What is the Critical Race Theory?

[BmorePat87]

(05-19-2021, 09:05 AM)Dill Wrote: Well done. I am curious as to whether parents ever query you as to what you are teaching. 

Also, do you ever get students who are primed to spot "leftist propaganda"? 

Seems to me the current battle over CRT in the curriculum is reminiscent of the battle in the '60s and '70s to include black history in high school history texts, which met with considerable resistance, especially in the South.

LOL Since Thomas Paine, "the Left" has always tried to make America look bad.

I haven't heard anything. We're a fairly liberal school within a fairly liberal county within a fairly liberal state, though there are some conservative pockets. I've taught government for a decade now, so I know how to present issues in a way that does not come off as stating something as a truth but rather presenting dueling arguments and offering evidence to empower students to make their own decision. For environmental policy, I presented an article discussing a Trump plan to reduce coal ash liner regulations and it mentioned the impact on businesses versus the environment. I provided a pro EPA cartoon and an anti EPA cartoon. Students were challenged to either defend the Trump administration's move or defend the protests from environmental groups, using evidence from the article and one of the cartoons. They also had to emphasize the cost-benefit of whichever option they defended.

I'm open about political ideology in my electives (psych and sociology) in that I share more personal beliefs with regards to the discipline though I'm not partisan in doing so. It's also important to stress that opposing views on politics shouldn't be treated with intolerance unless that opposing view point is one that believes a class of people should be treated as less than human.

I had a student this year in sociology who I had taught before. She told me that she may leave class if we talk about the police because her parents are police and she got into a lot of arguments with classmates over the summer. I reassured her that nothing in my curriculum was negative towards the police and that I understand if she needed to. Early on I had students add images to a collage that discussed US culture and one added "ACAB". I made sure to address this and I pointed to the fact that the acronym was originally a skinhead mantra. I used it as a lesson on why you should be more educated on things you repeat and the way it demonizes a whole class of people.

The student I mentioned earlier ended up leaving class anything anything involving race was mentioned, but she never complained about the content.