Biased Curriculum
Critical Race Theory—in the education literature, it’s not critical thinking.
Teaching the C3 Framework, Making Inquiry Critical: Examining Power and Inequity in the Classroom.
Social Education 82(1), pp. 14–17, © 2018, National Council for the Social Studies.
Critical Race Theory—the education literature recognizes it as Marxist.
Teaching the C3 Framework, Making Inquiry Critical: Examining Power and Inequity in the Classroom.
Social Education 82(1), pp. 14–17, © 2018, National Council for the Social Studies.
Randi Weingarten, head of American Federation of Teachers (National Teacher’s Union), July 8, 2021:
Oops!: American Federation of Teachers twitter feed 3 weeks earlier June 14, 2021
Critical Race Theory: defined
Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) holds that the United States is a nation founded on values of white supremacy and oppression, and that these systemic forces (not individual behavior, talent, choices, etc.) are the root causes of all outcome differences in today’s society.
CRT teaches that American institutions, such as our Constitution, legal system, and capitalism are also racist. It modifies the Marxist dichotomy of capitalist vs. labor to the oppressors vs. the oppressed.
CRT theory presumes that life outcomes are inherently unjust if they are unequal. That is in contrast with U.S. principles of equality of opportunity. “Equity” = equal outcomes, not equal opportunity.
CRT states differences in outcomes between races on any metric (wealth, incarceration rates, school performance) is proof that the system that produced those unequal outcomes is racist.
CRT drives decision-making by skin color or identity-group “victim” status, not individual value and talent.
As CRT principles are put into practice, public and private bonds that create trust and allow for civic engagement get weaker, not stronger.
Critical Race Theory is Embedded into Education-terminology.
Curriculum – What is Being Taught
Pedagogy – How it’s Being Taught
D205 education is becoming more and more race-obsessed, and using textbooks, teaching modules, handouts, explicit visuals and heavily biased class lectures to engage in identity shaming and reprogramming.
The D205 school board is not engaging in any meaningful curriculum oversight.
Curriculum – What is being taught
Just ONE D205 “American Studies” class:
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates. Required reading.
Coates disparages the “American Dream.” He argues that the exploitation and oppression of African Americans is deeply implicated in white aspirations for security and material success. Coates insists that the “Dream” cannot exist without racial injustice.
Coates writes of September 11: “I suppose everyone who was in New York that day has a story. Here’s mine… looking out upon the ruins of America, my heart was cold…In the days after, I watched the ridiculous pageantry of flags, the machismo of firemen, the overwrought slogans. Damn it all.”
Coates, “The Case for Reparations.” (Not on syllabus, but teachers use it anyway)
Coates asserts that “America begins in black plunder and white democracy,” that “black people always will be twice as good” but “generally find white predation to be thrice as fast,” and that “white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.” Coates offers reparations as the pathway to “healing the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.”Elmhurst D205 teachers have fully committed to teaching this.
Zinn education project widely recognized as political activism, not history.
The Zinn Education Project
Below is an excerpt from Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America by historian, Mary Grabar
Zinn’s vision of American history is creeping into curricula across the country and is becoming the “dominant narrative” in many places.
The narrative is relentless and blunt: the people should be ashamed of their history. The history of the powerful abusing the weak is at America’s core. America is not, as Abraham Lincoln intoned at Gettysburg, a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Rather, it was conceived in oppression, was born of oppression and has always been dedicated to oppression.
Zinn’s influence has been spurred by groups like the Zinn Education Project, which supplements his book with documentaries, role-playing activities, workshops for teachers and librarians, and dozens of spin-off volumes.
The purpose of Grabar’s book is to unmask the blatant, destructive lies that pervade Howard Zinn’s history. As she convincingly summarizes,
One of the D205 ringleaders: Lindsey DiTomasso
Pedagogy: how things are taught.
In class discussion this year:
- Instructors (DiTomasso, Erin Deloria) disparaged founders as rich privileged white males
- Instructors encouraged students to gang up on and bully property owners and bankers
- Role play forced students to take on roles and argue them even if students disagreed with the principles their “role” required them to discuss.
- Segregated students into racial and gender identity groups.
Students are also not meaningfully graded or assessed.
Kelly Delorea teaches American Studies and AP Government at York. She went on a rant in the classroom this school year.
While shrieking about Thomas Jefferson, she told the class she was going to “destabilize” facts known about Jefferson, that he was our 3rd President, wrote the Declaration of Independence, was Secretary of State, “yada yada.” She said this destabilization was “not some crazy agenda,” but that “when we think about values, what are the values that are in the words, and what are the values in the secret facts.” She claimed Jefferson’s words in the Declaration “could not coexist” with him, and that “there is a problem there, and we saw a problem in the founding.,” and “if it [the Declaration] wasn’t true then, when did it become true? And that threatens certain values… and the reality of how this country came into being.”
She then announced her “macro feedback” for student papers. “In this class, you’re not going to get individual comments on your paper. The requirements of this job at a time that exists and what we’re paid for and what they’re making us do does not allow for that.”
Another Example: Students forced to proclaim their “intersectional identity,” not treated as an individual.
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