Racial Resentment As Pedagogy

City Journal ^ | April 5, 2019 | Max Eden

[reaganaut1]

This weekend, more than 14,000 academics will gather in Toronto to share their research for the American Education Research Association’s annual conference. In past years, I’ve documented the focus of AERA academics on matters that seem only obliquely connected to curriculum, instruction, and policy. It looks like more of the same this year, from the symposium on “Liberating Oppressed Ontologies and Cosmologies for Transformational Praxis” to the paper “Queer Evolution: (Re)invigorating Environmental Education through Queer Interpretations of Evolutionary Onto-Epistemological Choreography.” But this year’s conference has especially lofty ambitions. Under the title Leveraging Education Research in a ‘Post-Truth’ Era: Multimodal Narratives to Democratize Evidence, the event’s promotional poster features a lighthouse inscribed with the words “Trust, Integrity, Methodology, and Reliability,” which looks out over a sea of “Post-Truth, Propaganda, and Fabrication.”

Unfortunately, rather than a renewed commitment to methodologically sound research into education policy and practice, the conference program demonstrates a preoccupation with promoting a virulent new brand of racism. A keyword search of the conference program reveals 422 hits for whiteness—more than for “personalized learning” (16), “school boards” (19), “standardized testing” (20), “high school graduation” (23) “reading achievement” (24), “digital learning” (25), “policy analysis” (31), “early education” (38), “teacher evaluation” (41) “literacy instruction” (42), “bilingual education” (48), and “achievement gap” (75) combined.

A symposium called “The Interrogation of Whiteness in Progressive Public Schools” promises to explore “the experience of teachers and education leaders who work to undo whiteness in public schools.” A featured paper in that session is “Trust, Community, and Dismantling White Dominance.” Another, “Critical-Race Elementary Schooling: Teacher Change Agents are Undoing Whiteness in Elementary Schools,” celebrates teachers who “actively resist elements of Whiteness.”

[moovova]

Whoa..gonna have to get my wife to read this and explain it to me (she’s the Doc in the family).

That being said...it sounds like a bunch of self-haters getting together to figure out how to hate themselves even more.

[griswold3]

“the racial hatred for whites is just zooming off scale this year”
Has always been at that level, just undercover. Permission to hate Whitey has been given and the intense expression is meant to gain leverage.

[SharpRightTurn]

“the experience of teachers and education leaders who work to undo whiteness in public schools.”

By striking algebra and chemistry from the curriculum and replacing them with studies on “queerness” and “straight white male pathologies”?

[onyx]

Hate to ask and don't want to be pushy,
but could y'all please really try to
Make Your Donation

[nicollo]

I work as academic coach with students across the country, so I see the curriculum state to state.

While I don’t work w/ K-6, from what I see the indoctrination is most extreme in middle schools, where, it seems teachers are most free to wander off established curricula and bend young minds.

High school teachers tend to mix leftism into their lessons, but the high school curriculum is actually very defined, and, believe it or not, standards keep teachers in line. Schools w/ AP are the least susceptible to the progressive drift. I’ve got a couple kids in the most competitive of San Jose public schools, and while I see politics now and then, it’s mostly about the three RRRs, only straight As, 5s on the AP and 1600s on the SAT or die.

DC, btw, is the worst for progressive b.s., especially in its pasty-white N.W. quarter.

[combat_boots]

You need to put out a book under a nom de plume

[nicollo]

Haha, I already got in trouble for publishing an article on EdWeek that teachers are OVERPAID. (They are.)

It got reposted on HuffPost, where they went nuts.

Have to keep me away from the keyboard...

[trebb]

They are jealous of that which they condemn - they wish they could be like the average White male and they also envy that “Toxic” Masculinity they complain about...Since they are not responsible enough to aspire to these ideals, they try to tear them down so they don’t have to constantly be ashamed with themselves when making the comparisons...

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it...

[Jim Noble]

I don't agree with that.

OK, but the data is not on your side.

[4Liberty]

Good to know!

I am a college educator, but also sit on my local School Board as an elected official.

School Board members are not allowed to directly interact with classroom instructors and employees. We must work "through" the Superintendent's office, to gather detailed information.

We are allowed to see aggregate numbers, such as SAT scores, spending per pupil, and so forth. But what is taught on a daily basis in each classroom is not easily accessible. It is not easy to get information on Grade level lesson plans and subject coverage (though I am trying to change that).

In short - if we do not hear from parents - we do not hear much. Parents are the eyes and ears for the School Board. They MUST speak up, either to the Superintendent or directly contact their elected School Board officials, if they see something sketchy in the curriculum that is unacceptable, biased, unethical, etc. Then we contact the Superintendent, and begin a review "process."

[nicollo]

In short - if we do not hear from parents - we do not hear much.

Yep. A core piece of my academic support program is developing self-advocacy, which we also preach to parents.

Btw, what you described about School Board oversight is precisely what is wrong with our schools: schools should be accountable to students and parents and not school systems, states, standards, etc.

The client relationship is backwards. It should be teacher <--> student, school<--> parent, but it's not. Instead, it's teacher <--> administration <--> teacher union <--> school system <--> county/ state rules & oversight <--> national standards, etc.

I could give you a thousand examples of how this plays out in the classroom, from curriculum to technology to rules and grades, and so on.

[nicollo]

All in the pursuit of a narrowing of the "achievement gap".

The "achievement" gap represents the decline in parity between races of "federal lunch qualified" (i.e. students on assistance, representing low-economic demographic) students in the 4th grade, based on standardized tests, and those same cohorts in the 8th grade, at which point black and Hispanic high achievement drops significantly, whereas white and Asian maintain the same rates.

In that black and Hispanic high achievers are lost between 4th and 8th grade, what the "achievement gap" highlights is that the hyper-focus on race, equity and meeting minimal standards is mal-serving those minority students. By further dividing by race, your Superintendent is merely exacerbating the problem.

Now, WHY your Superintendent is even bringing this up is because the "achievement gap" is the latest fad and not becuase it is actually meaningful to the school system (it could be). The reason the school systems constantly bounce from one educational fad to another is because 1) nothing they do works; and 2) whatever they do to change changes nothing of what they are already doing that doesn't work.

[4Liberty]

Teachers’s Unions: Problem #1!!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yep, it’s now permissible to unmask the hatred for whites and “white values.” Thanks, Obama.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Did you read the rest of my post? It is a very simple prescription to close the achievement gap and it works. But I closed with “none of it is possible.” Until that simple plan is implemented, nothing will work.

Ergo, I am saying it is not possible to close the achievement gap in today’s PC climate.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

black and Hispanic high achievers are lost between 4th and 8th grade

I would assume that's when the higher level gangs are starting to reach down to those kids and groom them for joining the gangs. The message they deliver is "don't act white - don't get educated." Peer pressure starts to kick in, the kids succumb and they are doomed. The kids that ignore the peer pressure and try to excel have one hell of a hard time doing that.