Banning Critical Race Theory in schools isn’t enough

Just as conservatives changed the courts, so too do they need to overhaul the education system

by Dan Buck, The Spectator World, January 26, 2022- While pundits bicker about whether bills targeting critical race theory in schools are ethical or constitutional, an equally important question is whether they’re effective. While such legislation is a workable stopgap to loathsome practices like affinity groups, it can only work as a temporary measure.

CRT is manifested not primarily as a set of explicit ideas to be taught like the freezing point of water or the causes of World War Two. Rather, it’s a philosophy that informs the instruction, curriculum, and policies of various districts. We cannot outright ban CRT from our schools anymore than we can ban the influence of philosopher John Dewey. When the culprit is a belief system, bans are the wrong tool.

..  — but what about the bigger picture? CRT links to a larger philosophy called critical pedagogy, which, in short, conceives of schools not as places of learning, classically understood, but as loci of activism. It manifests in practices like “action civics,” where students spend class periods researching political issues, forming solutions — invariably always big-government ones — and attending protests. In ethnomathematics, students discuss how they can use math to measure their activism or just how important it is to be right.  ... Within this broader philosophy, students do not master skills and acquire the knowledge they need to succeed in the future, but rather now. Banning CRT would have no effect on these practices when the fault is an entire approach to education itself. ... (subscribers, continue reading)

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