RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trumps-1776-commission-to-reassmble-tackle-critical-race-theory-in-history-education_3825673.html

Members of the 1776 Commission, which President Joe Biden disbanded on his first day in White House, are reportedly set to meet again with a renewed focus on combating the teaching of U.S. history based on the Marxist critical race theory.

The advisory commission was established by the Trump administration in November 2020 to celebrate and promote the principles enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. It is commonly seen as a response to The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project, which argues that the United States was founded as, and remains today, a racist nation.

Nearly four months after its dissolution, the commission regained attention when a leading member spoke against a Biden administration’s proposal to prioritize funding education programs that promote the 1619 Project and critical race theory, an ideology rooted in Marxist class struggle but with an emphasis on race, with the goal of dismantling all institutions of American society, which it deems as tools of racial oppression.

“The Proposed Rule should be withdrawn, just as individual states, which actually have the authority over the nation’s K-12 educational system, should oppose race-based pedagogy as part of their curricula and even if attempted to be imposed by the federal government,” Matthew Spalding, the executive director of the 1776 Commission, wrote in a letter to the Education Department.

“On behalf of my fellow Commissioners, I submit and draw your attention to Appendix III of The 1776 Report,” Spalding added. The appendix explains why race-focused narratives like the 1619 Project and critical race theory are “fundamentally incompatible” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which connects liberty-loving Americans everywhere regardless of their race.

“Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression they have experienced at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them,” the document reads. “While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, this new creed creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities.”

In an interview with Washington Examiner, Spalding said that members of the 1776 Commission will convene next week in Washington on the campus of Hillsdale College. One of their topics will be critical race theory, which sees racism in all aspects of American life.

“When we start going about dividing people by groups, by social identities, and especially by identities that deal with race, and we’re starting to make those kinds of divisions, all Americans should get very nervous,” said Spalding. “It’s a departure away from the historic grounding of civil rights in America, which is that we all are equal.”

The commission’s first and last report, commonly referred to as the 1776 Report, was taken down after Biden’s inauguration. It can still be found on the publicly archived Trump White House and Hillsdale College websites.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/marylands-largest-school-district-spent-454k-in-taxpayer-money-on-anti-racist-system-audit/

Maryland’s largest school district spent over $454,000 for an “anti-racist system audit,” according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, while the district’s middle school students were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy” that ranks just below “lynching,” hate crimes,” “the N-word” and “racial slurs.”

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, says it obtained 685 pages of records on Montgomery County Public Schools’ (MCPS) “anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes.

The district hired The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium to conduct the audit, a company that claims its “expertise in using intersectionality as part of its theory of change makes us uniquely positioned to conduct the Anti-Racist Audit and mitigate the root causes of systemic barriers.” 

The documents include Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s “anti-racist system audit” proposal, which describes intersectional theory as “people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, native language, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. Intersectionality recognizes that identity markers (e.g. “female” and “Black”) do not exist independently of each other, and that each informs the others, often creating a complex merging of oppression.” 

Meanwhile, students in Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class who were taught that MAGA is an example of white supremacy were also taught that “white privilege” means being favored by school authorities, having a positive relationship with police, “soaking in media blatantly biased toward my race” and “living ignorant of the dire state of racism today.”

https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-public-schools

There are only a few places on earth where radicals and their children ritualistically burn the American flag and chant “Death to America”: Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul, Ramallah—and Portland, Oregon.

The City of Portland, a cloud-covered metro on the south bank of the Columbia River, has become known for its political protesters. Anarchists, Communists, ecofascists, and various other agitators regularly denounce the police, politicians of both parties, and America itself, and flag-burning has become part of the protesters’ liturgy. Last summer, protesters associated with Antifa upped the ante with chants of “Death to America” and participated in months of violent protests to avenge the death of George Floyd while he was in police custody in Minneapolis. Children as young as four marched with the crowd to the federal courthouse, raising the Black Power fist and chanting “Fuck the Police!”

Famously the “whitest city in America,” Portland has become the unlikely headquarters of race radicalism in the United States. The city has elevated white guilt into a civic religion; its citizens have developed rituals, devotions, and self-criticisms to fight “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” The culminating expression of this orthodoxy is violence: street militias, calling themselves “antiracists” and “antifascists,” smash windows and torch the property of anyone transgressing the new moral law.

We might be tempted to dismiss this as the work of a few harmless radicals “keeping Portland weird,” but in recent years, their underlying ideology on race has become institutionalized. The city government has adopted a series of Five-Year Plans for “equity and inclusion,” shopkeepers have posted political slogans in their windows as a form of protection, and local schools have designed a program of political education for their students that borders on propaganda.

I have spent months investigating the structure of political education in three Portland-area school districts: Tigard-Tualatin School District, Beaverton School District, and Portland Public Schools. I have cultivated sources within each district and obtained troves of internal documents related to the curriculum, training, and internal dynamics of these institutions. We can best understand the political education program in Portland schools by dividing it into three parts: theory, praxis (or practice), and power. The schools have self-consciously adopted the “pedagogy of the oppressed” as their theoretical orientation, activated it through a curriculum of critical race theory, and enforced it through the appointment of de facto political officers within individual schools, generally under the cover of “equity and social-justice” programming. In short, they have begun to replace education with activism.

The results are predictable. By perpetuating the narrative that America is fundamentally evil, steeping children in race theory, and lionizing the Portland rioters, they have consciously pushed students in the direction of race-based “revolution.” In the language of the Left, the political education programs in Portland-area districts constitute a “school-to-radicalism pipeline”: a training ground for child soldiers. This is not hyperbole: some of the most active and violent anarchist groups in Portland are run by teenagers, and dozens of minors were arrested during last year’s riots. These groups have taken up the mantle of climate change, anticapitalism, antifascism, and Black Lives Matter—whatever provides a pretext for violent “direct action.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-cancel-math-class-11621355858?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.

This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.

The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.

The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/math_is_racist_and_22__4_is_just_a_trope.html

“2+2 does not equal five. Nor do two wrongs make a right.”

Laurie Rubel, a professor of math education at New York’s Brooklyn College, does not appear to be fond of the discipline she teaches. In fact, she apparently believes math is inherently racist. She recently tweeted, “the idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH.” In a separate tweet she noted that math “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy” after stating, albeit incoherently, “along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2 + 2 = 4 trope’ are the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’” Appearing drunk on her own peerless wokeness, she added, “I’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals).” Well, maybe just drunk.

What an amazing social justice warrior! What a flawless person! She’d rather “think on” nurturing people! And protecting the planet! Not that she’d actually do anything in furtherance of her stated goals. It is enough that she has stated them. And she wants to take that racist (and no doubt misogynistic, homophobic, and Islamophobic) math and use it “in service of them goals.” It’s a good thing she isn’t an English teacher. Though, to be fair, Ms. Rubel may believe English is at least as racist as math is. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be a better instructor.  Or Barney Rubble.

Seemingly every week another professor claims math, data, facts, good behavior, competence, proper hygiene, discipline, a work ethic, speaking ability, or another such basic building block of a successful society is prima facie evidence of the white supremacist patriarchy’s evil and unwarranted hold on American society. (How racist is that?) Yet, Rubel’s assertion that 2+2=4 is a “trope” still boggles the mind.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/when_a_newlyelected_school_board_member_stood_up_to_oppose_teaching_critical_race_theory.html

In a bizarre “Complaint” filed against recently-elected Vermont School Board member Elizabeth Cady, two citizens allege Cady’s inquiries about the introduction of Critical Race Theory (CRT) constitute a “clear breach” of School Board Operations Policy.  As in many states, this controversial ideology is seeping into Vermont’s curricula.  Cady’s case is instructive of the coercive pressure exerted by CRT radicals against those who dare question the hasty implementation of this novel, race-based “theory.”

Laura Taylor and Emily Franz allege that Cady “gave the impression that… she would represent special interests or partisan politics for personal gain.”  No monetary “personal gain” is identified.  Their real complaint, in my opinion, is summarized in their conclusion:

We are both strong supporters of the EWSD [East Westford School District] and its work on equity and inclusion. We feel that each and every member of the School Board should be as well.

CRT proponents oppose dissenting opinions.  A core principle of CRT asserts that free speech liberties have been used to oppress Black people, and thus White people cannot be permitted a differing opinion — free speech is an obstacle to “equity.”  (Ryszard Legutko calls this “coercion to freedom.”)  A quasi-religious ideology, CRT is being launched in Vermont schools via what scholar Christopher F. Rufo aptly identifies as an “institutional orthodoxy.”  This dogma does not tolerate disagreement, as it “feels that each and every member” of society “should” agree to use skin color as a determinant of education and public policy. If one disagrees, one is a heretic to be targeted, shunned and slandered.

The complaint falsely attributes an article written by reporter Guy Page to Mrs. Cady, which dared employ the word “uppity”:  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/the_father_who_fought_brearley_school_racism_has_a_message_for_everyone.html

Even as the Biden administration doubles down on Critical Race Theory, a dishonest, divisive, toxic idea holding that Whites are racist, inferior creatures who have used their unfairly obtained privilege to oppress Blacks and other races, parents are beginning to fight back. It turns out that, once you ignore cancel culture make a statement, there are a lot of people who want to follow your lead. One of those parents, to his surprise, found himself at the head of a brewing revolution.

Three weeks ago, two letters exploded on the New York education scene and started echoing through the rest of America. The first was from a teacher challenging Grace Church High School’s anti-white Critical Race Theory indoctrination. The second letter was from Andrew Gutmann, who spoke out against the same indoctrination at Brearley school. Both schools are expensive, claim to be elite, and are teaching a doctrine every bit as toxic as the Jim Crow, eugenics garbage that Democrats promoted in the first half of the 20th Century.

While the teacher’s letter was an eye-opener, the fact that Gutmann is a parent meant that his letter resonated with parents across American. To his surprise, he’s found himself leading the charge for these parents. In an opinion piece in the New York Post, Gutmann describes the positive feedback he’s getting, as well as the fact that there is a huge battle ahead for those parents unhappy about the hard left turn their children’s education has taken:

I am enormously gratified by the overwhelmingly supportive emails and messages that I have personally received. Countless parents expressed to me their appreciation for stating clearly and forcibly what so many Americans have been thinking but have been too afraid to state out loud. Many also conveyed that they felt newly emboldened to speak up for their children. I have learned that my letter has been circulated and discussed in Board of Trustees meetings of schools across the country and I have been told that it has begun to make an impact. Even Brearley, after initially dismissing the contents of my letter and indicating a desire to double down on antiracism initiatives has, for the very first time, offered parents an opportunity to ask questions about the school’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracist initiatives. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Gutmann learned from the outpouring of messages that, in a single year, Critical Race Theory has become deeply embedded in American education from kindergarten through to graduate work: