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EDUCATION

Important Reading on the Critical Race Theory in Schools Debate By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/important-reading-on-the-critical-race-theory-in-schools-debate/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Conservatives are on the march in the political offensive against the teaching of Critical Race Theory and related racialist concepts in K-12 public schools, a battle that has moved into state legislatures. I have written about some of the philosophical problems with the “anti-anti-CRT” movement. But it is also the case that the anti-CRT initiatives must navigate a series of political and legal obstacles, and prudent consideration of those is a worthwhile task for those of us who believe in that cause.

Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has some thoughts worth reading in a blog post co-authored with three other FIRE staffers. FIRE is, as I have detailed, an essential defender of free speech rights in higher education, without which conservative college and graduate students would be in a much worse situation. As you might expect, Lukianoff is somewhat skeptical of using state laws to limit the teaching of ideas in any school, particularly universities, but he takes a thoughtful approach to the important distinctions: between public and private schools, between universities and K-12 schools, between academic freedom and the power of government to intimidate and indoctrinate students. On the legal and political status of public K-12 education:

The modern view of education as a pipeline designed to carry children from preschool to graduate school tends to obscure the fact that K-12 education had a very different evolution from the university system. Compulsory public education was a project advanced by politicians and enacted by legislatures for a political purpose [as far back as 1794]…[W]hat will become the curriculum in most public K-12 schools is democratically decided by a combination of state legislatures, local school boards, and individual schools. As such, they represent the will of the people, as expressed in local and state elections. The individual schools cannot exceed the scope granted them by their school boards, which themselves derive power and authority from the state…Because K-12 attendance is compelled by the state and, at public schools, funded predominantly by local taxes, it is understandable that the substance of that teaching is subject to democratic oversight, through state legislatures and elected (or appointed by those who were elected) school boards. Legislators are expected to exercise oversight when citizens with children in the schools voice legitimate concerns about curricular matters.

It’s Critical Race Theory That Is Un-American, Not Laws Banning It This is not about banning racists from speaking, but in using representative government to deny them the privilege of receiving taxpayer sinecures to help them pursue America’s collapse.By Joy Pullmann

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/07/its-critical-race-theory-that-is-un-american-not-laws-banning-it/

Without breaking a sweat, the New York Times has gone from insisting critical race theory doesn’t exist to arguing state legislatures must let public schools inflict it on kids. Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley, and Thomas Chatterton Williams claim in the Times that “Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Un-American.”

This is exactly backwards. It’s teaching critical race theory that is un-American. The reframed Marxist ideology aims to destroy core American cultural and legal norms, including those these authors claim as the basis of their support for forcing taxpayers to subsidize its racism.

Just to name a few, critical theorists oppose free speech, the consent of the governed, freedom of association, and equal justice under the law. This is not about banning them from speaking, but in using representative government to deny them the privilege of taxpayer sinecures to help them foment America’s subversion and collapse.

CRT teaches not only that people are defined by their skin color but also that paler skin is inherently evil. So this theory is used to justify the insistence that the United States is inherently evil, which is also patently anti-American.

The concepts of “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “anti-racism,” and “equity [as opposed to equality]” all stem from critical theory. Since this ideology is obviously false and toxic, state legislatures have moved to protect children from being taught it as gospel in the public education systems they directly oversee.

Racists Can Still Speak Freely, Just Not on My Dime

Despite the obvious anti-American racial toxicity of this worldview, here’s the core of the four men’s NYT argument against banning its promulgation in public schools:

They are speech codes. They seek to change public education by banning the expression of ideas. Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education, it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression.

The Teachers Unions Go Woke The NEA and AFT get behind progressive political indoctrination.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teachers-unions-go-woke-11625697757?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Parents didn’t ask to be thrown into the trenches of America’s culture war, but progressives aren’t giving them a choice. Witness the way the national teachers unions are adopting woke values and pressing them into K-12 curriculums across the U.S.

The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, held its annual meeting last week and the measures approved by delegates deserve broader attention. One calls for the union to support and lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic (Native people, Asian, Black, Latin(o/a/x), Middle Eastern, North African, and Pacific Islander) Studies curriculum in pre- K-12 and higher education.”

Critical theory is a neo-Marxist ideology that is pervasive in higher education and teaches that a person is defined above all else by race, gender and sexual orientation, and that American institutions are designed to ensure white supremacy and “the patriarchy.”

The delegates also directed the NEA to lobby for “professional development around cultural responsiveness, implicit bias, anti-racism, trauma-informed practices, restorative justice practices and other racial justice trainings” for “all school employees.” The delegates called for similar training for students. Just what second-graders need: instruction on how to distrust kids with different skin colors.

Class at Yale Compares American Prisons to Nazi Concentration Camps By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/06/class-at-yale-compares-american-prisons-to-nazi-concentration-camps/

In the fall of this year, the Ivy League university of Yale will be offering a class that explicitly compares the American prison system to Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and other brutal authoritarian regimes throughout history, the New York Post reports.

The class, titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States,” falsely claims that the United States is currently operating “one of the most brutal prison societies in human history.” The course description says that the class will be “an investigation of the experience and purposes of mass incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States in the twentieth century.”

To this end, the class will also compare the American prison system to “important comparative cases, such as Nazi Germany and Communist China.”

“Incarceration is central to the understanding, if not usually to the self-understanding, of a society,” the course description claims. “This course proposes a frontal approach to the subject, by investigating two of the major carceral systems of the twentieth century, the Soviet and the American.”

The class will be taught by History professor Timothy Snyder and Philosophy professor Jason Stanley. Stanley took to Twitter to further justify the course’s existence, claiming that “the United States is the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world…almost 10 percent of the world’s prison population comes from the US’s traditionally oppressed minority, the 38 million black Americans.” He then went on to further claim, without any evidence, that “US prisons are famous for brutality.”

In the Soviet Union, such concentration camps – known as “gulags” – were primarily used for the imprisoning of minorities and political prisoners, often put to heavy labor or starved to death for opposing the Communist regime. In Nazi Germany, similar concentration camps were primarily used for rounding up and executing various minorities that did not support the Nazi regime, with Jews being the primary target, as well as Christians, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups.

How Alumni Established A Beachhead For Open Discourse On Bucknell’s Campus The new headquarters of the Open Discourse Coalition was established this spring by Bucknell University alumni to support innovative programs for the nearby campus. By Paul Siewers and Charles Mitchell

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/06/how-alumni-established-a-beachhead-for-open-discourse-on-bucknells-campus/

The small, classically pillared bank building at the center of the little town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, could be the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan in Bedford Falls from the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But it’s at the center of revolutionary new trends emerging in American higher education.

The new headquarters of the Open Discourse Coalition (ODC) was established this spring by Bucknell University alumni to support innovative programming for the nearby campus, and will feature seminar rooms, space for receptions and talks, and offices for student and faculty research. The goal: Encourage viewpoint diversity and civil discussion on campus about the “great books” of the liberal arts tradition, at a university where faculty and staff increasingly seem to many students to only advocate for one set of extreme ideological views.

“We want to open up higher education to new ideas and not let it stagnate in static ideology, to prepare students adequately for a dynamic twenty-first century ahead,” explains Allison Kasic, an alumna involved in the project, which has seen initial financial support from alumni in the seven figures since its launch in November 2020. The alumni involved include a former chair of Bucknell’s Board of Trustees, Judge Susan Crawford, and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone.

Among innovative projects underway sponsored by ODC:

A non-credit leadership seminar in the fall by a Bucknell professor emeritus and former Goldman Sachs general partner and naval officer, whose courses earned rave reviews from generations of alumni, with grants for students who successfully complete it.
Support for paradigm-shifting student research, faculty curricular development, and faculty work that comes under attack by colleagues for ideas at odds with conventional campus political wisdom.
Speaker programming featuring dialogues and thoughtful viewpoints on issues often excluded from campus.

The Left’s Critical Race Theory Is Ruining U.S. Public Education

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/07/the-lefts-critical-race-theory-is-ruining-public-education-in-the-u-s/

A radical teachers’ union has a message for parents: We control your children, not you. And it means to prove it by shoving Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT) down your kids’ throats, part of the union’s ongoing effort to “fundamentally change” America. If you want the best for your children’s education, you’ll say “hell, no!” to this pernicious, anti-American ideology.

Unfortunately, many centrist and conservative parents have looked the other way as our nation’s once-superior public schools have been taken over by leftist unions and their “educator” allies, using race-based Marxist CRT as their tool. It’s a pity.

Just last weekend, the 3-million-strong National Education Association, the largest labor union in America, stated its outright opposition to parents’ groups and state legislatures seeking to end CRT’s baleful influence on a whole generation of school kids.

Doubling down, the NEA announced not just its support for CRT, but also said it would encourage teachers to hold a “national day of action” each year on martyr George Floyd’s birthday to “teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”

No parents needed. In fact, teachers are actively opposing parents who don’t like what they’re doing. The NEA last week, for instance, also voted to “research” (that is, spy on and politically attack) groups that oppose CRT in our nation’s schools.

“NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators,” the union threatened.

Meanwhile, “More than 5,000 educators have signed a petition vowing to break anti-critical race theory laws being considered in multiple state legislatures – as the controversial curriculum faces a reckoning in districts across the country,” the New York Post reports.

And why is this so important to the left? It thinks it owns your children. Don’t you remember? “It takes a village.” So it has a right to push hateful CRT and the wholly specious 1619 Project on gullible students.

THE PUSHBACK AGAINST INDOCTRINATION IN SCHOOLS….CHECK OUT THIS SITE

http://getinsight.pro/schools/intro_video.htm

My way of coping with this situation was to create an online curriculum to teach my children to question the propaganda that they learn in school and to expose them to information that is being left out by schools.  This online curriculum is free for everyone.  The lessons have condensed video clips by some of the best experts on the different topics and added explanatory texts.  I unexpectedly have learned a lot by doing this.  The lessons are full of history that I didn’t know.  Although the original intent was to counter propaganda a side benefit is that my children are learning a lot of science and history and most importantly they are learning to think critically about what they are being taught in school.

I asked my son what he thought would motivate children to learn the online lessons.   He suggested that I make a quiz for them to take on each page.  Once they take the quiz the computer will display a certificate that shows that they took the quiz and how they scored which they can show their parents.  Then their parents can reward them for it.  Of course he wants rewards every time he takes a lesson and I give one to him.  Usually it’s a dollar or a treat.  It’s cheaper than private school and a lot of private schools indoctrinate as much as the public schools do anyway. 

Regarding quizzes. There are two kinds of questions those with circles in front of the answers and those with squares in front of the answers.  The ones with circles have only one answer.  The ones with squares can have more than one answer but might only have one answer.  Lets say a question has 2 right answers and your child checks the correct boxes but also checks two boxes that are the wrong answer.  In that case your child will get a score of zero on the question even though 2 of the answers were correct.

The Lesson List of the web site lists all the pages on the site so children can make sure they didn’t miss a lesson.  If children learned a lesson the color of the link to that lesson in the Lesson List changes.  This only works if the child took the lesson on the same computer with the same browser.  Children can print the Lesson List and check off what quizzes they took to help them keep track.  If a child wants to look up a topic they learned in school, they can do a search on the Lesson List page for a keyword by typing CTRL F and entering the keyword.

The site is arranged by topic.  These topics were chosen to counter what my children are being taught in school.  For example my daughter was taught that voter ID wasn’t fair.  That falls under the topic of discrimination.  So there will be the topic Discrimination on the home page of the web site.  Clicking on it will take your child to a web page on some aspect of discrimination.  That page will in turn have a link on the bottom to another page about another aspect of discrimination which in turn leads to another until your child gets to the voter ID.  The fastest way to get to it is from the Lesson List page.  There is a link to that at the bottom of most pages.

Some of the words on the lesson pages are highlighted in yellow.  If your child places the cursor over those words the page will show the definition of the word.

This website is continually being improved and extended.

One of the challenges of a site like this is that children come in all ages.  Some of the material may be too difficult or advanced for some children.  I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible but some of the videos were made by adults for adults.  Sometimes I have put definitions of difficult words before the video to help the child understand what is being said.  My children often surprise me with how well they understand what they are reading but they are 9 and 12. 

Stopping K–12 Indoctrination Is Right By Stanley Kurtz

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stopping-k-12-indoctrination-is-right/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

A July 5 New York Times Op-Ed by Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley, and Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that it is “un-American” for state laws to keep indoctrination in the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) out of the K–12 curriculum. While conceding that such laws may be permissible in the “narrow context of public primary and secondary education,” they argue that said laws are “antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression.” While the authors raise some legitimate concerns about specific provisions in bills that have passed to date, their conclusions do not follow. Many of the specific problems they point to can and should be fixed. The overall effort to prevent CRT indoctrination, however, is both necessary and justified. It is CRT that is un-American, not efforts to prevent the imposition of this pernicious orthodoxy on schoolchildren.

Let us begin with specific legislative language, then move to broader principles. I focus here on Texas House Bill 3979, inspired in significant part — but by no means entirely — by my model legislation published with the National Association of Scholars. That Texas bill has some technical flaws, which were well on their way to being fixed as the legislative session wound down. The flaws of which the op-ed complains can and should be addressed when House Bill 3979 is taken up soon in a special legislative session.

Texas House Bill 3979 initially passed the House. After it reached the Senate, a key fix was made. The original House version held that the various illiberal concepts listed (e.g., collective guilt by race or sex) should not be made “part of a course.” This phrasing could potentially prevent even discussion of the various concepts, which would indeed run afoul of our culture of free expression, despite being legally permissible. In contrast, my model legislation merely says that teachers should not teach the various illiberal concepts in such a way as to inculcate them. Anything can be discussed. The core concepts of critical race theory, however, should not be presented as worthy of assent and belief. In other words, students should not be indoctrinated with CRT.

A University Capitulates to the Woke Mob Nikole Hannah-Jones, having been awarded tenure, will be around for a long time to come. If her past is prologue, the University of North Carolina can expect repeats of controversy and scandal.  By Peter W. Wood

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/05/a-university-capitulates-to-the-woke-mob/

May and June were lovely months. The cherry trees in Riverside Park put on their annual extravaganza. The eastern redbuds came a beat later with their mysterious clusters of lavender flowers bursting straight out of their bark. And free-range New Yorkers met the sunlight, maskless as the day they were born. This glorious freedom was bound to fade, but not before we had one more gift: the revelation that the trustees of the University of North Carolina had summoned the courage to say “no” to the proposal that Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the New York Times‘ now-infamous “1619 Project,” be appointed with tenure to UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism. 

I expressed my delight in this development several weeks after it was reported. And while the American higher education establishment was seething with resentment over the decision, it looked like those UNC trustees had the gravel to stick with their unpopular choice.

Now we know better. Last week, in a 9-4 vote, the UNC trustees approved a grant of tenure to the award-winning journalist. No explanation was offered, but the decision followed an intense campaign of vilification of the trustees for their failure to recognize Hannah-Jones’ exceptional merits.

Kudos to the four trustees—Dave Boliek, Haywood Cochrane, Allie Ray McCullen, and John Preyer—who had the fortitude to stand against the surrender. 

The vote is a significant defeat for those of us who hope to see American colleges and universities cease their seemingly relentless slide into the politicization of their faculty, curricula, and academic standards. 

Hannah-Jones’ tenured appointment, of course, is far from the first time that a public university board has capitulated to pressure to go along with a meretricious appointment, and it won’t be the last time either. It feels a little different, however, because it was preceded by that short spring of hope. 

What should we make of the trustees’ reversal? Some of the lessons will be abundantly clear to Hannah-Jones’ supporters. Noise works. Bluster, threats, and intimidation are effective ways to advance an academic appointment that is meritless on its face. University trustees are as susceptible to social and political pressure as anyone else. The trick is to spot their particular vulnerabilities. 

The other lesson is more speculative. UNC has willingly sacrificed some of its reputation for high academic standards in order to appease its woke critics, to land a celebrity journalist, and to stave off the threat of a boycott by some other black academics. 

The university faces a potential cost in doing this—the cost of reputational damage. That cost, of course, is unknowable at this point. Will the Hussman School fail to attract some good students who are turned off by the prospect of studying under a teacher who has conspicuously played fast and loose with the facts? Or will her celebrity and the controversy itself yield a bonanza of starstruck students? Plainly, UNC faces no reputational cost within the progressive American professoriate which rallied to her cause. But what happens among alumni, parents, and taxpayers in North Carolina? 

Nation’s Largest Teachers’ Union Rejects Anti-Israel Resolution By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nations-largest-teachers-union-rejects-anti-israel-resolution/

The representative assembly of the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teachers’ union, rejected an anti-Israel resolution that would condemn the Jewish state for its “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.

The failed measure, which only 23 percent of members supported, was one of over 30 items the organization was scheduled to debate at its annual conference, according to The Algemeiner.

The decision comes after certain teachers’ unions, including three local unions affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, denounced Israel as an apartheid state and indicated sympathy for the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement last month.

New Business Item 29 asked that the union allocate approximately $71,500 to advance Palestinian causes through a number of programs. The resolution used language that legitimized Palestinian terrorism as a “heroic struggle” in the fight to combat alleged Israeli “military repression” and “ethnic cleansing.” It also urged the NEA to “publicize its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and call on the United States government to stop arming and supporting Israel.”

After Jewish members and others voiced their opposition and lobbied against it, the item was defeated in the chamber by a significant margin.

Chairman of the NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus Patrick Crabtree noted, “I’m almost positive 29 is so divisive, it will go down in flames.”

In a statement, the Jewish caucus leadership wrote that the resolution, in addition to another anti-Israel item on the table, “could inadvertently exacerbate antisemitic sentiment, or anti-Arab sentiment, in the United States, and G-d forbid, lead to hate crimes of some sort.”

The letter warned that the measure could make Jewish students “feel uncomfortable” and put the NEA “at odds with the larger Jewish community.”