Loudoun Co. school board meeting on critical race theory/trans policy turns chaotic, 2 ppl arrested

[lfromnj]

This episode and these courageous parents give me a glimmer of hope that Youngkin might actually pull it off. And it also shows me that this, THIS, is how we can STOP thy bleeding in the suburbs!


Of course, I don’t want to be mistaken for a wishcaster. I said might, Atlasian mob!

These parents are not courageous. They are throwing a tantrum, disrupting a public meeting, and making their cause look like something supported only by radical agitators.

One video making the rounds on right-wing media even shows a man resisting arrest. We are supposed to view this sympathetically? People who believe that "freedom of speech" means that they have an absolute right to show up at a public meeting, dressed like slobs, toting crude signs, and shouting at public officials?

The school board should have had these clowns arrested in their dozens and stuffed into the back of several wagons. Americans ought to stop acting like hooligans and start acting like citizens.

Agreed their behavior is extremely silly. Just screeching and ruining the Star Spangled Banner should be borderline  grounds for treason.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Conservatism is a mental illness.

[Indy Texas]

Once again, critical race theory is not a real thing that is actually being taught in schools.  Can anyone point to a single school in the country where critical race theory is being taught?

https://news.yahoo.com/amazon-donated-hundreds-copies-ibram-144550798.html

In a follow-up email, the Arlington diversity officer requested 550 copies of Stamped with accompanying study guides “to really make this investment impactful.”

A few dozen miles away
Kendi is CRT, or whatever the definition is. Amazon may have donated the books but the school has decided to create a curriculum out of Kendi and they originally requested the books.

On the actual note though, these parents are very cringe and some of the offenders should be punished very harshly.

I admit myself I first saw this issue as pure red meat for a GOP base but after seeing the whining by DEI firms after Trump's executive order I realized it actually did have a decent effect.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/03/critical-race-theory-backlash/

Loudoun spokesman Wayde Byard confirmed the video was authentic, from a college-level English class that teaches students to “explore literature through applying a variety of literary theories.” The teacher was explaining how critical race theory works, Byard said, as one of several theories studied including structuralism, deconstructionism and feminism.

Funnily enough they literally admitted to it that they do teach the concept .

Do you agree with and endorse every single viewpoint of every single author of every single book you've ever read?

If someone wanted to learn more about the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, reading Mein Kampf would probably be useful. Does reading Mein Kampf mean that someone endorses Nazism?

Why does reading a book by Ibram X. Kendi imply you must agree with everything he says?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Do you agree with and endorse every single viewpoint of every single author of every single book you've ever read?

If someone wanted to learn more about the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, reading Mein Kampf would probably be useful. Does reading Mein Kampf mean that someone endorses Nazism?

Why does reading a book by Ibram X. Kendi imply you must agree with everything he says?

Based on the evidence provided in lfromnj's post I agree that in this specific case the actions taken by the diversity officer (Arron Gregory) were inappropriate.  He was clearly teaching the book to his students in hopes that they would take up the mission the author presents and become "allies."  I don't think the school is an appropriate place for that kind of recruitment, especially on something controversial like this.  His goal wasn't to educate, it was to recruit.  That was inappropriate.

Even his intent doesn't really matter if the subject was taught in an unbiased way and students were allowed to make up their own minds.  But based on the way he talked about this as an opportunity to turn students into allies, it's probably reasonable to assume the materials he provided were going to be less focused on education and more on recruitment.  Reasonable enough to stand up and say "that's not ok so let's make sure that doesn't happen" at least.

With that out of the way, that doesn't mean the conservatives are in the right here.  This was a decision made by one misguided diversity officer at a school.  There are tens of thousands of education personnel in the Virginia educational system and this poor decision by one low-level individual is not indicative in any way of any sort of systematic decision or trend.  It's the kind of mishap that happens every day in schools around the world.

I had a teacher in middle school who was very obviously a creationist and would constantly do this wink-wink stuff about how "there's a lot more to this story and you can talk to me on your own if you want to know more."  That was inappropriate.

During the SATs in high school, a lot of kids were cracking bitter jokes about the "check this box if you're black" section, and a teacher overheard us and went on a 30-minute rant in the middle of class about how we were all ungrateful white kids who didn't understand why affirmative action was so important.  That was inappropriate.

My english teacher in middle school would cut out pro-Bush editorials from the newspaper and have us read them and give our thoughts on them and would argue with anyone who didn't agree with the pro-Bush sentiment.  That was inappropriate.

But all of these are just like the case here -- isolated incidents of individual teachers letting their biases show through and inappropriately trying to push their viewpoints on students.  This is a problem with the education system that's as old as time itself.  MSNBC didn't give a national spotlight to my pro-Bush english teacher, sparking a national debate.  Nobody thought this was indicative of any nationwide movement or grand plot by the Bush administration to indoctrinate our youth.  My liberal parents didn't go stage a huge protest about "stop pro-Bush indoctrination in our schools!"

Instead I think all that happened was someone brought it up at a PTA meeting like "my kid says Mrs. so-and-so is having them read a bunch of pro-Bush stuff and I think she should knock it off if that's true."  That's the appropriate way to handle something like this.  "My kid says that Mr. Gregory is having them read a bunch of anti-White stuff and pushing them to agree with it, and I don't think that's appropriate."

[GeneralMacArthur]

The other thing I'd like to add is that all the people who are endorsing and misrepresenting this kind of thing as "conservatives are just upset that real history is being taught" or "white people are upset that they're losing their power" are in the wrong.

e.g. https://twitter.com/therealhoarse/status/1407852850680565761?s=21

The Reynolds/Kendi antiracist ideology is about a lot more than just "teaching real history" or "equality" or whatever the strawman is.  It's a very controversial and divisive ideology.  People are free to adopt it on their own, I personally think it's dumb but I have no problem with that.  But I disagree with the posters who who would celebrate it being pushed on kids in our schools -- which, again, it isn't, except in this one isolated instance of one single diversity officer wanting kids to read one single book to try and make them into "allies."

There are certain ideologies or causes that we have a society have agreed are good -- things like being healthy/active, anti-drug, anti-bullying, and anti-racism in the more agreeable, universal, MLK-style "we should all get along" sense.  These things are pushed on kids in schools.  I think this is good and I think virtually everyone agrees except for some extremists.  If you want kids to learn an ideology that not everyone is OK with, guess what, it's a free country and you are free to start your own school.  We have plenty of religious schools that teach religious ideologies.  You could start a private school based on the Reynolds/Kendi antiracist ideology and produce little antiracist allies.  More power to you!  But if you can't get near-universal agreement that this is a net social good then it should not be taught in public schools.

The reason the conservatives look like idiots here isn't because they're fundamentally on the wrong side of this issue, it's that it isn't an actual issue, it's a moral panic that's being driven by Fox News and right-wing mediasphere.  They've whipped everyone up into a hysteria over something that doesn't actually exist.  And then when an event happens that's maybe kinda sorta loosely connected to the story they're telling, everyone loses their minds.  Right-wing candidates all across the country are running on platforms of "No CRT in our schools" and it's all based entirely on maybe 2-3 isolated incidents of individual teachers trying to have their kids read controversial books that discuss CRT.  That's very different from "CRT in our schools."  There is no CRT in our schools, and nobody is trying to change that.  If there was, I would agree with them, because pushing CRT on students in our schools would be inappropriate.  It's like if they found one teacher in Alaska who was a satanist and started a massive nationwide hysteria about "satanism in our school" and Fox ran lurid stories about parents who didn't want their children forced to drink the blood of puppies or whatever.




Also, I don't know what planet you guys are living on where schools are lacking in "real" history.  My social studies teachers from about 7th grade on took great pride in "correcting historical misconceptions" and "exposing the dark side of American history" and so on, and historically underrepresented groups were dramatically over-represented in all my history books.  Unless you go to school in Texas or some blood-red deep-south state, you're probably learning history from a book where every single chapter has sections about what blacks, women, latinos and poor people were up to during that time period.

[lfromnj]

Do you agree with and endorse every single viewpoint of every single author of every single book you've ever read?

If someone wanted to learn more about the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, reading Mein Kampf would probably be useful. Does reading Mein Kampf mean that someone endorses Nazism?

Why does reading a book by Ibram X. Kendi imply you must agree with everything he says?

snip

Again this women was wholly supported by the Fairfax school district. School districts across the nation are wasting money on the grifter Kendi.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/30/fairfax-va-school-district-spent-24000-on-ibram-kendi-books-for-u-s-history-classes/

Sure enough, according to Caldwell, the school district spent about $10,000 buying Kendi’s book, “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” through Amazon, and doled out about $14,000 for his book “Stamped.”

This was not teacher doing a simple move but a school/district wide initiative to push this doctrine of being an "anti-racist"

I do agree with you that the right wingers at Loudoun are acting quite dumb, but the idea that nothing is happening is silly.  If nothing was happening than these DEI consultants/grifters wouldn't be complaining about the bans.

[HisGrace]

"Decorum"? I thought things like decorum and civility were made up by evil white men to control discourse?

They just don’t want actual history taught because it America look bad like the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Teaching those is “un-American” I guess.

I learned about the Tuskegee Syphilis study in HS way before CRT was a thing. CRT is not "talking about racist history", according to the sympathetic descriptions I've seen it is about critiques of integration, legal equality, rationalism, and even the idea that people should have "rights" in a liberal society. These are people whose ideal government is likely akin to a Stalinist dictatorship.

There's a reason the "LOL, you don't know what CRT is" commenters never actually themselves explain what it is. What it actually is is even worse than what the parents in the OP think it is.

I don't have any issue with expanding critical thinking. I learnt about Marxist critical analysis in HS as  part of one many different types of critical analysis and it was fine. The teacher just taught it, with no desire for the indoctrination.

I also read exerts from Marx and Engels and had the basics of Marxism explained to me in HS econ class, along with other economic theories. It was presented neutrally without any editorial comment from the instructor or any attempt to get the students to think one way or the other about it. That's the way it should be, the purpose is to educate, not persuade. In out current climate I have zero faith that would be the case and the class would likely be taught by some pseudo-intellectual bougie Marxist who'd spend the whole time telling students that Marxism was the one and only lens through which to view the world at the expense of everything else one could learn in a history, econ, or social studies class.

Why does reading a book by Ibram X. Kendi imply you must agree with everything he says?

Do you honestly think that if Kendi was taught in your garden variety university or public HS today that he would just be presented neutrally with students being left to form their own opinion? They'd treat his writing like the Bible in a Christian school and any student who dared disagree or even question anything he said would get called racist or even disciplined by the school.

[HisGrace]

Also, I don't know what planet you guys are living on where schools are lacking in "real" history.  My social studies teachers from about 7th grade on took great pride in "correcting historical misconceptions" and "exposing the dark side of American history" and so on, and historically underrepresented groups were dramatically over-represented in all my history books.  Unless you go to school in Texas or some blood-red deep-south state, you're probably learning history from a book where every single chapter has sections about what blacks, women, latinos and poor people were up to during that time period.

I brought up the bolded in the "should history be taught from the perspective of marginalized groups" thread and got at least one person very mad at me but I'll do it again. Kids have no idea how the government works on a basic level (the powers of the president and Congress, how a bill becomes a law, how judicial review works) because American history classes are basically racial struggle sessions at this point with endless anecdotes about racism. You should absolutely talk about slavery/segregation/lynching and mistreatment of Native Americans in an American history class, but those weren't the only things that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries, there are lots of things that happened then that are very relevant to our lives today that have nothing to do with racism in fact.

[Calthrina950]

I'm of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, I don't fully understand the Republican obsession with critical race theory. This has become just another aspect of "culture war" politics that has exacerbated polarization and poisoned political discourse in this country. Moreover, I am of the viewpoint that we must teach the good and the bad in American history, and I certainly think that our curriculum has been lacking with regards to its discussion of slavery, Jim Crowism, and other such aspects of our past.

But on the other hand, I don't think that America is a fundamentally evil country, and I believe that our civic education needs to be geared towards inculcating a greater trust in our institutions, and how we can use those institutions to remedy disparities and advance the ideals of equality for all.

[GeneralMacArthur]

This was not teacher doing a simple move but a school/district wide initiative to push this doctrine of being an "anti-racist"

I think both you and The Federalist are over-selling it here.  You are both relying on two tweets about the distribution of the book as evidence that there's some expansive curriculum being pushed on students based on the book's ideology.  The article you linked also mentions discussion of such a curriculum at a school board meeting.  If it's a real thing, show me the "anti-racist curriculum" and all the other books and lessons that will be pushed on students.  As far as I can tell, this is one school ordering a couple hundred copies of a controversial book, and one diversity officer at the school hoping that the book will encourage students to become allies of the antiracist movement.

[GeneralMacArthur]

But on the other hand, I don't think that America is a fundamentally evil country, and I believe that our civic education needs to be geared towards inculcating a greater trust in our institutions, and how we can use those institutions to remedy disparities and advance the ideals of equality for all.

Even if you did believe that, if you're a fair-minded person, you still shouldn't want that taught to our kids.  Give them the facts and teach them to think critically and to decipher the world around them, and then if you truly believe your ideology is correct, you should have faith that those skills and that information will lead them to the correct conclusion.

[AGA]

Oh boy, more culture war garbage clogging up USGD.

[HisGrace]

But on the other hand, I don't think that America is a fundamentally evil country, and I believe that our civic education needs to be geared towards inculcating a greater trust in our institutions, and how we can use those institutions to remedy disparities and advance the ideals of equality for all.

Very good point, you can't complain about a lack of faith in institutions if you're going to shove crap like this down everyone's throat. If I thought America was 100% bad I wouldn't trust any of our experts or our elections either.