Critical Thinking

 It has been said by many, myself included, that education is a political act. Any time you get grownups in a room talking into the brains of young people, you're liable to upset or confuse some of the status quo. That is what Critical Race Theory is all about. Long before I ever went in front of a classroom full of black and brown faces turned up to me to gather wisdom, I was getting signals that my own beliefs were in need of some rustling. That whole Pilgrim thing, and the way those nice Indians gave up their land for us to achieve Manifest Destiny. And maybe this continent was just fine without Christopher Columbus accidentally discovering it, bringing Europeans to settle it and then discover that in order to make it work for them they needed to capture and enslave human beings from another continent. And then when we advertise our shores as a welcoming place for others to come and seek their fortune we have to find ways to oppress them because of course we didn't really mean it. 

Something like that. So Critical Race Theory suggests, in somewhat less ridiculous terms, how we might approach our nation's history. That one that, upon closer inspection, has quite a few contradictions to that whole all men are created equal ideal. Though the idea of Critical Race Theory has been around for at least thirty years, it is the howling vortex of the past year into which it has become a screeching point of contention. There are those (white) voices who would like us to go back to referring to the U.S.A. as the land of the free and home of the brave and stop asking questions about the Tulsa Massacre, okay? These (white) voices would very much prefer it if we could just teach the script as written by those (white) voices from long ago. So much so that there are a great many state and local authorities looking to ban the CRT curriculum in their schools. 

Here is where you can feel free to wonder about how banning ideas is any sort of American ideal. 

The Nevada Family Alliance would like teachers to wear body cameras to ensure that CRT is not being taught in their children's classrooms. Spokesperson for the NFA Karen England insisted, "We expect that the teachers' unions will reject this proposal immediately. But we should ask, what they have to hide? If police do a better job interacting with the public when they are wearing body cameras, how much more important is it for teachers to do the same?" Ms. England is on the lookout for  "concerted efforts to indoctrinate students in the leftist narrative." Which makes me wonder how a teacher is supposed to deal with the eight year old who raises their hand during a rushed lesson about America's Civil War: "Why did they have slaves in the first place?" What sort of standard issue traditional teaching answer can be found in the safe for our children to hear text should be played out on the digital recording of this youthful inquiry? 

I've got another question, while we're figuring that out: If she's so gung ho for her country, why isn't her name Karen America?