Education schools that train America’s teachers are permeated with Critical Race Theory. So much so that a California education school won’t send student teachers to a nearby school district that has banned Critical Race Theory, notes Joanne Jacobs. A 2019 study found that the most assigned authors at three leading education schools were Critical Race Theorists.
The College of Education at California State University, Fullerton blacklisted a school district for opposing Critical Race Theory, cutting off its supply of student teachers. The College wrote:
The placement of student teachers in Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School District (PYLUSD), at this time, would place us in conflict with our goals to prepare teacher candidates with pedagogical approaches rooted in diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, race and gender theories, cultural linguistic studies, social emotional well-being, and tenets of Critical Race Theory.
On April 5, the board of the Placentia Yorba Linda Unified School District passed a resolution that expresses support for “efforts in education to promote equity, respect, diversity; celebrate the contributions of all; and encourage culturally relevant and inclusive teaching practices,” but also forbids “the use of Critical Race Theory as a framework to guide such efforts.”
In response to the College of Education’s action against it, the school board said it remains focused on “providing a fair, equitable, and inclusive education for all students.“
This demand by college officials for Critical Race Theory is one sign that, as teacher Daniel Buck notes, “systemic wokeness” has infected public education. For example, the schools in Kentucky’s biggest county, Jefferson County, now put prospective administrators through an “equity screener” to exclude from consideration those who fail “to utter the necessary progressive shibboleths.” In Illinois, “the standards for teacher preparation require prospective teachers to assess their ‘biases’ and analyze how to mitigate their own ‘racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, [and] Eurocentrism.’ They must critically consider the ‘wide spectrum fluidity of identities’ and the need for ‘social advocacy and social action.'”
It is bad for education schools to mandate Critical Race Theory (CRT), because CRT is a harmful ideology that is hostile to the free-market economy, equating it with racism: “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says the best-selling book promoting critical race theory, How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.
The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” writes Kendi in that book. Kendi is a leading “critical race theorist.”
K-12 students are also being required to take classes in critical ethnic studies or critical race theory. Hispanic students in a California school district were forced to learn critical race theory. They hated it, reported Reason Magazine.
“Less than half of high school students in St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) are proficient in math or reading but” soon all of them “will be required to take a Critical Ethnic Studies (CES) course before they can graduate,” reports the Center of the American Experiment:
The graduation requirement will first apply to the class of 2025, who will take the one semester class as 10th graders in the 2022-2023 school year, according to school communication.
Course concepts will include: identity, intersectionality, race, dominant/counter narratives, racism, white supremacy, racial equity, oppression, systemic oppression, resistance and resilience, social/youth-led movements, civic engagement, hope and healing, and transformation and change.
If state education bureaucracies had their way, critical race theory would become more common in school curriculums. In 2015, under Governor Terry McAuliffe (D), Virginia’s Department of Education instructed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” in order to “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems.’”
Detroit’s school superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, says critical race theory is deeply embedded in his school system: “Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines. We were very intentional about … embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”
Virginia’s largest school system, the progressive Fairfax County Public Schools, encouraged teachers to apply critical race theory. The Washington Times reported that a “slide presentation” in 2021 “instructed social studies teachers in Fairfax County Public Schools that ‘critical race theory is a frame’ for their work.”
The progressive Arlington County schools have students read books by critical race theorists such as Ibram Kendi. Arlington distributed hundreds of copies of Ibram Kendi’s book Stamped to students at Wakefield High School. The book contains many errors and celebrates a Marxist anti-Semite. It also peddles conspiracy theories and is dismissive about Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. At Arlington’s Washington-Lee High School, most students in 9th grade English were assigned to read either Stamped or a much longer book that would require more work to read. Virtually all students chose to read Stamped as a result.
The Loudoun County, VA public schools paid a contractor to train their staff in critical race theory, giving it $3,125 to conduct “Critical Race Theory Development.”
Under Democratic governor Ralph Northam, Virginia’s official “Roadmap to Equity” published by its Department of Education in 2020 thanked critical race theorist “Dr. Ibram X. Kendi” in its acknowledgments section, as having “informed the development of the EdEquityVA Framework.” Kendi says he was “inspired by critical race theory,” and that he cannot “imagine a pathway to” his teachings “that does not engage CRT.”
Twenty percent of urban school teachers report having discussed or taught critical race theory with K-12 students, according to an Education Week survey. The Seattle public school district has employed a critical race theorist who embeds it in elementary schools.
“Unequivocally, critical race theory is taught in K-12 public schools,” said the Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher, noting he wrote a research paper detailing numerous instances of school districts openly using the phrase “critical race theory” in curriculum plans.
Seattle Public Schools noted that its “Black Studies” class includes critical race theory. “Critical Race Theory” is also “explicitly included in a course at Ballard High School in Seattle,” reported the Washington Examiner. Seattle is injecting critical race theory into its curriculum, including a mandatory Black Studies course “that will be required for graduation from Seattle Public Schools.”
