Banning “Critical Race Theory” in public schools and other government institutions seems like such a good idea that when you read Scott Shackford’s headline at Reason, “Don’t Ban Critical Race Theory in Education. Embrace School Choice Instead,” you may balk.
“Conservatives in Florida, Idaho, and the nation’s capitol are attempting to block public schools from teaching Critical Race Theory,” Shackford writes, describing CRT as “an ideology that holds that racism is historically fundamental to how America’s political, legal, and cultural institutions are structured.” His problem with this political move is that it is “an authoritarian proposal that would cut off classroom debate about hot-button political issues.”
My issues really begin with the a‑word.
From what I can tell, CRT is itself authoritarian, and groupthink-oriented, class-based and generally racist. The program looks designed to implement a sort of Cultural Revolution indoctrination-and-social control system into American institutions, definitely not to encourage “classroom debate.”
While Shackford makes the obvious point that America’s past institutional make-up was indeed racist and structurally so, and that learning this is important for a decent education, CRT did not add this to “the debate.” This has been widely acknowledged for years.
Besides, CRT activists go much further, calling “whiteness” a disease and white people ineluctably, “systemically” racist.
Though Shackford’s main point — that we should take the occasion to offer the best way out, “school choice” — is indeed a great one, letting socialist radicals and weak-minded educrats enshrine a racist theory about racism into public institutions amounts to a kind of brinksmanship, a “collapsitarian” approach.
Couldn’t we put government education’s allotted doom on the back burner, stop teaching CRT or other woke indoctrination, and also empower parents and students with freedom of choice?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “The A‑word in Our Schools”
Banning CRT in schools sounds good, but that train has left the station.
The private sector has embraced CRT. So even if children don’t learn it in school, it will be seen in public venues and in the workplace. It will be on display in all forms of entertainment. They won’t be able to avoid it. The human need to be accepted means many of them will embrace it, too.
But it is a start in educating folks and once in the light of day we will get better educations where history is taught without being surrounded in Marxist wrapping.
I do not think censoring Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a very good idea. Authoritarian actions tend to create opposites. It may be better dealt with by teaching it with analysis and criticisms from multiple sources. That alone is insufficient as it leaves a hole that would best be filled with alternate information and ideas.
School choice as an alternative is inadequate. I would suggest a totally different approach to school funding. That would include funding of each student rather than directly to the institution. That makes choice more flexible. Further, schools should not be regulated by any government.
CRT is a flawed revisiting of the previous Christian heresy of predestination, coupled with the presumption of an irredeemable original sin. It can bring no good, only pain, suffering and discord.
In accord with CRT, all humans are preprogrammed and immutably racist or otherwise fatally flawed. There is no self-determination and therefore no responsibility. There is and can be no redemption and, therefore, at its logical end, no human soul.
We, under CRT, are simply a herd of animals to be to be controlled and managed by those who somehow are better than all others (selected by their election by the majority of those who are fatally flawed for all other purposes).
CRT should be rejected, and is incompatible with all which is good and special in humanity and therefore this Republic. It has no place in any school. That it might cause some thinking parents to demand school of choice to prevent exposure of their children to its poison gives it no merit. It has none and can gain none from the fact it causes adverse reactions.
You may have said that better than I. Thanks!