Having what taught as a truth?
Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory isn’t taught at all at the K-12 level.
Then it seems that these school board meetings in VA with the parents showing up would be quick.
Parents: We demand that you do not teach CRT to our children!
Board: Done. Next item is…
Also you wouldn’t have needed McAuliffe to say his gaffe about parents not saying what their children should be taught. He could have just said, “Parents don’t want CRT taught in schools, and we have listened. No VA K-12 schools teach CRT.”
Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. CRT isn’t taught at the grade school or high school level.
It’s part of the Trump playbook. Use a phrase, but devoid of context, so that your audience members can each supply it with whatever the like. “Don’t Teach CRT in schools!”
Democrats: CRT = critical race theory. Okay. We don’t and we won’t. Next.
Republicans: CRT = liberal anti-white indoctrination, which is totally happening.
There’s no dialogue possible when the two groups are using the same phrase as shorthand for entirely different conversations.
It might be reasonable to have a debate as to whether teachers ought to have some background in Critical Race Theory. I think they should. It is certainly reasonable to discuss how issues of race are being taught, or not taught. The trouble is, I don’t think most of the electorate is prepared to hear that the history they were taught was incomplete or incorrect, even though it was.
Maybe someone else can answer, because it isn’t a gotcha question. When you read about these school board meetings with parents showing up in a froth about CRT, why doesn’t the President, at the beginning of the meeting, say:
“I see this room is full of people ready to string us up from the tree outside here. But your anger is misplaced. We do not, and have no intention, of introducing CRT to the curriculum of our public schools. It is not there. To the extent that you believe teaching CRT is harmful, fear not, for it is not taught to your children, and it is not on today’s agenda, next month’s agenda, or next year’s agenda. Please stay for the rest of the meeting if you like, but your position has carried the day.”
??
I think you meant to say “Some Parents” as that is far from universal. The parents who are demanding such and seem to not understand what it really is are best summed up in this comic:
Because the only ones they would believe are the “news” propagandists that they listen to. Unless they hear it from them they will not stop freaking out about whatever they are told to freak out about.
Yeah, it’d have been nice if McAuliffe said something along the lines of “We promise not to teach Torts and Contract Law in elementary school, either.”
As far as how this bodes for 2022: the good news is that elementary education is not generally something that House and Senate candidates talk about, since the federal government has virtually nothing to do with curricula.
Also, voters will be in a lot better mood in 12 months when Covid is a distant unhappy memory – we’re no longer talking about mask mandates and vaccine mandates, and the economy is humming.
So the best thing the Dems could do would be: pass the goddam infrastructure bills. Get a success under their belt, that they can run on.
And the crowd responds, “LIAR!!!!”
Out of curiosity, what do you think is the most imprtant thing in the infrastructure bill? What is needed the most?
Language games. The left plays them all the time. One day 'we’re all socialists now." Then socialism polls badly, and suddenly it’s, “Whaa? Socialism? There are no Socialists! It’s a Republican Bogeyman!” And every time someone on the right brings up socialism we have to have a tedious discussion about the minutae of what defines the term and what doesn’t. Antifa doesn’t exist, because it’s not a centralized movement or something. There are no Marxists in BLM, even though two of the leaders said they were ‘trained Marxists’.
When normal people, and not academics from ‘studies’ programs talk about CRT, everyone knows what they are talking about: White Fragility, ‘white supremacy’ being a serious thing impacting minorities today, ‘original sin’ of white people requiring them to be actively anti-racist to be absolved of their white guilt, racial quotas to fight ‘white supremacy’ or for that matter ANY material that assigns differences to individuals based on their race or skin color.
Telling them that “this is not strictly CRT you stupid rubes” is likely to work about as well as Republicans trying to parse the term ‘assault rifle’ vs ‘assault weapon’. To gun activists there’s no such thing as an ‘assault weapon’, and they are correct. But the other side just shrugs at the pedantry and says, “You know damned well what we are talking about.” Their pedantic argument about terminology did not prevent an assault weapons ban from being enacted. And it won’t stop people from using CRT as the catch-all term for racist ideas they despise.
There is a huge, profitable industry devoted to telling professional Democrats what they want to hear.
It’s impossible to actually examine the curriculum in a Northern Virginia school or the documents issued by Atif Qarni’s Department of Education and conclude that “critical race theory is not taught at the K-12 level.” It’s impossible to actually listen to what Scott Smith said about his daughter’s rape and conclude that this controversy had anything to do with “restricting trans bathroom access.” It’s impossible to read the actual statements of the Fairfax school board or the DOE’s curriculum committee and conclude that there isn’t a huge push for anti-Asian quotas and to eliminate appropriate education for advanced students. It’s impossible to look at the names and appearances of the people leading the movement against the VA Democrats’ assault on education and conclude that they are “white supremacists” for any coherent definition of that term.
But it’s very easy to listen to low-intelligence people on MSNBC who know where their bread is buttered report that “there is no CRT,” “the bathroom rape doesn’t count because the victim knew the rapist,” “everyone in Virginia, one of the most reliably Democratic states in the country for the last decade, suddenly became a white supremacist Republican partisan in the last year for no reason.” Not only is this intellectually dishonest on its face, it’s a pretty fucking terrible way to try to win an election - it rejects even the most basic curiosity about what is motivating the voters in favor of just-so stories about why you were right all along and everyone who notices that your pronouncements make no sense or has a problem with your policies is an Evil Person Who Doesn’t Count.
Far too many people who get paid to advise Democratic candidates or have the time to post on the Internet about politics would rather be told they were born correct about everything and never need to revise their worldviews in light of evidence, than actually learn something about what’s going on outside their bubble in order to win elections.
That’s the funny thing about thinking that the redefinition of words away from what they are commonly understood to mean. Only the folks who want to be fooled are.
So much of this is BS. Nobody is saying that a rape “didn’t count” because the victim knew her rapist. Everybody on both sides is critical about how this was treated. Everybody is calling for the superintendant to be fired and to know why the sheriff’s department took two months to investigate before an arrest. Nobody is eliminating advanced education. There was research done on whether math education should be restructured so that tracking only begins after 10th grade. It hasn’t been implemented, and it would not affect students who wanted to take higher level courses in the last two years of high school including college level calculus. (Incidentally, I don’t agree with this proposal but I don’t have children). it does seem to me that the advanced placement system is way out of hand. We have a systems where students feel they are falling behind unless they start AP classes by sophomore year and take at least 10-12 AP classes. AP classes are supposed to be college level classes and are for students who have completed their high school classes and are ready for college level classes. However, many of these students get to college and need remedial classes just to be ready for college work. When I took AP calculus I was ready to step into the fourth semester of college calculus and do the work. With the current devaluing of advanced classes, even the students in “accelerated” classes are really not getting college level training. Youngkin’s response to what you call an “assault on education” is to promote private schools and charter schools and leave the public schools to fester. That is a sure way to ensure that there are not enough students to justify accelerated classes in public schools.
And what you define as “critical race theory” currently being taught in the public schools should be taught. Students should know the history of our country, and should appreciate the advantages they have.They should learn about slavery and should learn about the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movements and the treatment of immigrants in this country.
As far as CRT goes, it’s a buzzword and Republicans are great at buzzwords.
However, I have the same hope for Youngkin that I had for Trump, that he will turn out to be a reasonable man who surrounds himself with qualified and ethical advisors who want to do what is best for Virginia. Let us see what he starts with. If his first action is to ban mask mandates in schools thus putting all Virginians at risk from Covid, then we will know that his motivation is to please the Trump base rather than to govern effectively.
I am actually not sure of the most critical individual projects. There are clearly some roads and bridges that are in critical condition that need to be fixed before they collapse. Water systems need to be made safe and lead pipes eliminated. I would like to see broadband internet available across the country at affordable rates. It is my hope that the allocation of funds can be done by people with a real knowledge of the situation but I fear it will fall victim to lobbying and backroom deals.
Can you provide some cites that any of this is being taught in schools either? I don’t mean a few nutty teachers here and there (there are nutty teachers sneaking creationism into schools, but you don’t have people screaming at school boards for that). I mean working its way into state curricula.
And, if we are all supposed to know that’s not CRT, then why is everyone screaming about CRT?
As for the rest of your cite-free anti-left rant, I’ll just ignore that.
Is there anything that will satisfy this talking point? The evidence regarding Virginia is almost comical - literal invoices marked “critical race theory training” paid by school boards, teacher training Powerpoints given on a Department of Education barnstorming tour around the state where the very first bullet point is, word-for-word, “embrace critical race theory.” Things that are so on-the-nose for “yes, critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools as part of the Democratic Party of Virginia’s agenda for the state Department of Education” that they’re practically from a film script. If this hasn’t been enough to get people to stop repeating McAuliffe campaign bumper stickers and actually get into reality about what’s going on and why people are upset, what possible additional evidence will be?
The campaign is over. There’s no one left to try to convince with the “deny, deny, deny” strategy. The result of it is clear: A 10-point Biden over Trump state elected a Republican a year later. I personally kept running into true independents and even diehard Democrats – people who were asking me last year for advice on moving to Canada if Trump was re-elected – who were disgusted with everything going on in the schools - not just CRT but the decline in safety, the imperiousness of school boards that see themselves as accountable to no one, and the war on excellence. If you don’t want to believe me, just talk to literally anyone else in Virginia who isn’t employed by a Democratic candidate’s campaign, or just look at the results which more than speak for themselves.
This CRT shit is a cancer, and McAuliffe and his disciples choosing to flippantly lie about it because they think having to defend their policies to the electorate is some sort of affront is an electoral loser. Time to reformulate the strategy for 2022.
Sure, supply those cites – although not that it’s being taught to teachers, but that it’s being taught to students, of course. And, reputable cites, if you please.