Battle over Critical Race Theory
wsj.com
wsj.com
I read and re-read CRT papers to understand what they're talking about, and they make a lot of really good points. They also have a fair number of errors. That's common to most documents.
It'd a brilliant starting point for a critical discussion.
As-is, it's trivial for people on the left to point out obviously true statements missing from the central narrative, and call opponents racists.
It's equally trivial for people on the right to call out things which are obviously wrong, and discount the whole thing.
What we need, though, is to sort out the good parts, refine them, and get rid of or fix the bad parts. We can argue about the ratios there, but I don't think we can argue it's 100% wrong or right.
Recently I've noticed the theme is to post purile edicts proclaiming that CRT is "just acknowledging that racism exists and is bad" (and therefore if you question it or this post, then you're a racist). But no, that's a lie. That's not what CRT is, it absolutely should be critically examined and questioned.
As and ideology it would be good to introduce when one is reading Adam Smith, Marx and Mussolini.
But I think a lot of the concern is that CRT isn’t being taught as an ideology amongst others, but it is being employed as the underlying “unseen” lens that is being applied to all aspects of curriculum and the classroom.
I also think CRT like a lot of more modern movements lacks a central authority that then allows the practitioners to take it in all sorts of directions that may or may not have been intended.
You can see in many CRT zealots that race predetermines everything. Like when talking to a Marxist. Everything is understood if you just apply the right lens. If only the world was so simple.
Like so much of education it is just another passing fad applied badly. My concern is that the opportunity to make the needed change is going to be missed due the extremes fighting and not getting to meaningful improvements.
CRT is a helpful lens, much like Marxism, Smith-style capitalism, and many other lenses. Like all of those, it has its limits. I want my kids to have as many lenses as possible, and to be able to use them critically.
I'll mention -- even elementary school kids have no problems understanding these lenses. I'd argue Smith, CRT, and Marx ought to be taught around 3rd-5th grade, not high school. My problem is CRT is being taught in kindergarten.
I don't agree any of those things should be taught in 3rd-5th grade because I think it is much more important to exercise the fundamentals of critical and creative thinking, logic, imagination, etc. at those ages.
I also have a big problem at any level of schooling with these unscientific and unproven "theories" (if you can even call them that) being taught by people who have entirely bought into the cult thinking and have no ability to critically reason about them let alone the desire to.
Would lessons about socialism and collectivism teach why the system can generally only sustain itself at a state level by devolving into a single party police state dictatorship in which the people most certainly do not own the means of production? Doubtful.
Would the teaching of CRT expose it for the unproven religious-like propaganda that it is? Or would it teach the horrific hurtful and racist pseudoscientific lies about toxic whiteness or children bearing some responsibility for things done by other people due to their race? Probably the latter, right?
It's like inviting a white supremacist to teach children lessons about nazism. Or a creationist to teach biology. Or a flat earther to each geology. Not a helpful lens at all.
That's exactly how you develop it. You teach complex concepts which require kids to sort truth from fiction. You don't teach one. You teach many.
> I also have a big problem at any level of schooling with these unscientific and unproven "theories" (if you can even call them that) being taught by people who have entirely bought into the cult thinking and have no ability to critically reason about them let alone the desire to.
I agree.
> Would lessons about socialism and collectivism teach why the system can generally only sustain itself at a state level by devolving into a single party police state dictatorship in which the people most certainly do not own the means of production? Doubtful.
You're generalizing an awful lot from n=1. We had the Soviet Block. That's the only time it's been tried. It'd be like evaluating liberal democracy from the French Revolution or the current collapsing Afghani government.
> It's like inviting a white supremacist to teach children lessons about nazism. Or a creationist to teach biology. Or a flat earther to each geology. Not a helpful lens at all.
I teach my kid those alternative theories too. I do a sincere job of it too. He doesn't believe me, in part due to other adults in his life.
I disagree.
> You teach complex concepts which require kids to sort truth from fiction. You don't teach one. You teach many.
And there are many. Take away nazism, flat eartherism, and CRT, and there are still many. Many more interesting useful and fruitful things to teach at that age.
For sure teach them to beware of said charlatans and snake oil peddlers, but there's really no need to spend any amount of time on the bullcrap they believe. There are countless unscientific cult beliefs like this, you're going to pollute your child's mind with all of them when they are like 8-10 years old??
> You're generalizing an awful lot from n=1.
I'm not, I'm talking about the basic human nature behind it (and resulting in not only CPSU but CPC, and WPK, CPK, etc.) But I'm not here to litigate the merits of socialism so much as to say it's unproven and unscientific at best. Looks like snake oil no matter how you look at it -- promises to be all things to all people, and has no proven results behind it and arguably many spectacular failures.
> I teach my kid those alternative theories too. I do a sincere job of it too. He doesn't believe me, in part due to other adults in his life.
That doesn't mean it's good for your kid though. An if it is, you're the one generalizing an awful lot from n=1.
The one place where we tend to confuse ourselves is that we're charlatans and snake oil peddlers too. We all hold countless unscientific cult beliefs, some individually, and some by virtue of being embedded in a given historical and cultural context. Those are embedded in EVERY cultural and historical context. Anything you teach your kid might be snake oil, and I have enough of an open mind to know I might be wrong.
Ergo, I don't have a problem with teaching kids things which are wrong, so much as with the cult-like way in which schools teach many concepts like CRT, or the right-wing equivalents.
You are firmly an N=1 case here. I'm not going to argue the merits of your teaching ideas any more because it's clear you believe in them, but if you don't realize your ideas are pretty extreme and fringe, then you should.
We really should de-learn much of the enlightenment period. The fantastical thinking of this era should never have been taken as fact.
As a specie we lost the plot and gave in to the theatrics of politics.
Human migration and mixing has always happened and will never stop. Heck its how humanity started/spread. So can someone tell us why its so difficult to accept that a man from Zambia is different from an Icelandic man? They are both men. Period.
At first, the goal in Russia was to implement communism in order to create a more equitable society. Of course, the biggest enemy of communism is the rich landlord. So naturally this was used as an excuse to target all rich people, even those who didn't do anything wrong other than manage to build a good life for themselves. The great irony is that at some point, even poor and average people started being prosecuted in the name of communism and they lived in fear of being sent to the gulag.
Critical race theory (or perhaps the social justice movement in general) is used as a weapon to prosecute people, and the scope of who can be prosecuted is growing (cough the George Floyd trial.)
[0] The Blindboy Podcast episode from 2021 May 30, The return of Emma Dabiri
[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/what-white-people-can-do-next...