Public Education Has Gone 'Woke'

A recent announcement by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) stated, "AASA's work on equity must become actively anti-racist...It is imperative that we ensure that cultural responsiveness is ingrained at every level of the district in order to lead a system-wide effort.

This may appear to numerous parents as a reasonable appeal to moral advancement in the aftermath of a heinous injustice. However, their perception of "antiracist," culturally responsive classrooms may come as a surprise. Simply put, antiracism entails treating all individuals equally; it is comparable to the Golden Rule. However, the recently released "toolkit to help foster productive conversations about race and civil disobedience" by the Chicago Public Schools district featured an epigraph authored by Angela Davis. Davis, a notorious criminal fugitive and former Communist, supplied the firearms that were utilized in the 1970 Marin Courthouse massacre. "In a racist society, it is not enough to not be non-racist," commented Davis. "We must be anti-racist." The compendium furnishes instructors with references to resources authored by the Southern Poverty Law Center and guides them to How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi.

"Classroom Q&A" by Education Week informs educators, "As Dr. Ibram X. Kendi would say, there is no such thing as 'not racist.'" Only racists and anti-racists exist. Your silence perpetuates the violent oppression that the status quo inflicts on black and brown people worldwide. Antiracism does not equate to respect and equal treatment. It is a comprehensive ideology that necessitates perpetual scrutiny of one's own and others' actions and motivations, as well as complete vigilance regarding one's ostensibly latent racial biases.

According to "Classroom Q&A," maintaining such vigilance is a critical matter that can literally mean the difference between life and death: "Educators who fail to acknowledge and confront their implicit biases, racism, and prejudice are complicit in the tragedies that have befallen African Americans and people of color nationwide." "By failing to actively engage in anti-racist efforts, one indirectly condones the daily physical and spiritual murders of African American children, men, and women."

English educators, appalled by the possibility that their discourse or conduct could inadvertently sanction homicide, might feel obliged to consult a "antiracist" authority such as Lorena German, the chairman of the National Council on the Teaching of English's Committee on Anti-Racism. During the height of the recent urban disturbance, when anarchists and rioters set fire to police vehicles and buildings, German tweeted: "Educators: what are you torching? Your curriculum is concentrated on whites? Amy Cooper, the neighbor? Your policies against Black behavior? Are the school's policies racist? Your principal is a bigoted a**hole? The allocation of funds towards school police as opposed to counselors? "WHAT ON Earth ARE YOU COMITING TO BURN?!!"

Perhaps German intended his urging to perpetrate arson metaphorically. However, antiracist institutions will teach significantly less than their predecessors. The NYC Culturally Responsive Education Working Group's "Transforming Our Public Schools: A Guide to Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education" informs educators that "the entire Western canon is rife with horrifying tales and atrocities of who we are as people of color."

In contrast, the Early Childhood/Elementary Community of the National Committee on Social Studies has pledged to revise content, stating, "In order to halt the systemic pattern of dehumanization, and we are referring to policies and practices that are systemic in nature, we must begin early." It is incumbent upon educators and family members to inundate their children with counter-messages...messages that demonstrate the #BlackLivesMatter movement and emphasize the critical nature of amplifying that message until racial parity is eradicated in education, incarceration rates, economic opportunity, and police brutality, among other domains."

In addition to distributing new books, this open-ended propaganda campaign would also involve facilitated discussions of news cycle controversies. The state's "Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education" structure encourages educators to "incorporate current events, even if they are controversial, into instruction" in addition to "utilize tools...that encourage students to engage with difficult topics (power, privilege, access, inequity) constructively." How might educators who are "culturally responsive" constructively respond to recent events? The remarks made by David Kirkland, a professor at New York University and the author of "Culturally Responsive Education: A Primer for Policy and Practice" and the designer of New York's framework, offer certain indications. Kirkland vehemently condemned the media's utilization of "the racist construction of criminality" as a means to "mark on who is permitted to fight for liberty and who is not." In regard to law enforcement, he proclaimed, "What does it mean to be tasked with enforcing a law that is overtly racist when your duty is to do the opposite?" It entails the implementation of bigotry.

One might assume that, despite the increasing prevalence of cultural and political polarization in American society, schools would continue to be havens of relative neutrality, where children can acquire literacy and numeracy skills while also cultivating their socialization abilities.

But the enlightened education establishment would deem that desire a reactionary defense of racial supremacism. The NCTE maintains that "no classroom is apolitical." Furthermore, renowned education professor Bettina Love asserts that contemporary schools are "spaces of Whiteness, White rage, and White Supremacy, all of which serve to terrify students of color."

Such rhetoric and the underlying "critical race theory" have become standard fare in graduate programs in the United States. Without parental vigilance, it could rapidly become the norm in elementary institutions across the United States.