Schools and School Boards: The Substance, OR My Thoughts on Critical Race Theory

So, with those procedural issues that should not be controversial out of the way, what of the substance being debated by school boards?  So far as I can tell, there are three main issues -- mask and vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and transgender issues.  Republicans oppose all three; Democrats favor them.  And maybe this is just the usual assumption that everyone agrees with my, but my impression is that public and parental opinion generally favors mask and vaccine mandates, opposes critical race theory, and has not really processed transgender issues. Thus a focus on mask mandates favors Democrats and a focus on critical race theory favors Republicans.  

I might as well express my own, rather unconventional, views on the subject.  I favor mask and vaccine mandates.  Masks appear to be effective at stopping COVID spread in schools. Granted, COVID is rarely serious in children.  There are nonetheless two reasons to want to stop its spread.  One is that the total number of children in school is very large. Even a small percentage of a very large number can add up to a significant absolute number.  The other is that children's education has already been disrupted by virtual learning.  The last thing we need is to disrupt it further by having high absentee rates due to COVID.

With respect to transgender issues, respectfully, speaking, I think elite opinion has lost its mind.  Biological males and females exist.  Subjective self-identification does not change that fact.  Hormone treatment only partly changes it. Yet this fact is unspeakable.  To point out the obvious is to be branded as a bigot.  I do not think it has really attracted all that much public attention because the numbers of people involved are very small. The usual response, for instance, to a bill seeking to ban transgender athletes from girl's sports is to say that actual instances are very rare.  Fair enough.  So long as the issue is purely hypothetical, it appears to be too rarified to sustain much controversy.  But when actual biological males start showing up in girl's restrooms or competing on girl's teams -- well, let us just say that if Democrats really want to go to war over this one, the term lemmings with suicide vests comes to mind.

Finally, there is critical race theory.  That is an extremely difficult issue.   Nor does it do to say that critical race theory is an academic theory taught only in law schools and that the things being associated with CRT -- that people are not individuals but members of groups, that all white people are oppressors and all black people victims simply due to group membership -- are not actual CRT but just bad diversity training (as one post put it).  That dodges the real issue -- are these teachings, regardless of what you call them, appropriate for elementary and secondary schools.  And maybe even more broadly, what should our schools be teaching about race.  That is the real issue here and should not be disguised by quibbling over the semantics.

So let me start with a few viewpoints of my own:

1. The history of race in the US is ugly.  Any minimally honest history has to acknowledge this painful fact.
2. Race is not all black and white; nor is it all black, white, indigenous and Asian.  White immigrants have also faced bigotry, and also been some of the most fiercely bigoted against other races.
3. We also have many great achievements that are worthy of celebration.
4. Other countries have ugly pasts, too.  James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me proposes, "U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia or Burundi -- but neither is it exceptionally less violent."  I am not sure whether I agree, but it is a useful perspective.

So when it comes to teaching school, I do believe that schools should teach our ugly history of race, in an age-appropriate manner.  I don't believe US history should be taught solely  from the perspective of race.  We also have many positive achievements that should also be taught.  As for the role of race in today's society, current events in general are an extremely explosive topic and should be handled with care.

I recall reading a most disturbing article in either the New Yorker or the Atlantic -- liberal publications -- giving a most disturbing portrait of New York City schools. By the author's account, the educational establishment is universally left wing and subscribes to a lot of preconceived dogmas that interfere with actually delivering an education.  Before 2014, these were minor undercurrents and easy to ignore, but since then, schools have trended in a most alarming direction.  Now, the author was talking about New York City, so his experience may not be typical, but it suggests what the education establishment might do elsewhere if they could get away with it.

So what were these disturbing trends?  Alas, I cannot find the article, but most notable was a tendency to treat children, not as individuals, but as members of identity groups, and to assume that all white children were oppressors and all other groups victims.  A podcast featuring a speaker from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recounted the case of students being asked to confess white privilege, chart oppressor categories, and unlearn the Judeo-Christian value system.  She also warned about schools not just teaching about controversial theories, but expecting students to endorse viewpoints, whether they agreed or not, and engaging in "thought reform."  

This may or may not meet the technical definition of Critical Race Theory, but it is not appropriate and should not be taught in schools.  At the same time, critics of the anti-CRT movement are right to point out that many of the bills banning CRT are so broadly written that they could be taken as barring any honest discussion of the ugly aspects of our history.

I would also add that, while the educational establishment overwhelmingly leans left, censorious parents strongly lean right.  While "cancel culture" is a left-wing phenomenon in academia and journalism, it is a right-wing phenomenon in elementary and secondary schools.  Terry McAullife infamously said that he would not let parents dictate what schools could teach.  It was an extraordinarily impolitic remark and may have cost him the election in Virginia, but can we concede that he had a point?  If we give every parent with a complaint a veto over the curriculum, schools will be paralyzed and unable to function.  

So, how do you draw the balance here?  I don't really know enough about education to offer more than simple common sense. But, again, many people, from the left-wing education establishment to right-wing parents, are not sensible.  But the best general suggesting I have seen in thoughtful pieces is the need to distinguish between teaching about a controversial idea (any minimally honest history will include some very controversial ones) and endorsing such ideas.