Busting the myth that CRT will not be in Westport classrooms

A common response from educators, journalists and politicians when the issue of CRT in the classroom is raised is that CRT is merely an arcane legal theory and that it is of course not being taught to little kids in public schools. This response is typical of how CRT advocates manipulate language and deploy semantics to get what they openly state they want. Their overarching goal is a complete transformation of the way children in America are educated (one need only spend a few moments on the NYU Metro Center website to come to this conclusion). Education is no longer about critical thinking and gaining knowledge and skills; it is now about “dismantling white supremacy” (as they define white supremacy, which is not how you or I may normally understand the phrase). Students are no longer in school to become highly sophisticated independent thinkers; they are in school to become highly effective social justice warriors.

Of course we are not arguing esoteric legal and philosophical doctrines are being imparted to grade school kids! That is happening in law schools and education schools, not kindergarten. What is happening, via efforts to change the way schools operate led by groups like the NYU Metro Center, is that the way we educate our kids — what we teach AND how we teach them — is being radically reshaped. Our group is motivated by our view that parents do not fully appreciate the scope of the proposed changes to teaching practices. Parents are being gaslighted into thinking this “equity lens” stuff is just about calling out the way minority groups have faced hardships in American life. CRT advocates thereby attack CRT critics as racists or hateful people who want to whitewash the sins of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We take no issue whatsoever with a full and accurate accounting of bias and racism in American history and teaching our children the great importance of the Civil Rights movement (which we believe is actually being undermined by this CRT-driven shift in emphasis from “equality,” the highest goal of the Civil Rights movement, to “equity,” the highest goal of the CRT movement). What we take issue with are the fundamental pedagogical shifts that groups like the NYU Metro Center are trying to implement, in Westport and in every town and city in America.

For the benefit of concerned parents, we discuss in some detail below what CRT pedagogy is all about. We encourage you to read our views on this topic — think critically! — think for yourself! — and come to your own conclusions. If there are going to be major changes to the way your children are being taught in school, you owe it to them to have a solid understanding of what these changes really are. Don’t worry — becoming informed and thinking for yourself does not make you a “conspirator” or a “white supremacist”! It just means you are a concerned parent who cares about your kid, all kids, and the future of your country. Some of this material is in fact tedious and abstract, but we urge you to process it — the impenetrable vocabulary of CRT is partly what makes it so insidious. It is difficult to articulate disagreements with a set of ideas that seem incomprehensible.

CRT Pedagogy: What really is it?

P edagogy was a rather uncommon term until Critical Race Theory came along. Pedagogy refers broadly to the art of teaching and “critical pedagogy” refers specifically to the relatively recent idea that pedagogy is necessarily political and should encourage teachers and students to be part of a broader social movement for justice.

Pedagogical theorists began applying the CRT framework, which was previously developed as a legal concept, to the field of education (Gloria Ladson-Billings, 1995). Thus, it is a distinct move away from the Socratic approach of challenging and debating ideas and towards a uniform implementation of what educators deem to be social justice.

In an effort to disguise its true intent, CRT Pedagogy cleverly uses familiar terms to convey completely different meanings. A primary example of such subterfuge is the idea of “critical thinking,” long understood to mean the challenging of different ideas through debate so that the “best” most truthful ideas would win out.

CRT distorts the traditional meaning of “critical thinking” by framing its educational approach as “critical pedagogy” or “critical thinking under a new banner.” It asserts that the way of thinking in the past was limited by dominant systems of power (white male) so that one must dismantle the power structures in order to think “critically.” One must criticize the very way in which thinking was engaged. For example, in the past, “Science” was conceived of as a process in which a hypothesis is formulated and then tested to see if the hypothesis could hold up under real life challenges. In this way, knowledge was always challenged and improved by subjecting it to the test of reason and experiment. Under the new “critical” approach, science as a process is “dismantled” on the basis that it is claimed to be merely an outgrowth of white supremacist thinking and, since all knowledge is considered relative due to the fact that it arises under certain circumstances in specific cultures, it is deemed that the goal of social justice must have preeminence and all knowledge, teaching and learning should serve the goal of social justice.

New university departments have sprung up around this new pedagogy to promote “anti-racist” and “anti-bias” teaching and learning.” See , Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) . See also , Steinhardt NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools . (Steinhardt has been engaged by the Westport school district to complete an Equity Study.)

How to Recognize CRT pedagogy

N YU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, or NYU Metro, which was hired by the Westport Superintendent and its BOE, is a primary agent for transforming schools and implementing CRT pedagogy in K-12 public schools. Below are some tenets announced by Metro on its website ( Emphasis added ):

Metro’s methodology upon being hired is first to engage in an Equity Study of the school or district. The purpose of the equity study is to prove that “marginalized students” are socially oppressed and academically disadvantaged by the institutional and structural racism that pervades the school in question. The question of (1) whether such structural and systemic racism actually exists in the school and (2) if found to exist to what extent it is responsible for inequities is never considered, but is assumed to be true for every school. Thus, personal agency is never acknowledged and differences in personal study habits or parental support are never addressed for fear of blaming the individual . Instead, CRT determines that the institution alone is to blame for gaps in educational outcomes, and therefore, the institution must be overhauled according to CRT principles.

Since the institution has failed to eliminate disproportional outcomes among groups, and since individual effort is discounted, racism is seen to be the only possible cause of education gaps among identity groups . These groups are based on whites being in the oppressor or privileged group and all other groups coalesced under the principle of intersectionality as one large group referred to as the marginalized/victim/oppressed group.

Metro claims that its study is uniquely designed for the school in question. However, it appears that Metro engages in a top-down approach where the outcome is pre-determined (institutional racism) and the recommendations and implementation for change are also pre-determined so that the same plan is proposed regardless of the school in question.

First, it determines that marginalized students are disadvantaged by the system and are not receiving equitable treatment. It does this by ignoring any and all individual inputs, such as hours spent doing homework, parental support and home environment, and focusing solely on the outcomes of the institution/the school in question. It purposefully ignores individual differences because it is based in an ideology (CRT) that exists only in an environment where individuals are disregarded in favor of identity groups that are divided into oppressors and oppressed, so that the oppressors are made to feel responsible for all failings of the marginalized group of oppressed and so that their shame and guilt will support the CRT political pedagogy.

A major and unaddressed problem with this approach is that it includes in the group of the oppressed many successful African Americans who have succeeded within the current system, and it excludes all the economically and educationally disadvantaged white persons that it categorically assigns to the group of oppressors.

It collects “data” of disproportional outcomes of the various identity groups, where white students are considered as belonging to the white supremacist group and all others are grouped into the “marginalized” identities through a concept of “intersectionality” that aggregates all non-white students into one grievance group of victims, oppressed by the system. It then massages the data so that its report will demonstrate the desired outcome and support its proposed plan (1) to change the curriculum, (2) to change the teaching methods (pedagogy, “teaching and learning”) and (3) to create ongoing support for professional learning and development of teachers and staff so that they can implement and monitor the new pedagogy.

It engages in its Equity Study in such a way that it guides the participants to the conclusions that it has already pre-determined, and it reframes all conversation to support its pre-determined conclusions.

SERC: CRT in Connecticut

T o understand what these changes look like, which Metro says will take a period of four years to implement, one need look no further than the State of Connecticut SERC curriculum already in place for African American studies in CT, given that SERC followed the same methodology and ideology as does Metro. Teachers are instructed to have students analyze every unit through the lens of Race, Power and Privilege and to assign students to engage in community activism using the understanding they have learned about oppression and systems of power.

On its website SERC states: “SERC … supports district efforts to align … curriculum to instructional practices and subsequent performance tasks that demonstrate student achievement,” thus mandating and incorporating student activism into the curriculum.

Thus, Academic Learning is replaced with Social Justice Activism and our children are used as ideological warriors as opposed to becoming critical thinkers, scientists and philosophers.