is anyone else starting to suspect that the reason teacher’s unions are so desperate to teach CRT to your children is to mask the fact that there is probably no group in the US that has done more harm to minority children over the last several decades than teacher’s unions?
this level of projection and inversion is surreal. this is like watching hugo chavez blame the yanqui imperialists for the famine he created and demand more socialist indoctrination to combat this intrusion into the venezuelan utopia.
let’s keep in mind that this is the group that has steadfastly opposed opening schools all year, threatened not to return to work, and made outlandish demand after outlandish demand.
this has caused the harm of school closure to fall disproportionately upon the poor and upon minorities.
and this is part and parcel to the pattern of decades to protect and enrich teachers and harm children.
they oppose accountability, pay for performance, assessment, school choice, charter schools, and every other policy that helps school kids learn and poor and minority children gain access to better opportunities.
and randi is a baghdad bob level liar. she is projecting her own dystopian tendencies onto others to deflect the blame from where it belongs.
this is a master class in dissembling.
sure, they probably are not teaching the actual post-modernist theory rooted in the deconstructionist philosophies of derrida and lyotard to 3rd graders.
what they are doing is something much worse.
they are teaching the output of such practices when you weaponize them with non-interrogatable dogmatic salients.
deconstructionism is just the endless pulling apart of words, language, and semiotics until you pixelate meaning past the point of coherence. it renders any sufficiently deconstructed concept devoid of meaning. thus, it’s inherently self refuting and dissolves into dada or cynicism.
but when you add an axiomatic payload that adherents are not allowed to deconstruct, it turns a parlor game for the parisian salon into a jihadi religion. (my detailed explanation HERE)
and when you teach schoolkids not even that inherently flawed and doctrinaire structure, but rather just its output, sure, maybe you can claim you never taught CRT per se, but you did teach all its tenets and worse provided no context or derivation by which this children might be able to critically assess it.
claiming that is “not CRT” is past the point of distinction without a difference. it’s way over the line into outright lying and then lying about lying.
it’s clear that the NEA which randi heads is pushing CRT.
they said so themselves.
then, facing backlash and states banning such teachings, they began to lie. they claim that they are not teaching exactly what they just said they were teaching and look to use weasel language to hide it. they even went so far as to take their position down from their website.
but do not be fooled into thinking this means it went away. this is an attempt to hide the truth, not to end a pernicious practice.
this is propaganda and slander of the first order. deny you’re doing it, do it, and attack any who point this out while ascribing to them the very things that you, yourself are guilty of.
it’s textbook alinsky and it is being pointed at you to protect them.
they are happy to vilify you and to break the law to do it. this is text from the petition being spread around to commit to teaching CRT even in violation of the law.
it’s clearly rooted in the core dogmatic assumptions of CRT chosen to divide and alienate rather than serve and elevate minority america.
this is not “teaching truth” it’s indoctrinating students into some form of assumptive original sin guilt or miring them in a cult of victimhood to substitute persecution narratives for a desire to strive or belief in themselves and their ability to better their lives.
i spoke at some length about this recently.
the dream is not your dream. you cannot have it because they keep it from you. you are disaffected and others rise beyond you not because their virtue or effort or luck exceeds your own but because the game was never fair. you are down because they put you there. your frustration will never know surcease nor your pain succor. so rise and knock over the game board. rise and start anew.
it was not your fault, the fault lay elsewhere. it was inflicted maliciously and their malice should evoke your own.
the prison of low expectations is one of the nastier and least escapable of social internments. it engenders division, separation, and hopelessness.
it alienates, inhibits achievement, and demeans such achievement as does occur.
literally everyone loses save for the grifters that use these philosophical pretexts to prey upon those they convince to play the role of the dispossessed. then these salesmen of snake oil bounce off to nice neighborhoods and buy big houses. because that’s what marxist organizations do. always have. always will. and the teacher’s unions are in lockstep.
they oppose every policy that increases accountability or choice. they want more pay for less performance and ever less work. in the last year they have refused to teach in person and are now demanding that children be treated with an experimental vaccine that is not approved for them and that almost certainly poses over an order of magnitude more risk than it provides benefit.
this has nothing to do with safety. it’s a grift to work from home and get paid for half the hours. and this grift is having a monstrously disproportionate effect on the poor and upon minorities.
and the evidence that kids were never at meaningful risk and that schools do not act as covid spread vectors has long been extremely compelling.
these unions are pushing a dishonest, divisive, and harmful political philosophy of guilt and grievance to allegedly “protect minorities” while at the same time pushing every policy imaginable to harm the people they profess to be saving. just what are we to make of such a group?
i suggest we make them unemployed.
this is never going to stop. the rot goes all the way to the core and these unions have too much power and are far too entrenched.
you cannot get rid of the unions. they donate too much money to too many politicians.
why, it’s almost as if allowing the literal bribery and extortion of the “leaders” who negotiate teacher’s contracts with these unions for 80 years has led to a grossly unaccountable and over-muscular guild that seeks to serve itself and not our children… huh.
i do not mean to vilify all the teachers. yes, there are some really bad apples attracted by this rotten barrel, but there are many great ones as well and they are victims here too.
so let’s free them and free our kids.
let’s make school choice and vouchers the issue of our time.
let’s give every kid the roughly $12,500 a year paid for their public schooling to spend on an education that they, not a union led by someone like randi, choose.
let’s let good teachers and and good practices evolve and thrive.
the US pays more per student for education than any large country on earth and gets results that one must be charitable to describe as mediocre. tests scores are dropping despite easier tests. competency is inadequate.
money is NOT the problem here. $250,000 per class of 20 could pay for an astonishing education and for astonishing teachers.
and it’s time that it did.
competition breeds competence. if someone tried to sell you a microwave oven of the quality level of most US inner city schools, you’d laugh them out of the appliance store.
quality that poor simply does not exist in free market products.
it’s time to make vouchers and the creation of a real 21st century educational system with high quality, high accountability, and a fit for everyone, not a “one size fits none” philosophythe centerpiece of our national plans.
this, not the trillions in porkulus crony projects, is the real “infrastructure”
the current system has not and cannot provide it.
the technology is there. the need is there. the money is there. all we lack is the will to do it.
education is not too important to be left to the free market.
I think the solution must be even more radical, i.e., going to the root of the problem.
Government-run/controlled education violates the First Amendment and should be abolished at all levels, from pre-school to graduate school and beyond. Government has zero right to decide what ideas may or must/must not be taught, how it’s taught, and by whom. There is no delegated authority or enumerated power for the federal government to be involved, at all: loans, college funds, research and other grants (except for some military applications), etc. etc.
It's in those breeding grounds of statism and collectivism that the academics and lawyers and doctors and journalists and teachers and students are indoctrinated with these horrific notions of how our society should be governed and the ideals we should follow.
Local and state schools at any level, school boards, regents, etc. are all part of government or are government agencies, either directly elected or paid via taxation, i.e., all such employees are state employees and thus part of the government (cf. FDA, CIA, FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies: none are elected or hold political office, but all are arms or branches of government, enforcing government laws, rules, regulations, etc.).
Private institutions _should_ be irrelevant here, but in today's sorry world, too many of them are subject to improper government rules/laws/etc. governing various aspects of education, especially if the institution receives government tax dollars via student loans, grants, etc.
And since states are bound to abide by the First Amendment via the Fourteenth Amendment, all this prohibition applies at the state level, as well.
Few will point out how unconstitutional all this is. Vouchers come with government approval of where/when one can use the voucher. Plus, those vouchers are still paid for by stealing income from everyone, whether one has children in school or not. Pay for your own kids' education. It's immoral and a violation of rights to force others to pay for this (or any other such programs or institutions). Quit being bullies, cowards, and thieves. No involuntary servitude (the Thirteenth Amendment). (In my state, education spending is the biggest item in the budget.)
This isn't rocket science. It's an issue of basic freedom and rights. There _is_ no fundamental right to education — or health care or retirement money or food or anything — paid for by money forcibly taken from unwilling strangers.
Without stealing money from taxpayers, many of these cesspools of SJW-PC-speak would disappear, and with that ending, more people will have a chance to learn that freedom, independence, justice, honesty, productiveness, and integrity are not just words but have real-world, objective meanings that we need to re-learn.
End government schooling and I wager all of this nonsense, all this irrationality — CRT, PC SJW crap, worthless courses and degrees, anti-capitalism, trans nonsense, relativism, anti-intellectual garbage, "diversity" officers/policies, etc. — will sooner rather than later wither on the vine and die. If schools were forced to rely on actually pleasing their customers and make a profit or close/go bankrupt, 90+% of this ridiculous illiterate, irrational, anti-freedom, anti-thought BS would quickly disappear.
There should be a complete separation of government and education.
One cannot "reform" what should not exist in the first place. Arguing about the degree of federal control or how much more money to spend is akin to two robbers arguing about whether to take all of someone's money or leave him some and whether they should beat him senseless or just rough him up. The activity itself is wrong. It cannot be "reformed" except through prohibition. Cf., also to slavery: how much is "okay"? None.
It's too bad that I’ve never seen anyone with a real audience make these points.
I gave feedback for our school that CA children may have a chance to compete with other kids ( globally in terms of education), if the CA board of education is hit by a meteor and an earthquake at the same time.
Even FDR was against unions in the public sector. Unions have a tendency to protect the bad actors at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be serving.
t seems that a large proportion of the US population does not know the name, Howard Zinn - the revisionist "historian" who has authored numerous textbooks that now form the basis for the teaching of history as advocated by the American Federation of Teachers and other teachers unions. Anyone unfamiliar with his works can find out more by performing a Google search for his works (example: https://libcom.org/files/A%20People%27s%20History%20of%20the%20Unite%20-%20Howard%20Zinn.pdf). This is the new history taught today and that supported by CRT advocates.
Thanks, excellent take on the CRT problem. When caught out, the CRT proponents deny they are doing it, blame you for not understanding what CRT teaching really is, then claim it’s really not CRT, and they are simply teaching “real” history. The idea that conservatives should sue school districts to enforce anti-discrimination laws already on the books is total BS. It’s costly, it will take too long and will allow CRT to become permanently imbedded in the public school systems. Your comment about the teacher Unions doing more to damage and cheat disadvantaged students is is exactly right. CRT also allows Unions to dodge the actual requirement to impart the necessary skills to be successful in today’s world, i.e. math, reading, science and history free from wokeness.
crt, sj, covid 17 are all tools for subversion. fortunately, the kids who think will read and talk to honest people, the kids who do not will be the usual output of unionized aka non performing education.....
when the battle is done hang both the lawyers and teachers.
Vouchers will likely lead to defacto takeover of private schools by the state. Government money always comes with strings. With vouchers will come demands for control of potentially every aspect of the product and how it's provided, including requiring or at least tolerating unions and union work rules, and including curriculum.
Vouchers would distort market pricing. Every private school will raise its prices to the amount of the voucher. Why would they charge less?
End compulsory free education. There's just no reason that education should be provided by the state.
while i understand this argument and also understand the issues with creeping socialism and doctrinaire monopolization through funding (akin to what has been done to universities) i just think this is not a possible outcome at this time. there is simply no political or societal support for such a plan.
this, like so many problems in politics, leaves us in a situation where the perfect may be the enemy of the excellent.
sure, it would be better to free schools from the public remit entirely, but there is simply no way to do it in one step and the current system is a disaster and could be made multiples better.
they key will be to develop a "voucher" program that is not really vouchers at all but rather cash grants.
so long as that money goes to people and those people can then spend it howsoever they like, government meddling will be kept out. as soon as the government can, for example, set standards on which schools are "voucher eligible" i 100% agree with you. they will subvert this system.
the goal must be to create such a system to be resistant to such. there can be no standards and the right to spend this money as one's own discretion must be sacrosanct. inevitably, this will give rise to anecdotes about some family that did something that others find ridiculous or offensive but that's the price of the program. pushing that back is the key fight.
starting from "so let's end public education" is, even if correct, simply one of those sort of edge lord positions that allows one to sit smug while claiming to know "the solution" and yet never solve anything while letting the existing system fester and get worse.
so, honest question: if your goal is to engage in a program that is possible, can be be implemented politically, will be accepted by the american people, and will do the most good for US children over the next decade, how do you outperform cash grant education accounts?
would you really try to push the "abolish public education" track?
because i think that if you did, you'd wind up accomplishing nothing and 10 years from now would simply be staking out same purported the moral and public choice theory high ground while having watched 10 more years of decline occur in the schools.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that straight cash payments with no strings would be a huge advance. I completely disagree about political viability.
The left always wins, decade after decade, because they never open the bidding with half a loaf. They cultivate their extreme left wing instead of lecturing them to be reasonable. Most “moderate” Democrats endorsed the Green New Deal, a scheme to remake society from the ground up, vastly more extremist than privatizing schools. They fill the universities with Marxists and get behind ever radical new idea.
The right just gets dragged along, decade after decade. It’s been correctly said that each generation of conservatives exists to ratify the gains made by the prior generation of progressives. They’ve been falling for the left’s good-cop-bad cop act and letting them make gains year after year. “Okay we’ll give you your massive infrastructure bill, just please don’t go full commie.”
How viable is cash payments? I’m confident it has zero chance. Governments never distribute money without strings, much less willingly weaken their system of indoctrination and their power bases. Teachers unions are a top donor. Why would they slap them in the face?
So vouchers will have strings. As such, I’m not sure it’s a step in the right direction at all.
The disproportionate harm done to poorer students from school closures is a feature, not a glitch. What better way to foment even more division than to make poorer students suffer more? Crimes against humanity.
Right on, hermano. I am put in mind of a recent move, in a Cali district if I recall correctly, to end all math enrichment programs for kids gifted in math because it would mean that kids gifted in math would be treated differently than kids not gifted in math. That way, poor kids who are gifted at math do not get enrichment programs while the families of rich kids gifted at math just hire private math tutors. Gee, it's almost like they were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Anyway, math is so boring and racist and it's not like we, as a country, face extraordinarily intense competition with countries where STEM is treated like a religion? Oh, wait a minute...
The synergy of naked self-serving incentives leading to bedfellows across the political spectrum has been something to behold. All these assholes, elbowing each other as they attempt to drink deeply at the trough of COVID hysteria...
"Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I will have sown will never be uprooted." Vladimir Lenin
If tomorrow the government decided that food was "too important" to be left to the free market, we'd be starving by September.
<venezuela has entered the chat>
I think the solution must be even more radical, i.e., going to the root of the problem.
Government-run/controlled education violates the First Amendment and should be abolished at all levels, from pre-school to graduate school and beyond. Government has zero right to decide what ideas may or must/must not be taught, how it’s taught, and by whom. There is no delegated authority or enumerated power for the federal government to be involved, at all: loans, college funds, research and other grants (except for some military applications), etc. etc.
It's in those breeding grounds of statism and collectivism that the academics and lawyers and doctors and journalists and teachers and students are indoctrinated with these horrific notions of how our society should be governed and the ideals we should follow.
Local and state schools at any level, school boards, regents, etc. are all part of government or are government agencies, either directly elected or paid via taxation, i.e., all such employees are state employees and thus part of the government (cf. FDA, CIA, FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies: none are elected or hold political office, but all are arms or branches of government, enforcing government laws, rules, regulations, etc.).
Private institutions _should_ be irrelevant here, but in today's sorry world, too many of them are subject to improper government rules/laws/etc. governing various aspects of education, especially if the institution receives government tax dollars via student loans, grants, etc.
And since states are bound to abide by the First Amendment via the Fourteenth Amendment, all this prohibition applies at the state level, as well.
Few will point out how unconstitutional all this is. Vouchers come with government approval of where/when one can use the voucher. Plus, those vouchers are still paid for by stealing income from everyone, whether one has children in school or not. Pay for your own kids' education. It's immoral and a violation of rights to force others to pay for this (or any other such programs or institutions). Quit being bullies, cowards, and thieves. No involuntary servitude (the Thirteenth Amendment). (In my state, education spending is the biggest item in the budget.)
This isn't rocket science. It's an issue of basic freedom and rights. There _is_ no fundamental right to education — or health care or retirement money or food or anything — paid for by money forcibly taken from unwilling strangers.
Without stealing money from taxpayers, many of these cesspools of SJW-PC-speak would disappear, and with that ending, more people will have a chance to learn that freedom, independence, justice, honesty, productiveness, and integrity are not just words but have real-world, objective meanings that we need to re-learn.
End government schooling and I wager all of this nonsense, all this irrationality — CRT, PC SJW crap, worthless courses and degrees, anti-capitalism, trans nonsense, relativism, anti-intellectual garbage, "diversity" officers/policies, etc. — will sooner rather than later wither on the vine and die. If schools were forced to rely on actually pleasing their customers and make a profit or close/go bankrupt, 90+% of this ridiculous illiterate, irrational, anti-freedom, anti-thought BS would quickly disappear.
There should be a complete separation of government and education.
One cannot "reform" what should not exist in the first place. Arguing about the degree of federal control or how much more money to spend is akin to two robbers arguing about whether to take all of someone's money or leave him some and whether they should beat him senseless or just rough him up. The activity itself is wrong. It cannot be "reformed" except through prohibition. Cf., also to slavery: how much is "okay"? None.
It's too bad that I’ve never seen anyone with a real audience make these points.
I gave feedback for our school that CA children may have a chance to compete with other kids ( globally in terms of education), if the CA board of education is hit by a meteor and an earthquake at the same time.
Even FDR was against unions in the public sector. Unions have a tendency to protect the bad actors at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be serving.
t seems that a large proportion of the US population does not know the name, Howard Zinn - the revisionist "historian" who has authored numerous textbooks that now form the basis for the teaching of history as advocated by the American Federation of Teachers and other teachers unions. Anyone unfamiliar with his works can find out more by performing a Google search for his works (example: https://libcom.org/files/A%20People%27s%20History%20of%20the%20Unite%20-%20Howard%20Zinn.pdf). This is the new history taught today and that supported by CRT advocates.
Thanks, excellent take on the CRT problem. When caught out, the CRT proponents deny they are doing it, blame you for not understanding what CRT teaching really is, then claim it’s really not CRT, and they are simply teaching “real” history. The idea that conservatives should sue school districts to enforce anti-discrimination laws already on the books is total BS. It’s costly, it will take too long and will allow CRT to become permanently imbedded in the public school systems. Your comment about the teacher Unions doing more to damage and cheat disadvantaged students is is exactly right. CRT also allows Unions to dodge the actual requirement to impart the necessary skills to be successful in today’s world, i.e. math, reading, science and history free from wokeness.
crt, sj, covid 17 are all tools for subversion. fortunately, the kids who think will read and talk to honest people, the kids who do not will be the usual output of unionized aka non performing education.....
when the battle is done hang both the lawyers and teachers.
Excellent post bc. Ty
Do right-to-work laws have anything to do with this?
Excellent article. Thank you for clarifying the issues.
No to vouchers.
Vouchers will likely lead to defacto takeover of private schools by the state. Government money always comes with strings. With vouchers will come demands for control of potentially every aspect of the product and how it's provided, including requiring or at least tolerating unions and union work rules, and including curriculum.
Vouchers would distort market pricing. Every private school will raise its prices to the amount of the voucher. Why would they charge less?
End compulsory free education. There's just no reason that education should be provided by the state.
https://mises.org/library/voucher-socialism
while i understand this argument and also understand the issues with creeping socialism and doctrinaire monopolization through funding (akin to what has been done to universities) i just think this is not a possible outcome at this time. there is simply no political or societal support for such a plan.
this, like so many problems in politics, leaves us in a situation where the perfect may be the enemy of the excellent.
sure, it would be better to free schools from the public remit entirely, but there is simply no way to do it in one step and the current system is a disaster and could be made multiples better.
they key will be to develop a "voucher" program that is not really vouchers at all but rather cash grants.
so long as that money goes to people and those people can then spend it howsoever they like, government meddling will be kept out. as soon as the government can, for example, set standards on which schools are "voucher eligible" i 100% agree with you. they will subvert this system.
the goal must be to create such a system to be resistant to such. there can be no standards and the right to spend this money as one's own discretion must be sacrosanct. inevitably, this will give rise to anecdotes about some family that did something that others find ridiculous or offensive but that's the price of the program. pushing that back is the key fight.
starting from "so let's end public education" is, even if correct, simply one of those sort of edge lord positions that allows one to sit smug while claiming to know "the solution" and yet never solve anything while letting the existing system fester and get worse.
so, honest question: if your goal is to engage in a program that is possible, can be be implemented politically, will be accepted by the american people, and will do the most good for US children over the next decade, how do you outperform cash grant education accounts?
would you really try to push the "abolish public education" track?
because i think that if you did, you'd wind up accomplishing nothing and 10 years from now would simply be staking out same purported the moral and public choice theory high ground while having watched 10 more years of decline occur in the schools.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that straight cash payments with no strings would be a huge advance. I completely disagree about political viability.
The left always wins, decade after decade, because they never open the bidding with half a loaf. They cultivate their extreme left wing instead of lecturing them to be reasonable. Most “moderate” Democrats endorsed the Green New Deal, a scheme to remake society from the ground up, vastly more extremist than privatizing schools. They fill the universities with Marxists and get behind ever radical new idea.
The right just gets dragged along, decade after decade. It’s been correctly said that each generation of conservatives exists to ratify the gains made by the prior generation of progressives. They’ve been falling for the left’s good-cop-bad cop act and letting them make gains year after year. “Okay we’ll give you your massive infrastructure bill, just please don’t go full commie.”
How viable is cash payments? I’m confident it has zero chance. Governments never distribute money without strings, much less willingly weaken their system of indoctrination and their power bases. Teachers unions are a top donor. Why would they slap them in the face?
So vouchers will have strings. As such, I’m not sure it’s a step in the right direction at all.
The disproportionate harm done to poorer students from school closures is a feature, not a glitch. What better way to foment even more division than to make poorer students suffer more? Crimes against humanity.
Right on, hermano. I am put in mind of a recent move, in a Cali district if I recall correctly, to end all math enrichment programs for kids gifted in math because it would mean that kids gifted in math would be treated differently than kids not gifted in math. That way, poor kids who are gifted at math do not get enrichment programs while the families of rich kids gifted at math just hire private math tutors. Gee, it's almost like they were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Anyway, math is so boring and racist and it's not like we, as a country, face extraordinarily intense competition with countries where STEM is treated like a religion? Oh, wait a minute...
Very powerful piece… bravo el gato malo 🐈
The synergy of naked self-serving incentives leading to bedfellows across the political spectrum has been something to behold. All these assholes, elbowing each other as they attempt to drink deeply at the trough of COVID hysteria...
Freedom future lays upon our will to die on this hill.