"This is not happening, and it's good that it is" (also, more evidence that it's not confined to the law)
No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Here's the Abundant Evidence Saying Otherwise
"Mary Nicely, who is now second-in-command at the California Department of Education, went on her personal Facebook page this summer to denounce conservatives who oppose teaching critical race theory in schools as “yet another White right and education reformer distraction.”
Nicely also reposted a newspaper column in July defining critical race theory as a key used in law schools to expose racism in the legal system: “It is taught, if at all, in law school — not high school.”
Her claim echoed other education experts, like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who tweeted: “We could explain until our last breath that CRT is not taught in K-12, but the actual definition of CRT doesn’t matter anymore in these debates.”
These denials, which have been amplified by many news organizations, are at odds with overwhelming evidence – documented by class lessons, school curricula, focus groups, teacher surveys and public statements by educators – that CRT is not only taught in class, but is also heavily promoted by the K-12 education establishment.
Some high schools are already teaching lessons and units on CRT, where students write papers demonstrating their facility with applying the theory, while other schools are introducing CRT concepts, such as systemic racism, white privilege, microaggressions, implicit bias and intersectionality.
Public and private schools are also training teachers, staff, administrators – and even parents – on the elements of critical race theory, which school administrators see as an indispensable tool for dismantling what activists describe as America’s racial caste system.
A July survey by EducationWeek found that barely a year after the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota cop, 8% of K-12 teachers said they have taught or discussed CRT with students; the figure for teachers in urban schools is much higher: 20%.
Meanwhile, the Association of American Educators found in July that 4.1% of teachers were actually required to teach critical race theory, and 11% said that teaching CRT should be mandatory...
“Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you'll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines,” Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at a Nov. 9 board of education meeting. “We were very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials, and embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”...
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, believes it is “educational malpractice” not to teach students about critical race theory at the height of its cultural moment. But Zimmerman thinks it’s perverse to teach it and claim not to.
“I think it’s a defensive posture,” he said of progressives. “They know the Republicans have succeeded in demonizing it and I don’t think they have the confidence and the courage to defend it.”
CRT is poised to grow at an unprecedented scale in Nicely’s bellwether state of California, which in March approved an Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that states teachers and administrators should be familiar with the theory and includes an example of how to teach it in high school.
In October, the state’s legislature made ethnic studies – a subject that focuses on the histories and cultures of marginalized identity groups, such as indigenous populations and African Americans – a requirement for high school graduation. Although ethnic studies is not identical to CRT, many academics, teachers and consultants who develop ethnic studies curricula for K-12 schools say that CRT is the software on which ethnic studies runs. (Nicely declined comment for this article.)
"Ethnic studies without Critical Race Theory is not ethnic studies,” Manuel Rustin, a high school history teacher who helped oversee the drafting of California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, told EdSource earlier this year. “It would be like a science class without the scientific method. There is no critical analysis of systems of power and experiences of these marginalized groups without Critical Race Theory.”
This means that within several years, when the high school graduation mandate goes into effect, California’s 1.7 million secondary school students would be exposed to CRT – and its trademark practices, such as interrogating “whiteness,” systemic racism, colorblindness and meritocracy as tools of power and oppression – on an unprecedented scale.
A sample course description included in state’s model curriculum affirms CRT’s centrality for the field of ethnic studies.
"Students will be introduced to the concept Critical Race Theory as they highlight and discuss [an assigned] reading in small groups,” reads the description of an actual course taught at San Juan High School in Citrus Heights. "One of the main focuses of ethnic studies is translating historical lessons and Critical Race Theory into direct action for social justice."
Focus groups in California surveying 48 teachers and 17 administrators last year found that “an essential focus of ethnic studies content is critical theory and critical framing”...
Critics warned that the [Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum] contains at least 90 direct and indirect references to CRT...
“I am just so relieved that California stood up and kept critical race theory intact,” Rustin said on his podcast in March. “That's an example for other states to follow, honestly.”...
What makes CRT truly radical is that it “questions the very foundations of the liberal order” as the source of anti-black oppression, according to “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,” a 2001 book, now in its third edition, that’s used in high schools and universities. Classical liberal ideals such as free speech, equal treatment and individual rights are not revered as sacrosanct constitutional guarantees, but regarded as hollow phrases and unearned privileges – mere smokescreens created by white men to justify structuring social institutions for their own advantage – that sometimes need to be scaled back to advance social justice.
Critical race theory entered the field of education in the mid-1990s, initially as an academic research methodology for explaining racial disparities in school discipline, standardized test scores and high school graduation rates as consequences of systemic racism and implicit bias, as opposed to social pathologies within the black community. Over time, the study of CRT trickled down to education students in college, who then became K-12 teachers and administrators and began applying the ideas in their work as educators. More recently, with the growth of the ethnic studies movement and the nation’s so-called racial reckoning, CRT and anti-racist pedagogy have become entrenched in the educational establishment.
In a groundbreaking 1995 article, “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education,” the authors argue that “U.S. society is based on property rights rather than human rights,” and that “racism is as healthy today as it was during the Enlightenment.” The paper refers to white people as “the oppressor” and “the perpetrator.”...
The Tamalpais Union High School District in Marin County approved a high school class called An Examination of Race in the United States. The course description outlines such learning goals as: “Students can identify the tenets of CRT and key scholars who were instrumental in its development.” Sample assignments include: “Students will write a 2‐3 page essay describing CRT and utility in evaluating historical and current events.”
A 12th grade, year-long course at the Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County, called Deconstructing Race, instructs students how to critique “whiteness” through a CRT lens. “How can white race and culture be examined and critiqued?” the course description reads.
Acalanes students learn about the tenets and themes of CRT, examine CRT’s legal origins, read case law excerpts, study legal storytelling, narrative analysis and counter-storytelling. As one of the hallmarks of CRT, narrative theory and counter-stories were developed by law professors who adapted classic courtroom rhetorical techniques of framing facts to the maximum advantage of one’s client, but in CRT’s case it’s for the purposes of political advocacy and moral suasion.
In other instances, CRT may not be on the menu, but it’s in the ingredients, so that teachers season their lectures with the theory to help students grapple with social issues...
It’s impossible to tell how common CRT is in the nation’s high schools, because as often as not, teachers don’t cite the theory by name when they teach it.
“K-12 teachers didn’t usually get up and say, ‘Well, today we’re going to do a lesson on critical race theory,” Theresa Montaño, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at the California State University, coached teachers during a November webinar.
“What they did is they took those tenets of critical race theory, the pedagogy, or the methodology, and create[d] pedagogical models,” she said. “You’re going to see how classroom teachers apply some of these pedagogical models in ways where they don’t even mention the words critical race theory but are doing anti-racist work.”
Montaño boiled down CRT to one of its core tenets – the ubiquity and permanence of racism in American society: “Simply what critical race theory argues is that every time our students of color walk out of their door into society, their every single day experience is informed by their encounters with racism.”...
Schools and teachers who use and teach CRT in school are not engaging in professional malpractice; indeed, teacher training colleges encourage it as a professional duty.
“There are plenty of topics that are reserved for the collegiate level and have difficulty translating to K-12 schools because they are too specific, advanced, or inappropriate for children. However, CRT does not fit those criteria,” Loyola University Maryland’s school of education said in a statement of solidarity. “We encourage teachers to use CRT to initiate complex dialogues about systems, structures, and race in our country. These conversations are vital to the collective work of eliminating barriers to opportunity and success, and are intended to promote solidarity, compassion, and care.”
Likewise, the nation’s largest teacher union, the National Education Association, endorsed CRT at its 100th Representative Assembly this summer. The union vowed support and to lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic … studies curriculum in pre-K-12 and higher education,” the trade publication EdWeek reported...
PEN America has also stated that “CRT is not taught in elementary, middle or high schools”...
One of the most frustrating claims of CRT for its critics is the idea that there is no objective truth, only the subjective perspectives of competing identity groups, and one’s identity can confer a special, almost prophetic, authority to interpret the human experience. Once opinions become a function of one’s identity, then it naturally follows that claims of oppression and microaggressions are unimpeachable, and objections to CRT can be dismissed as the exercise of white privilege and systemic racism.
“CRT’s adversaries are perhaps most concerned with what they perceive to be critical race theorists’ nonchalance about objective truth,” according to “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.”
“For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics,” the authors state. “In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group.”...
Marvin Lynn, dubbed by Loyola University Maryland as a renowned education and CRT scholar, said that conservatives are correct that CRT can be found in K-12 schools "
This is another great summary of the relationship between post-modernism and critical theory/grievance studies