“The Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Education is bringing in a consulting group to help teachers ‘dismantle racism’ from their math curricula,” reports The College Fix:
the board decided on October 25 to shell out $50,000 to Quetzal Education Consulting, which claims it readies teachers “to identify, disrupt, and replace white supremacy culture practices in math instruction with practices that center the wellness of students of color.”…
Quetzal’s homepage is emblazoned with the title “Decolonize. Reclaim. Reimagine” and its stated mission is to “support institutions working to build a legacy of liberatory education with Black and Brown communities through anti-oppression consultation.”
Quetzal offers services such as “antiracist consultation,” “antiracist education,” “disrupting anti-black racism,” and “healing spaces.”
“We’ve been effectively disrupting several forms of oppression in our careers as educators,” Quetzal says on its site. “We have learned how to assess, redistribute and disrupt power dynamics for the purposes of liberation. We remain aware of and connected to our ancestral legacy of genius. Our work honors the ancestral traditions and teachings of Black and Brown freedom fighters who have paved the way for us and future generations.”
Pittsburgh’s schools are just over one-half African-American.
Quetzal Co-Founder Ana Benderas says she has “impactfully championed critical resistance and liberation” and has “co-creat[ed] liberatory spaces with students and critical educators of Color.” She claims she draws from her “ancestral wisdom.”….
Two years ago, the Oregon Department of Education offered a “micro-course” which taught the “toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” These included a “focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer,” student “tracking” (kids assigned to classes according to ability level), and “participation structures reinforc[ing] dominant ways of being.”
Bringing in anti-racism and diversity consultants probably won’t help black students at all. “Black, Hispanic students did worse, especially in math, when their districts hired ‘chief diversity officers,’” notes Joanne Jacobs, who writes about education policy: “Hiring a ‘chief diversity officer’ doesn’t close achievement gaps, concludes an analysis by Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Education Policy…Even controlling for [pre-existing] achievement gaps, minority students lost more than their white classmates, especially in math, they found. “Racial achievement gaps went from bad to worse in these districts.”
Diversity staff sometimes view basic educational requirements as racist — for example, they don’t think students should have to do their homework. As Jacobs observes, “If students are told that turning in work on time, respecting teachers and taking responsibility for their actions are ‘white supremacist’ expectations, that success in school won’t pay off due to ‘systematic racism’ . . . Why bother with the math homework?”
Diversity officials have attacked virtues such as planning ahead. The St. Paul, Minnesota schools cite cite the antiracist protocol “Courageous Conversation” as part of their Critical Ethnic Studies class required for graduation. That protocol has “guided school districts to deem traits such as the ability to plan ahead and ’emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology’ as attributes of ‘whiteness.’” Schools have also disparaged individualism and planning ahead as signs of “cultural racism,” under its baneful influence.
Diversity officials instill what they euphemistically call “anti-racism.” “Anti-racism” teaches students to hate their country and view it as incorrigibly racist. “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 How to Be An Antiracist, used in some high-school classes. It advocates discrimination against whites, saying, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination [against whites]. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate, which loves this odious book.
The book’s author is Ibram Kendi, whose books are read in many American classrooms. In 2020, the Fairfax County, Virginia, Schools paid Kendi $20,000 for a one-hour presentation on “anti-racism” to school staff. At the time, they were also paying bus drivers to drive entirely empty school buses.
Neighboring Arlington, Virginia, 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.
