ignorance isn't only what you don't know. It's what you WON'T know.
You clearly have no interest in learning about anything that falls outside of your ideology."
Yet you stopped reading my response at my 2nd paragraph. I read all of your latest comment.
Another thing: While you enjoy the perfect right to comment anonymously (which is a smart move on your part), I sign my name to everything I have ever written.
Do yourself a favor-remain anonymous. It'll save you a lot of embarrassment.
You may have read the entire thing, but it's clear that you comprehend little.
ReplyDeleteI stand by my initial assertion: you don't know what CRT is. All you know is what dishonest critics say it is.
And trust me, I'm not the one who should be embarrassed.