I’m curious what everyone’s thoughts are about it. And, I suppose equally important, what exactly is it and what is the typical K-12 curriculum for it?
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I’m curious what everyone’s thoughts are about it. And, I suppose equally important, what exactly is it and what is the typical K-12 curriculum for it?
I doubt it has anything to do with a K-12 curriculum. Maybe something for college students to debate, ergo inapplicable to actual living :).
Seems to me to be some form of focusing on race so much that you throw the baby out with the bathwater. And again of nothing to do with what you would teach in K-12, because if you just want to teach historical instances systematic racism it seems entirely superfluous, you teach red-lineing and stuff of that nature. And that's not a theory.
Things of this nature are still going on (you can call it separate and equal but ...) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/calif...ison_n_3087093
Very much in schools K-12 and being battled over right now. Here is more info: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/wh...attack/2021/05
I can't speak specifically to that, but a couple of days ago, my granddaughter in public school kindergarten wanted to know if I knew who Harvey Milk was and what had happened to him.
That was their lesson this week.
Seriously, kindergarten?
My understanding is that it's a law school class.
People seem to be confusing it with aspects of American history. Heaven forbid that students learn about the dark side of our collective past.
Interesting article!Quote:
Originally Posted by sweetana3
I won’t get involved in much here about CRT because I know next to nothing about it in the academic sense, with all of its nuances. And it *IS* an advanced academic concept, it started there and in the academic/ legal community.
Yes all of a sudden it’s exploding all over social media. I’m moderating two threads right now on Nextdoor about it. Not thrilled about this. But as long as these threads remain polite, they will remain.
That watered down versions are debated in the Twitter world and of course picked up and promoted in the K-12 arena should not surprise me.
Beware of mainstream media promoting this as THE ISSUE we all need to be fighting about today.
I pulled this part of of the article:
As one teacher-educator put it: “The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: ‘Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?’ That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers.” Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment.
I like that approach. Those are the two most important metrics for managing a classroom, IMHO.
As far as going up the ladder to people who decide curricula, I need more time to think about it. Do I think that Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, the murder of Medgar Evers, should be taught and discussed? Yes. Harvey Milk in kindergarten? Hmm.. If you take a 5-year old kid to France do you expect them to appreciate the Mona Lisa?
The article also references how in the 1930s, the American Legion tried to outlaw teaching of Socialism/Marxism. Maybe that's part of the reason Scott Nearing got tossed out of UPenn.
How do you legislate which ideas should be discussed and how they should be discussed? And which ones should be banned from discussing? Children learn by example. Young children learn from their parents; older children learn from their peers. A teacher's job is to open their minds to explore different ways of thinking. To teach critical thinking and methods of discourse. I don't know how you legislate that.
I think it's got media attention because of attempts to ban teaching "critical race theory" in most cases without even defining what critical race theory is. Which amounts to pure intimidation. If you define it, it may amount to censorship and some level of intimidation, but at least the rules are clearer, when it can mean anything if it somehow talks about racial issues, it's just intimidation. So not so great.
The thing is I am not at all sure I would be very sympathetic to actual critical race theory (I accept systematic racism has existed). But teaching about slavery and the trail of tears, I'm sorry but when have schools ever not taught that as basic history?
I think it's the latest cleverly-manufactured "tempest in a teapot" in the culture wars. Whatever meaning the phrase "critical race theory" had previously is no longer the point.
yes, this. Only I don’t think it’s especially “clever “manipulation of our populace, I think it’s predictable and ham fisted.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
About age 4-5-6 is the age kids start to understand society’s slicing of gender and sex, or so we are told in ponderous tones by those educating us.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
I suppose this Harvey Milk lesson is timed for that. ? This is why we have Drag Queens* leading story times in public libraries reaching that 4-6 aged audience
* Drag Queens are neither gender identified as opposite sex in real life or necessarily gender fluid. Confused yet? You and me both. I am now convinced that Drag Queen story hour fad is all about the appearance of being WOKE by the library organizers who seldom have opportunity to be edgy in their (perceived) role of staid librarians in a culturally dull, middle class institution.
I think that with so many people depending on the culture combat industry for a paycheck, it was only a matter of time until they came after a share of the education budget.
Personally, I would like to see more effort going into producing a more literate and numerate product from the schools than whatever it is the CRT people think they can accomplish.
Like most of the insanity we have to deal with it starts on the right. Attempts to ban teaching "critical race theory" even if undefined and it's probably especially dangerous if undefined, are changes to the law, and therefore of some import. So the average liberal is left of course reacting to right wing attempts to shift the narrative, and all "huh, where did that come from, and out of nowhere, oh hmm now I have to know what critical race theory is". They may not know of course, there may be much group-think, but the thing is they didn't start the fire! If laws are being passed they feel they have to react somehow. So it is in fact a right wing and Republican attempt to change the narrative and it seems pass laws that do little more than broad intimidation of teachers.
Around 15 years ago my SIL, her husband and 2 kids came to visit and stay with us for a few days. SO's nephews were about 7 and 9 at the time. As we gave them a tour of our then new home we got to the master bedroom and spent a few minutes there chatting about the shelves SO had installed in the closet or whatever. 7yo nephew turns to me and says "Uncle JP, if this is Uncle JB's bed, where is yours?" I said "I sleep here too." His face clouded over and I could practically see the gears grinding in his brain as he pondered this. Then suddenly the proverbial lightbulb went on over his head and he said "Oh! Ok." And a minute later turned to his mom and said "you said we were going to dinner soon. I'm hungry."
Kindergarten may be a bit young for a discussion of Harvey Milk, but if done age appropriately I don't see a particularly big problem. Especially since there's a non-zero likelihood that there is a kid in the room who has same sex parents. And friends of that kid who are aware that the kid's parents are same sex. The first sex ed class I went to, all those years ago, was in fourth grade. For better or for worse I suspect that kids today are exposed to ideas about sex earlier than they were 40-whatever years ago when I was a kid, so we probably need to be addressing issues around this earlier.
An added confusion to this concept is that Critically Responsive Teaching, also known as CRT, is a thing in K-12 education.
So if you’re reading about CRT in the world of education, make sure you know which acronym they’re throwing at you.
My objection to the teaching about Harvey Milk had nothing to do with "gender" issues--my granddaughter is comfortable with same-sex couples and has been in class with children with same-sex parents. It had everything to do with teaching 5 and 6 year old children about violent murder. Sorry I did not make that clear; weird to me that people assume this is about the fact that Harvey Milk was gay.
The Moscone/Milk assassination was way too complicated a story for primary school students to absorb.
why was he chosen as a subject?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
As I understand it, CRT as such is just another mode of analysis that focuses on race the way Marxist analysis focuses on class or Deconstructionism focuses on language. The real idiocy we’re seeing recently would be what I think of as CRT adjacent, where people make their own half-baked interpretations or misuse specialized jargon. Sort of like the people who use psychological tools and terms to analyze politicians they never met but don’t like.
Like that LGTBQ group in Seattle who announced they would charge a “reparation fee” to white participants at one of their events. Or that recent WaPo op-ed that attacked the “Hamilton” guy as a white hegemon who invisibilized afrodescendant Latinxs for not using enough dark-skinned performers. Or the NYC mayoral candidate who accused Yang and Garcia of “Jim Crow” tactics for opposing him.
I’m not that worried about the threat of the most recent educational fad. I sincerely doubt most Americans of any pedigree over the age of six will defer to the moral authority of public school teachers to the extent that it will have any lasting impact. Eventually it will collapse under the weight of its own silliness. If it causes harm, it will be more as empty intellectual calories than political indoctrination.
It's so easy to put together a straw man, label it "Critical Race Theory", and then let loose.
Fnord.
I don't know; she brought it up and asked me if I knew who Harvey Milk was and I said to my son, "not the Harvey Milk " and he said, "Yeah," and I said, "Yes, I had heard of him," and started talking about the sewing project I had brought to show her, since I really didn't want to go there, I was so shocked that they were telling these babies about someone being murdered, and worse, a hero being murdered. It was the violence that shocked me; these are really young children and back when I was a child, or raising children, you tried to protect them against certain things.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I think talking to children about brutal violence against others is really terrifying, and not an appropriate subject for kindergarten.
Totally agree Tybee that kids need to be kids and that’s too young for them.
I had the same thought. They need trigger warnings to protect college students from “Hamlet”, but this is OK?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
I was watching some new zombie series on Netflix the other night, and many of the episodes have trigger warnings on the initial title cards. We're not talking a sensitive Disney zombie series either, but a pretty kinetic and violent show, I suspect anyone watching it knows what they are getting into.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
Also, one of the characters drank some whiskey in one episode...
I’ve seen warnings about smoking along with the sex and violence stuff. Brace yourselves kids, they smoke in “Casablanca”.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
Smoking may be back in Vogue in tv.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
the recent “Mare of Eastown” with Kate Winslet, a tv production getting lots of buzz, has many characters who smoked.
I think all that smoking was to signal the working class environment it portrayed.
Quick survey. How old was everyone when you learned that Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther king Jr. had been murdered?
Second quick survey. At what age do kids these days have to do active shooter drills in school so that they will hopefully not die for someone’s second amendment freedoms?
Well, I was ~5 years old when MLK was killed, so there's that.Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
I think I learned about Lincoln around the same time.
I wasn't quite a year old when JFK was killed, so I don't remember that much, though certainly I heard about it a few years later. Malcolm X - I also don't remember the day he was killed, though again within a few years it came up.
I didn't learn about the Japanese-American Internment until about middle school. Age-similar friends of mine from California who lived in a town that had had Japanese-American residents removed to the camps tell me they didn't learn until late high school/college.
I think the nuns explained the whole "Jesus was killed" thing to me before the age of 6.
Yeah--that Jesus one was brutal!
I was ten when King was killed. I remember it well because my grandfather was a Chicago fireman who was stabbed during the ensuing riots. His stiff coat prevented serious injury, and he and a colleague beat his assailant senseless with their axes and left him bleeding in the street. It was a different time.
Growing up in Illinois, we heard about Lincoln and his murder early and often. Growing up Catholic, we couldn’t help but notice the gruesome art and statuary and drew the appropriate conclusions at a very young age.
I can’t remember at what age I learned just because people sometimes abused a right it would be ridiculous to assume that no one should have the right.
I didn't learn of the Sand Creek until doing a writing assignment about it in college. I was a full fledged adult before learning of the Japanese interment camps, even though a couple were reasonably close. And maybe I'd forgotten, but only recently learned the detail of the Tulsa massacre. Then again, I've read of the depredations and tortures of early white settlers by some native Americans outside of schooling. I was pretty up on the Chicago 7 (or 8) trial with out any help from the educational system and the murder of the Kent State students by the National Guard. Maybe some of that was just a little too traumatic for our young minds back in the day.
I can’t imagine that Harvey Milk was brought up as an example of anything other than persecution of gay a man in power, threatening to some people. If you take away his gay-ness, he was a white male politician. If the kindergarten teacher wants to talk about white male politicians assassinated while in office, there are many to choose from. I don’t think Harvey Milk would make the cutQuote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
That is why I mentioned gender and sex and etc.
I think the kindergarten teacher, assuming she really did have a formal lesson of some kind around Harvey Milk’s assassination, made a mistake on several fronts and yes certainly assassination is a violent thing little kids don’t need to be talking about in class.
I'd love to see some very specific examples of the troubling curriculum being presented in our public schools. I spent much of the pandemic helping daily with a 4th grade public school class, in a dual-language program school, in a very "woke" district, and I didn't really see anything worth yammering about(*) on FoxNews or CNN.
(*) Other than my observation that teachers are dreadfully underpaid for what they are expected to do.
I seem to recall Moscone also being killed that day, and that the killings had nothing much to do with anyone's sexuality. Dan White didn't wake up in the morning, have too many Twinkies, and decide to go gay-hunting.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I also happen to know moderately one of the other people who were on his hit list that day, who I have attended many firearms training classes with... I think the City of SF had 8 concealed carry permits issued at the time, and several of those permits belonged to other Supervisors. Some of whom went on to become gun rights supporters, some went the other direction...
Wait—I thought he, Milk, WAS Assassinated because He was prominent in the gay community and was making headway in San Francisco politics.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
OK I will accept that I’m wrong, but I am gonna have to look it up.
I believe that's correct, although Harvey Milk's sexuality does come into play when nearly 45 years later he's still being martyred. No one would remember him if he were straight.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
Perhaps people would remember Moscone better if he had something named after him. Like a ginormous convention center or something.
From that case, I remember hearing about the “Twinkie Defense”.