The Blog

2021-

2021-11-28 c
THE STATE OF THE DISUNION III

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

It exposes a radical approach to education that pervades our schools and upends all of our former notions of what education should be, replacing the goal of fostering inquisitive, capable minds with ideologically trained readers, who already know what a text has to say. Headline-making stories of racialized “affinity groups” and “privilege walks” are only the most visible elements of this pedagogy. Other seemingly innocuous practices are also rooted in a philosophy that treats the immutable characteristics of students as their most central attributes.

Critical race theory flows from the more general philosophy of education called “critical pedagogy,” which, in brief, seeks to leverage every math class, English lesson, history unit, elective, and scientific concept as a means to inculcate a political goal: the overthrow of Enlightenment-based, classically liberal principles—including the scientific method, objective reasoning, evidence-based argument, and so on.

“Critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order,” writes Richard Delgado, an early scholar of CRT, “including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Though its proponents defend CRT as merely teaching “accurate” racial history, the discipline’s aim is to use race and history as a lens through which to judge—to condemn—Western values. Each branch of critical pedagogy proceeds accordingly, using gender, say, in the same way.

— Daniel Buck & James Furey, Units of Indoctrination

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