For years, Critical Race Theorists have told parents that Critical Race Theory
is a "discrete legal theory" taught only to law students. This is an outright lie.
is a "discrete legal theory" taught only to law students. This is an outright lie.
In 1995, Gloria-Ladson Billings and William F. Tate IV published Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education. Three years later, Gloria-Ladson Billings published Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? Critical Race Theory has shaped educational theory and practice for more than two decades. Education schools now train teachers and administrators to view race as the central construct for understanding inequality. Newly minted teachers, school principals, and curriculum directors have been assigned a straightforward task — dismantle the U.S. educational system and raise a racial consciousness in children.
Critical Race Theorists claim that the U.S. educational system is fundamentally broken. They point to achievement gaps between Asian, white, black, and brown students as evidence that racism is present and needs to be eliminated. If racism weren’t present, they argue, then all students would achieve the same outcomes regardless of socioeconomic status, parental education, desire, or ability. According to Critical Race theory, school curriculum, standardized tests, standards of excellence, gifted programs, grading schemes, and disciplinary measures are all tools that hide, reinforce, and perpetuate racism. From their perspective, these traditional methods of teaching and assessing a student’s math and reading proficiency are nothing more than a back-door way to privilege whites and position whiteness at the top of a racial hierarchy.
Critical Race Theorists claim that the U.S. educational system is fundamentally broken. They point to achievement gaps between Asian, white, black, and brown students as evidence that racism is present and needs to be eliminated. If racism weren’t present, they argue, then all students would achieve the same outcomes regardless of socioeconomic status, parental education, desire, or ability. According to Critical Race theory, school curriculum, standardized tests, standards of excellence, gifted programs, grading schemes, and disciplinary measures are all tools that hide, reinforce, and perpetuate racism. From their perspective, these traditional methods of teaching and assessing a student’s math and reading proficiency are nothing more than a back-door way to privilege whites and position whiteness at the top of a racial hierarchy.
School Curriculum
According to Critical Race Theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Critical race theory sees the official school curriculum as a culturally specific artifact designed to maintain a White supremacist master script.” Ladson-Billings believes knowledge is socially constructed and culturally contingent. In other words, she proposes that a student’s race and culture determine how they learn.
Critical Race Theory argues that black and brown students are underachieving because white cultural knowledge and norms are the benchmarks for student success. Because they think in this way, they remove race-neutrality from school curriculum. "This race-neutral perspective," writes Billings, "purports to see deficiency as an individual phenomenon. Thus, instruction is conceived as a generic set of teaching skills that should work for all students."
Critical Race Theorists also believe traditional school curriculum serves only to program all students into the current and “unjust” social order. Inspired by the works of Paulo Freire, Critical Race Theorists make it their job to program students to view the world through a Race Marxist lens. Once programmed, these students become a “counterinsurgency” tasked with social justice activism.
Revisionist history and counter-storytelling are two ways Critical Race Theorists map their practice onto school curriculum. The 1619 Project, taught in schools around the country, is one such example of this practice. Critical Race Theorists teach students that America was founded in 1619, not 1776. They also teach students that the founding fathers declared independence from England to protect the institution of slavery. Of course, this is nonsense. But the truth doesn’t matter to them. Only “their truth” matters, and that truth just so happens to be grounded in Race Marxism.
Critical Race Theory argues that black and brown students are underachieving because white cultural knowledge and norms are the benchmarks for student success. Because they think in this way, they remove race-neutrality from school curriculum. "This race-neutral perspective," writes Billings, "purports to see deficiency as an individual phenomenon. Thus, instruction is conceived as a generic set of teaching skills that should work for all students."
Critical Race Theorists also believe traditional school curriculum serves only to program all students into the current and “unjust” social order. Inspired by the works of Paulo Freire, Critical Race Theorists make it their job to program students to view the world through a Race Marxist lens. Once programmed, these students become a “counterinsurgency” tasked with social justice activism.
Revisionist history and counter-storytelling are two ways Critical Race Theorists map their practice onto school curriculum. The 1619 Project, taught in schools around the country, is one such example of this practice. Critical Race Theorists teach students that America was founded in 1619, not 1776. They also teach students that the founding fathers declared independence from England to protect the institution of slavery. Of course, this is nonsense. But the truth doesn’t matter to them. Only “their truth” matters, and that truth just so happens to be grounded in Race Marxism.
Standardized Grading and Testing
According to the world’s most popular antiracist, “standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black minds and legally exclude their bodies.” Like the critical critique of school curriculum, Critical Race Theorists like Ibram X. Kendi believe standardized tests are a tool to judge black and brown children against whiteness. In their view, white people camouflage racism in student assessment by claiming standardized tests are race-neutral and objective.
In Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?, Gloria Ladson-Billings makes this point explicitly. She writes, "For the critical race theorist, intelligence testing has been a movement to legitimize African American student deficiency under the guise of scientific rationalism."
Critical Race Theorists use equity to level student achievement. When possible, they minimize the weight of standardized tests, create grading floors so no student can earn a failing grade, and make numerous exceptions for late work and misbehavior in the classroom.
In Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?, Gloria Ladson-Billings makes this point explicitly. She writes, "For the critical race theorist, intelligence testing has been a movement to legitimize African American student deficiency under the guise of scientific rationalism."
Critical Race Theorists use equity to level student achievement. When possible, they minimize the weight of standardized tests, create grading floors so no student can earn a failing grade, and make numerous exceptions for late work and misbehavior in the classroom.
Gifted Programing
Critical Race Theory also demonizes and dismantles tracking programs, believing 'gifted and talented' coursework is yet another way to cherry-pick privileged white and Asian students for further development. No kids are considered gifted or exceptional within the Critical Race Theory framework, and this is why Critical Race Theorists often relabel tracking programs as “segregation programs.” The re-framing is intentional — the language shift makes it seem as if racist educators are denying student opportunity rather than identifying students in need of additional rigor because of their exceptional ability.
The third prong of our definition of social justice links social justice to inclusive schooling… To raise academic achievement, requires leaders to provide all students access to a rich and engaging curriculum (Oakes et al., 2000). Students who are segregated from each other by pull-out programs or tracking are denied this access (Johnson, 2000)… In addition to serving as a prerequisite for academic achievement, heterogeneous classrooms and untracked schools are prerequisites for preparing students to live as critical citizens by requiring students to learn in a community with peers who are different from themselves. (McKenzie, K. B., Christman, D. E., Hernandez, F., Fierro, E., Capper, C. A., Dantley, M., González, M. L., Cambron-McCabe, N., & Scheurich, J. J. (2008). From the field: A proposal for educating leaders for social justice. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(1), 111-138. Sage Publications.)
School Discipline
Critical Race Theory argues that student behavior results from structurally determinate forces. In other words, students are often not to blame for breaking school rules and policies. Critical Race Theorists believe white supremacy culture created those rules and policies to marginalize all students that don’t have — or are not proximate to — whiteness. Therefore, student misbehavior is often not misbehavior at all — it is an act of open resistance against an unjust liberal order.
One should not readily assume that seemingly neutral decisionmaking and behavioral evaluation criteria, especially in issues that involve race, are in face race neutral. Instead, one should be strongly suspicious that these criteria might “misidentify” as race-neutral personal characteristics, traits, and behaviors that are in fact closely associated with whiteness… normative baselines represent the fact that the dominant societal group—whites—will attach labels of appropriateness, even superiority, to its own customary behaviors. (Simson, D. (2014). Exclusion, Punishment, Racism and Our Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on School Discipline. UCLA Law Review, 61, 506.)
Critical Race Theorists erode disciplinary policy and practice to combat what they consider unfair disciplinary measures. They accuse educators and systems of harboring unconscious bias and work to equalize student detention, suspension, and expulsion rates. Generally, Critical Race Theorists implement new “restorative justice” techniques instead of traditional measures.
In Summary
Critical Race Theory is the neo-Marxist political practice of re-engineering society to create equal outcomes between racial and ethnic groups. Critical Race Theorists apply this practice to education to force equal educational outcomes between children. To do this, Critical Race Theorists revise curriculum, lower academic standards, remove tracking programs, and erode disciplinary policies. They work to program children to practice Critical Race Theory, too. In short order, academic achievement plummets as school climate deteriorates into one of cynicism, division, and violence.
REFERENCES:
1. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate IV, W. F. (1995). Towards A Critical Race Theory of Education. Teachers College Record, 97(1).
2. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7-24
3. Kendi, I. X. (2016, October 20). Why the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea. African American Intellectual History Society.
4. McKenzie, K. B., Christman, D. E., Hernandez, F., Fierro, E., Capper, C. A., Dantley, M., González, M. L., Cambron-McCabe, N., & Scheurich, J. J. (2008). From the field: A proposal for educating leaders for social justice. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(1), 111-138. Sage Publications.
5. Simson, D. (2014). Exclusion, Punishment, Racism and Our Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on School Discipline. UCLA Law Review, 61, 506.
1. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate IV, W. F. (1995). Towards A Critical Race Theory of Education. Teachers College Record, 97(1).
2. Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7-24
3. Kendi, I. X. (2016, October 20). Why the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea. African American Intellectual History Society.
4. McKenzie, K. B., Christman, D. E., Hernandez, F., Fierro, E., Capper, C. A., Dantley, M., González, M. L., Cambron-McCabe, N., & Scheurich, J. J. (2008). From the field: A proposal for educating leaders for social justice. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(1), 111-138. Sage Publications.
5. Simson, D. (2014). Exclusion, Punishment, Racism and Our Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on School Discipline. UCLA Law Review, 61, 506.
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Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.
Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.