John Thompson reports that the crusade against teaching racism critically is in full swing in Oklahoma. Rightwing legislators can’t seem to understand why it’s okay to encourage students to think critically about the terrorist bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City but to forbid them to think critically about racism.
Who would have thunk it?
The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, at the site of the Murrah Building where 168 people were murdered by Timothy McVeigh, has an exhibit that asks questions like:
“Do you see a relationship from the violence that occurred on this site and the events happening in our world today?” It offers conversation prompts such as “What are the pros and cons of having a domestic terrorism law?” and “Does social media play a part?”
Isn’t that what leftist teachers ask when using critical race theory (CRT) in order to shame white people?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rightwing legislators are also ed reform legislators. Not all ed reformers are Right wing, but all Right wingers are ed reformers.
How long are public school supporters supposed to pretend these folks are actually interested in “improving public education”? How many political attacks on our schools are we supposed to put up with before we admit the obvious- not one of these people supports our schools or contributes anything of positive value to our schools yet they insist they should RUN our schools.
The summer immediately following the pandemic Right wing ed reformers looked around and said “let’s start a critical race theory panic in public schools!”. This is the “work” they chose to do. You don’t need to know anything more about them. They are NOT working for public school students. They’re working against labor unions, or against “government” or against “cultural changes” or whatever this month’s attack is about but what they completely FAIL to do is contribute anything of practical value to any public school, anywhere.
It’s really a disservice to students in public schools to continue to go along with ed reformers. They don’t deliver for our students. We can find and hire people who will. That’s possible.
Meanwhile, while Republicans continue to divert attention with attacks on CRT strawmen, the right wing Supreme Court continues it’s attack on the Voting Rights Act.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/brnovich-vra-scotus-decision-arizona-voting-right/619330/
Headed by John Roberts, the fellow who testified under oath in his confirmation hearing that he would respect established precedent.
Supreme Clothes
Black robes, white robes
What’s the diff?
Black Supreme clothes
Meaningless
To be fair, maybe Roberts was referring to pre Civil war legal precedent.
OMG these voting laws are like counting angels on the head of the pin. Why oh why don’t we have automatic voter registration conveyed with a US-born birth certificate which can be activated at age 18?!
Key takeaway of this article on SCOTUS 7/1 decision: “There is an impulse in American society and politics today to unmoor the present from the country’s history of racial discrimination.” Here SCOTUS yet again undermines the Voting Rights Act, which it already mutilated in 2013. [Did they think racial discrimination/ voter suppression was gone because we’d elected a black President?] Meanwhile since 2013 we’ve had a backlash of white supremacy unleashed by Obama’s successor, culminating in the televised murder of a handcuffed black citizen barely over a year ago, plus a white-supremacist insurrection against the counting of the vote just 6 months ago, and a rash of voter-suppression legislation across red states.
It’s the SCOTUS that is unmoored.
“For the majority, and thus for the Court, in order to free the states and the present, they must be liberated from the past.”
No wonder we do not want to hear about CRT. Sounds like all history is banned in modern conservatism.
Isn’t the American Enterprise Institute backing this ridiculous panic?
Why would I accept their directives for public schools? Can we possibly instead take direction from people who actually support public schools or is it mandated that all public school policy must come exclusively from people who are ideologically opposed to the existence of our schools?
How can that possibly serve public school students, who, after all, ATTEND the schools these people are attacking? It’s nuts. No one should accept it. No one in their right mind would.
And Steve Bannon has said, “the path to save the nation is very simple. It’s going to go through the school boards.”
The attack on CRT is another excuse to rile up the right so they will attack public schools. It is hypocritical that Democrats espouse support for public education while they repeatedly sell their allegiance to the same right wing that attacks public schools. Corporate Democrats have aligned with DeVos, ALEC and The Heritage Foundation. The war on public education is a war on democracy itself.
“It’s going to go through the school boards”
That has been the xtian regressive fundie strategy since the 70s in order to get their version of Bibble Dribble taught in the public schools.
Second is NBC story on quanon’s plan – run for school board
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanons-new-plan-run-school-board-rcna1352
Flynn is a very dangerous type.
Intriguing that the media has blown up the battle over CRT, but has no interest in the corporate takeover of public schools. Charter scandals involving the theft of millions of dollars and fake promises to kids, are a one-day story.
That’s it right there, Diane. The elite are only liberal on social issues. On financial issues, they are conservative. That’s neoliberalism in a nutshell. Corporations are happy to let red states and blue states fight and fight and fight, as long as no one mentions any economic injustices. It takes constant effort to get people to move on taking away the charter school slush fund or passing an infrastructure bill.
Yes Diane, I’ve been thinking how ironic it is that rw pols see the path to flipping the Congress (& later the Presidency) as running through K12 pubschs & state-supported colleges. If this controversy still has legs in a year, it will be the first time in a dog’s age [if ever] that Dem or Rep parties saw publicly-supported ed as anything other than a minor issue– a public service to discredit and defund.
Bethree, I find it sad that the only time the polls and pundits care about public education is when there is a hullabaloo about CRT (too much time talking about racism). They have no interest in investigating the corporate takeover of public schools.
LCT, I don’t think that’s fair. There is robust support in the Dem Congress for $big worker & school/ childcare aid [which they’ve passed—but had to bypass Senate to do so] as well as huge investment in infrastructure [still in negotiation mainly because unsure whether to again bypass Senate]. That suggests that progressive impulse in Dem Party—economically, not just culturally—is beginning to get an edge on the Dem neoliberals. Would never have happened without pandemic; pandemic revealed weakness in the neoliberal approach. The stumbling block here is strictly Republican: a 50-50 split in Senate with a fly in ointment [Manchin].
When I say “elite”, I’m talking about the media. There was a time, I think, when the elite were in government. Nowadays, the elite features cable news pundits and Hollywood producers.
Ah I getcha. Agreed.
From where I sit in St. Petersburg, the male brown anole–in Flor-uh-duh, an invasive lizard–seems just about the dumbest creature on planet Earth. It spends its whole life squared off against another male brown anole and flexing mindlessly—pumping its body up and down and displaying its dewlap. Having followed American politics for some time and heard a lot of speeches (Trump, Cruz) and radio and television commentaries (Limbaugh, Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham) by Republicans , I was, of course, already familiar with the phenomenon.
And CRT in K-12, ofc, was nonexistent A scary Repugnican bedtime-for-democracy story up there with Jewish space lasesrs and schools teaching Sharia law: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2021/07/04/3491/
Bob, this brouhaha over CRT is meant to appeal to white racists and to distract attention from the insurrection of January 6, a day that should live in infamy. Republicans want to forget and move on.
Diane I agree the CRT brouhaha is exquisitely timed to distract from the Jan 6 insurrection. It’s clearly a gambit, as in “what, white supremacy and Jan 6? look at what those black academic racists are up to!”– & should be getting lots more press as such. Way to combat this issue is to brand it another “Big Lie”– just like the ‘stolen election’ bit distracts from the fact that US population is sick of Trumpista interlude & ready for a return to political norms.
Well, I agree, Diane, but I think it’s more than that. Ever since someone took Trump the idea of creating a nationalist curriculum, the right has been fired up about that. They see it was a way of winning back young people. And they’ve had enormous success. Starting with this coming school year, teachers in many states are going to be working under the shadow of the Thought Police. It’s all very sudden, extreme, chilling, and from the POV of the fascists, successful.
It has to be fought.
The Repugnicans were very serious about their propaganda curriculum, the 1776 Project. And now that that’s nixed, they are resorting to this.
They know that they are losing with young people and losing badly and that they have to crank up the indoctrination by turning U.S. schools into fundamentalist, nationalist madrasas.
K-12 CRT is simply the totally fabricated excuse. Something to scare the rubes and justify the Thought Control legislation.
How many K-12 teachers in the U.S. had ever even heard of CRT before all this nonsense started? I don’t know. Three, maybe?
Before,: no one had heard of it (or likely ever would have)
After: everyone has.
Ha ha ha.
It’s called the Streisand Effect
The Magnifier
A magnifying glass
Is known to start a fire
When sun is made to pass
And focussed on a pyre
Maybe “The Magnifier” would be a better title
Magnifire
Damned autocorrect
Magnifire
LOL
Wag the Dog
Dustin Hoffman as Rufo
Four perhaps
Bob, to get really real here, there are a few school districts in the US as well as some private schools that have bought into over-the-top tripe imported from adult [non-profit & corporate] diversity-training dumbed down/ distorted for K12, resulting in some not-great/ age-inappropriate exercises designed to tease out bias by means which are not appropriate for children. In other words, not just 8th-12th-gr school kids talking about our racist past and comparing historical narratives. And ed-industry is right on their heels, churning out iffy content that could cause division and confusion among students. That this is not CRT per se is beside the point, it will be labelled as such, and trying to refute the rw media onslaught is whack-a-mole.
We do not need to deny or even address this. It is a matter to be debated among members of the school community. What we need to stand up against is the interference of the state in curriculum. State standards should be a framework of minimum requirements; curriculum to be developed at district/ bldg level by professional teachers.
As Dems– &/ or teachers– our position should be whatever it takes to get the pols [especially the legislature!] the heck out of the classroom. Best approach may be to label this whole thing as another “Big Lie.”
Ginny, OBVIOUSLY, elementary school is not the place for diversity training. It’s the place for kids of all races and ethnicities and creeds to play together and learn to enjoy one another. But your comment is troubling because it provides comfort to the enemy here. Any such stuff as what you are describing is vanishingly rare and should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis not brought up when we are discussing the attack of the right on the teaching of actual history rather than jingoistic nationalist propaganda. Please don’t give these creepy incipient (in some cases, full-blown in others) fascists any ammunition.
Agree, Bob. That’s why I say we do not need to refute or even address it: debating the degree of prevalence just plays into this political red herring. Diversity-training for tykes, where/ when/ if encountered at all, may be viewed as another crumb on the s**pile of age-inappropriate curriculum dumped on public schools by people peddling something.
Yes, behree!!!
CRT was not taught in High School. But maybe it should be! Critical thinking is important, especially in history. Terrorist within this country are the greatest threat to our country! Most of our intelligence agencies agree! Timothy McVeigh was just an example of how domestic violence is encouraged by certain aspects of this culture!
Anybody here figured out yet how critical race theory is related to fruit flies in kitchens? Sure would like to eliminate these. Feel free to post your thoughts here about any other troubles you’ve had recently with CRT.
BTW, if you park your car under CRT, you can get spots on the paint job that just won’t come out.
On the one hand, it is completely ridiculous to try to teach history without mentioning that anything wrong ever happened. However, it is entirely possible to go too far and suggest that nothing right ever happened. Several years ago, a teacher who no longer works at my school put on an assembly for Black History Month, and in the assembly, called all white people devils. That was hurtful. She also told students to fear all police officers. That was harmful. Name calling, making fun of dialects, labeling people stupid or evil, and presenting a monochromatic view of the world is wrong on both sides. I am guilty too. We who are teachers need to be above the fray. If Marjorie Taylor Green were one of my students, I would respect her views. I would present information that challenged them, but there would be nothing but respectfulness in the doing.
I getcha. A whole lotta crazy stuff can happen in school from time to time. As nycpsp pointed out a while back, if CRT-like overreach is happening [perhaps under the name of Diversity and Inclusion], it won’t be the first misguided ed fad to come down the pike. The key [for parents] is not to call the cops or write your legislator or publish it on FB. The only & best thing admin/ teachers can do is establish good relations with parent families & stay in close touch, so they come to you first with questions and feedback.
Let’s ignore the long, horrific history of racism in this country. Let’s ignore the systemic racism that erupted into protests after the murder by police of George Floyd. Let’s ignore the continuing economic inequity suffered by people of color. Let’s ignore that we have more black men in prison than were enslaved in 1858. Let’s ignore the centuries of systematic exclusion. Let’s ignore that black people are much more likely to be stopped and harassed by police, arrested, and convicted in court than are white people and that when convicted, for the same crime, are given longer sentences. Let’s forget about the fact that Covid-19 hit black and indigenous and other poor communities of POC much, much harder than it did white communities because folks living in those are much less likely to have insurance and access to healthcare and are much more likely to suffer from pre-existing conditions due to growing up in poverty and deprivation. Let’s ignore Trump and the other white supremacists in his Offal Office separating brown-skinned babies from their parents. No, what we really need to get all worked up about is that we didn’t like some diversity picture book used in one school somewhere by one teacher. What we really need to get worked up about is something that no teacher ever taught to schoolkids because they hadn’t even heard of freaking Critical Race Theory.
Yeah, those are the real problems, and to counter them, we need the Thought Police passing laws to tell teachers what they can’t teach, which is anything that isn’t blithering fascist nationalistic white supremacist jingoism.
Uh, no thank you.
Let’s ignore the FACT that if you are black or brown in the United States, you have to have The Talk to your kid about making sure the police don’t mistake that cell phone or toy for a gun and have The Talk again to your teenager about what he or she absolutely must do if stopped, when driving, by the police in order to keep from getting shot.
Not important. In some school somewhere, one teacher showed a picture book about racism to her students, and it made little Tommy White feel bad. That’s the real problem.
Not.
And I sure do wish that scientists would stop all that research on cancer and heat disease given that we have really important issues like skinned knees to deal with!
Sorry. Zero respect for the view that we should be trying to stop the Jewish space lasers.
Can you buy a used Jewish space laser on eBay?
I’d like to do some hamster vaporization experiments.
FYI
I’m only interested in Jenuine Jewish Space Lasers (TM), identified with a six pointed star of David where the laser light spot normally is in the warning symbol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laser-symbol-text.svg
I am aware that there are some Chinese knockoffs with a five pointed Chinese star but I heard they are not as good and you don’t get the same bang for the buck.
Mel Brooks created the Jewish space lasers:
It is little known that the Jewish space lasers story was first made public by the Koch-funded Mohels for Prosperity. They fear the space lasers will kill their business model. Unpublished intelligence reports obtained by the New York Times have confirmed that the space laser Greene cited was really a test run for an intended project to circumcise the newborn son of a prominent Jewish member of the Dark Money Syndicate in northern California, but for some reason, the ray went toward the forests. “We’ll make it up for it with a bar mitzvah for the ages!” said the unidentified DMS member.
The MfP and Greene teamed up for this to work to remove funding for the space laser program from this year’s budget and have the money shifted to a K12 charter franchise devoted to Mohel education and advocacy. The theoretical curriculum is fine according to McKinsey consulting experts. But there have been issues with hands-on, as it were, practical experience, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic-inspired social distancing policies. It remains to be seen if Jeff Bezos’ DSM-funded rocket launch later this month will include the new space laser models as originally planned before the mission’s true purpose became public.
LCT: While you are correct about needing to balance history in a survey class between the things that happened that were horrible and those that were hopeful, I think we can present the horrifying in ways that will influence children to be better consumers of information fed to them by the perpetrators of atrocity. We have done a pretty good job of teaching kids about the Holocaust in recent years, nonwithstanding those who still deny its reality.
History is actually a story of enlightenment pushing back at inhumanity. Sometime one side wins and sometimes the other. The winning side always wants to be seen as enlightened. To this end they push away stories that show their dark side, but all movements seem to have the elements of the shadow vs the enlightened.
Figures of the Enlightenment actually began us on a march toward better government. But, from Montesquieu to Modernity ideas have lived together that are contradictory at best. Few people in 1750 considered women human, let alone equal. Olympia de Gouges found herself on the guillotine as proof of the lack of the Enlightenment’s regard for women. That does not negate the real progress of that era with regard to governmental development.
So it is hard to mix all the story in a survey class. I do not think God Almighty could referee a ballgame or teach a high school history class to the satisfaction of all.