Thinly veiled legislation that seeks to prevent the teaching of America’s racist past (and present) have passed one chamber of the state legislatures in Iowa and Pennsylvania and may advance to the desks of the governors in their respective states and effectively reduce the quality of teaching in those states.
Missouri River near Sioux City, Iowa (Matthew Howieson/iStockPhoto)Whatever it truly means in the world of PhD dissertations and graduate-level courses in our best universities, “critical race theory” in the popular lexicon across America has come to mean the denouncement of White people as racists and our best social scientists as unpatriotic nation-haters.
In a well-reasoned editorial in The Wall Street Journal, editor-at-large Gerard Baker tries to explain how critical race theory isn’t “education” at all but indoctrination:
Critical race theory—and its various postmodern cousins—is not some interesting interpretation of social and political history that we are free to examine, embrace, or discard. Its proponents do not seek to frame a critique of modern America to be tested alongside alternatives.
They insist that a traditionally liberal approach to evaluating the merits of competing ideas is itself an outgrowth of an illegitimate system of oppression. Rejection of their critique is the product of false consciousness, since critical thought is itself invalid, the product of white male hegemony.
This isn’t really education at all, not in the sense in which the term has been understood in the post-Enlightenment era. It is closer to pre-Enlightenment religious instruction: the imparting of doctrinal truth with the practical aim of saving souls and reordering the world. Hence its migration from college campuses to K-12 schools, where its practitioners expect to find supple and more-suggestible minds. They have taken to heart the old Jesuit maxim about the first seven years of life.
Critical race theory is taught in law schools, where the theory originated: it refers to the idea that race is a social construct and racism isn’t just the product of prejudice on the part of individuals but also something deeper, a part of legal systems and policies. For example, in the 1930s, when government officials drew actual lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, obviously based on the racial make-up of those areas, banks then wouldn’t offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.
It’s understandable that a WSJ editor would want to keep the study of this local government activity a secret—local officials are generally pro-business. But to do that is to deny an important piece of the puzzle of who we are as Americans, good and bad. Failing to address this part of our past renders us less equipped to address important ideas in our future and therefore stunts our intellectual and social growth.
That’s what the Iowa bill does, write Isaac Bullwinkle and Julius Perez in the student newspaper at Iowa City High School. These two students seem to understand the point better than Mr Baker, mocking the bill’s insistence that it will not violate teachers’ or students’ First Amendment rights even as it specifically prohibits the free discussion of a specific topic from history. They write:
Bill 802 is an attempt by lawmakers in the Iowa House to uphold the standard of teaching American exceptionalism. The law calls for the banning of race and sex “scapegoating,” strictly prohibiting mandatory training that includes “assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.” It implies that our wish is simply to apply blame for racism in the US, and to make others feel negatively about their privilege. While this language is quite menacing, it misinterprets what advocates of racial justice actually want. The point of teaching students about privilege and systemic racism in America is not to make them feel guilty, it is to help them understand how and why several of America’s systems are fundamentally and inherently racist, and how this creates the concept of privilege.
Iowa isn’t the only state trying to pass similar laws, according to a report by NBC News. As of NBC’s publication date of June 17, Illinois and Maryland had no bills about teaching critical race theory introduced, but several other states did. Florida schools, as if they didn’t have enough to worry about, are experiencing increased political division over critical race theory, writes Isabella Whedbee at Palm Beach Central High School in Wellington.
One such state is Pennsylvania, although the words “critical race theory” are never mentioned in either Iowa Bill 802 or the Pennsylvania legislation.
But based on comments from Pennsylvania Gov Tom Wolf’s spokesperson in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the bill is doomed.
It represents “an unfunded mandate and a potentially harmful means to incite further resistance to ensuring all learners have access to accuracies in history, and exposure to content reflecting multiple student identities,” the paper quoted Mr Wolf’s spokeswoman, Lyndsey Kensinger, as saying. She went on to say that critical race theory isn’t even a part of any state curriculum. “To prepare our Pennsylvania learners for a global marketplace, they require the ability to learn about others and their experiences. That should not be a political discussion,” she added.
The bill hides its true intentions by requiring schools to post information about what teachers are teaching, what textbooks are being used, and other information on a website accessible to the general public. That transparency isn’t a bad idea, for sure, but transparency isn’t the real goal of Pennsylvania’s House Bill 1332.
