A video of a white teacher from Loudon County, Virginia protesting the required Critical Race Theory (CRT) training for teachers is a highlight of Andrea Widburg’s article, “Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing on cancel culture.”
As the teacher demonstrates, teaching whites that their skin color makes them racists is in itself racist. “You are the face of privilege…” she tells the School Board. “If you keep up this racist insanity, you will have successfully stripped us of every ounce of love of teaching, and so far you have succeeded in doing that.”
Yet Critical Race Theory has spread beyond Loudon County. Widburg reports in a more recent article that CRT has now infected North Carolina’s Wake County schools, the state’s largest school district. In what Widburg describes as a “festival of race hatred,” school administrators “told white teachers they must ‘challenge the dominant ideology’ of ‘whiteness’ and ‘disrupt’ white culture.” When one teacher asked about parental pushback against such a program, the leaders of the CRT workshops told them to ignore parents and force the CRT curriculum on their students.
Critical Race Theory should frighten all parents, no matter what their politics or skin color. CRT exacerbates racism and is propaganda aimed at dividing rather than uniting Americans.
For years now many of our schools, including our universities, have failed to teach students American history. Today they are mixing that ignorance with a poisonous radicalism. Young people who can’t name our enemies in World War II or explain the basics of our Constitution will readily identify the United States as a racist cesspool, an evil oppressor both at home and abroad.
So what can parents do?
We might begin our resistance by keeping a sharp eye on what our children are learning in school. Is their eighth grade teacher introducing them to CRT? Is their fourth grade teacher teaching about sexuality and gender awareness? We can discover these intrusions by staying in touch with our children, by asking them about their school day, and by examining the assignments they bring home.
Now for the hard part. If we discover that the school is teaching CRT to its students, then we must protest that instruction. We must risk becoming those parents despised by some teachers and administrators, gadflies who refuse to be denied, who ask questions and demand real answers.
Even better, we should ask other likeminded parents and guardians to join us in our challenge to the system. Some parents undoubtedly support CRT, but many others, I suspect, are opposed. Some of them may be too afraid to speak out, but if we gather a platoon of protesters, they may join us. There truly is strength in numbers.
Then comes the hardest decision of all. Suppose the principals, the vice-principals, and the members of the school board refuse to listen to you? Suppose they brush off your objections or worse, vehemently defend CRT?
If that happens, then you must decide whether you’re going to leave Johnny and Mary in the clutches of these people or find a different educational venue. If your circumstances dictate leaving the children in school—maybe both parents are working, or you’re a single mom with a low-paying job—then you might counter the CRT training with home discussions regarding race.
But even in these cases some possibilities exist for removing your children from the offending school. Perhaps you have a relative—a grandparent, or possibly an aunt—who would take the kids and educate them at home. Perhaps you might find a private or charter school that offers financial help, or perhaps that grandfather who lives too far away to instruct the children would financially contribute to their education.
More fortunate parents have the opportunity to enroll their children in private schools or teach them at home. Regarding that latter choice, we live at a time when homeschooling has never been easier. Scores of hard copy resources and scores more online help provide parents the tools they need to educate their children.
The greatest gift a parent can give to this dark world is an adult who can think critically, can discern truth from lies, and understand and practice virtue. Children are still our greatest natural resource, and we need them to come of age as educated, morally sound citizens.
As for the CRT crew, nearly 40 years ago Richard Mitchell, author of The Leaning Tower of Babel, had this to say of what he called “educationists”: “They dream of being priests and prophets, lofty enlighteners, healers of disordered young psyches, beneficent agents of social change.”
Those dreams have now become nightmares for the rest of us. It’s time to put an end to them.