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Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “social justice” are the starring themes of this year’s summer and fall workshops conducted by the largest national councils in education. Even with the “ban” on CRT in certain states, educators and leaders in the field are carrying on with even more “social justice” and CRT fervor than ever before. 

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

The National Council of Teachers of English has one of the best homepages displaying their outright allegiance to “equity, justice, and anti-racist teaching,” which will be featured at their 2021 annual convention in November.  At this convention, teachers will be reworking their curriculum to reflect “systemic racism” and consider how teachers of English are the chosen ones to lead themselves, their students, and their communities on a path towards divisiveness and racism. Acting as though they have been hired to lead racist uprisings, teachers of English seem to have abandoned all tenets of a proper English classroom (though some may argue they did that decades ago). The NCTE does not have much work ahead of them since they have been engaging in “culturally responsive teaching” for years, but there is always room for progress. 

In their 2020 statement, NCTE Takes A Stance Against Racism, the NCTE declares that “…change can begin with protests, but ultimately it must happen through action. As educators, we are poised to lead the way through our teaching.” They also seem to think teaching begins with advocacy, but ultimately it must lead to the radicalization of children who will be poised to denounce their families, communities, and country in the name of a radical leftist crusade. Nonetheless, teachers of English understand the power they hold over the minds and development of America’s youth, and that is what makes all of this dangerous. 

The NCTE defines racism in the following statement: “Racism in America is the systematic mistreatment and disenfranchisement of people of color who currently and historically possess less power and privilege than white Americans.” This is a statement from 2018, well before the hype over Critical Race Theory started taking over news headlines. The radical left is always many years ahead of their opposition, and once their opposition catches up, it is already too late.  

Of course, they promote curriculum resources from Black Lives Matter, Learning for Justice (formerly known as the intolerant Teaching Tolerance), and one can find their “Resources for Working with White Students” and “Resources for Understanding White Supremacy” from their post, There Is No Apolitical Classroom: Resources for Teaching in These Times. 

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)

The “social justice warriors” leading the National Council for the Social Studies have filled their workload for the summer to ensure social studies teachers across the nation will have their racist resources ready to go come the start of the new school year. 

The NCSS, and its Executive Director Lawrence Paska, have expressed their support for the Center for Anti-Racist Education (CARE), which is also supported by the National Council of Teachers of English, National Humanities Center, the National Council for History Education, and many more educational organizations. CARE works with “educators across the nation to identify antiracist curriculum, build antiracist expertise, and demonstrate what works.” Specifically, the NCSS supports CARE’s principles including “overturn[ing] the long legacy of racism” and confronting racism by “explicitly addressing bias, racism, power, privilege, and oppression.” They could have just written Critical Race Theory, but most educational organizations are now avoiding that term. 

Executive Director Lawrence Paska has co-authored an article featured in the May-June 2021 issue of the Equity and Access Journal from the American Consortium for Equity in Education titled 5 Ways to Support Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Social Studies. Their five approaches include “promot[ing] equitable, inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-bias practices, resources, and programs,” “review[ing] existing resources, position statements, and publications…to ensure that they reflect equitable, inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-bias positions and practices,” “creat[ing] professional learning opportunities…to promote equitable, inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-bias practices,” “creat[ing] and help[ing] identify high quality resources for use with faculty and with students to teach topics and teach through instructional practices that promote equity and inclusion.” Speaking of “high quality resources,” the NCSS has been a major supporter of the fictional socialist propaganda piece, the 1619 Project. 

The NCSS released a statement regarding the use of inaccurate and racist teaching resources, by stating, “As the largest professional association in the country devoted solely to social studies education, the National Council for the Social Studies resoundingly rejects any effort by the federal government to silence social studies curriculum that explicitly addresses the centrality of slavery in the historical narrative of the United States […] We stand with all of the schools, school districts, and teachers who use resources like the 1619 Project to accurately depict the history of slavery in the United States, broaden the horizons of their students, and prepare citizens for a just democratic society.” 

Shawn Healy will be the keynote speaker at the NCSS Summer Leadership Institute 2021. Healy works with the radical leftists at iCivics, aiding their effort in destroying civics education, as their Senior Director of State Policy and Advocacy. He has shared his thoughts concerning the promotion of racist teaching in social studies and civics. In July of 2020, he highlighted the article, Effective Anti-Racist Education Requires More Diverse Teachers, More Training from NPR Illinois by quoting: 

Still, the real issue is the President of the National Council for the Social Studies who embodied civics by engaging in some of the most hateful banter against the President of the United States through his bullying and harassment feed on Twitter in which he joined in using nicknames for the President such as “CommanderinCheeto,” “RacistinChief,” “TinPotDictator,” “DividerinChief,” “POTUSClueless,” “TrumpSycophant,” and questions the religion of other representatives of the administration.

If the National Council for the Social Studies sees it as appropriate to hire Anton Schulzki to be their president and leader of social studies teachers across America, then all of their resources and conferences about unity and respect must not be taken seriously. Anton Schulzki does not need to like the President of the United States, but one who claims to be a leader of educators should act like one and engage in the appropriate discourse for disagreement. Not even Randi Weingarten has gone as low as Schulzki in her disagreements with the Trump Administration. Here is a resource for Anton Schulzki courtesy of The Locke Society titled Accountability in Civil Discourse. Also, though we applaud you for all of the badges you earned drinking beer on Independence Day, you may want to research some information about Independence Day and what it celebrates; it is heartwarming to know that the president of the largest organization for social studies teachers appears to have no respect for America or knowledge of our history. 

National Science Teaching Association (NSTA)

The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) is arguably the least shy when it comes to embodying the essence of Critical Race Theory and the suggested practices for following it. On the first day of one of their summer conferences titled, What IS Social Justice Teaching in the Science Classroom?, they instructed teachers to go into what are now called affinity spaces in which they defend segregation (let’s just call it what it is) by stating, “Affinity spaces centered in racial/social justice praxis help educators to reflect on pedagogical practices; promote a sense of collective rejuvenation, unhinging feelings of being the “only one”; and inspire more progressive anti-racist science curricula. Affinity spaces also help cultivate valuable friendships that are rooted in an understanding of why it is important that we fight for the humanity of all.” The keynote speaker for this day is Jason Foster, a National Board Certified Teacher who “tends to focus his educational lens on anti-racist pedagogy, BlackCrit, and Critical Race Theory. Currently, he is applying these approaches to how Black educators create different modalities in order to survive in contested white educational spaces.” Their other keynote speaker for the day is Michael K. Nocella, a science teacher whose “research and pedagogical interests center on anti-racist science teaching practices, critical affinity/solidarity spaces for education staff, critical multimodality…as well as the role of social transformation with respect to racial/sociopolitical identity self-work of [white] educators in working to become more anti-racist in personal and professional contexts.” The days that follow this workshop include “restructur[ing] learning opportunities” to root out “systemic racism and heteropatriarchy,” and more keynote speakers who want to bring racism back into schools. 

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)

In the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics’ Leadership 2021 conference titled Courageous Actions in Leadership: Turning Talk Into Meaning, math teachers will learn how to apply “social justice” to their subject. On day one, they will learn how to “[apply] an anti-racist, asset-based lens to lead from the heart in [a] way that humanizes mathematics for all our students.” Day two, has one session titled, Social Justice in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, which has teachers “unpacking mathematics teaching and learning focused on racial equity and social justice,” and another session titled, Facilitating Transformative Conversations about Race in Education. Days three and four instruct teachers on how to turn themselves and their students into advocates for racism. 

However, none of this is new; the NCTM has been hosting conferences covering this topic for years. For example, in 2018 they hosted a summer webinar titled, Collective Action to Develop Awareness: Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education. 

“Equity minded” former president Robert Q. Berry III, who just completed his two year term, made equity issues “central” to mathematics education and research.  

 

The new president, Trena Wilkerson, will surely continue the work of equity-oriented math education and professional development. 

(Storytelling is a major tenet of Critical Race Theory.)

The National Art Education Association (NAEA)

The National Art Education Association, “the leading professional membership organization exclusively for visual arts educators,” proudly displays its commitment to the tenets of Critical Race Theory. “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” will be a “super-pillar” in their 2021-2025 NAEA Strategic Vision. 

For Dr. James Haywood Rolling, Jr., President of the NAEA’s Board of Directors (2021-2023) and Chair of the NAEA Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Commission, the term “systemic racism” does not appropriately describe America, where “white supremacy [is the] ultimate outcome.” According to Rolling in his Open Letter to Art Educators on Constructing an Anti-Racist Agenda, “Racism, all by itself, is systemic. That is its nature. It does not require a grammatical modifier. […] Racist systems produce racist individuals, racist institutions, and racist policies as their necessary byproduct—not the other way around. […] Racism, as practiced in the United States for centuries, has long distorted racial differences into divisions in order to systemize the collection of wealth, the plundering of land, and the accumulation of social power, effectively sustaining the slaveholding White supremacy present at the birth of this nation from generation to generation. That is the nature of racism. So when the practice of slavery was abolished and profiting from the unpaid labor of nearly 4 million Black bodies became illegal, slavery was replaced by targeted policing practices, the depiction of Black men and women as dangerous, and the incarceration of as many Black bodies as possible.” Rolling further states, “Any national organization that is not actively anti-racist is complicit with the outcomes of a society that has long institutionalized its racism.”

Their link to Black Lives Matter is clearly visible through their position statements and suggested resources. The NAEA’s March issue of Art Education “calls for reimagining teaching and art-making as embodied acts – pushing us to think about the impact of systemic racism.” Anti-racist teaching is also far from new for the NAEA. They reshared a resource from their 2012 Art Education Journal titled, Dismantling a Master Narrative: Using Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to Teach the History of Art Education. 

National Association for Music Education (NAfME)

The National Association for Music Education is wholeheartedly embracing equity, diversity, and racism. Since at least 2019, the NAfME has been working with Cook Ross, a consulting firm founded by Howard Ross and Dottie Cook that “partners with clients to co-create solutions that help them advance Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility within their organization.”

An article from 2020, written by Cook Ross co-founder Howard Ross titled Dear White People: It is Time for Us to Step Up, helps “clueless” white people understand their white supremacy. In the article, Ross states, “For 401 years, 157 years longer than the United States has existed as a country, racism has been the bedrock of our culture. It has formed the very structure of our society, paid for the economic base of our society, and been at the foundation of some of the institutions that impact us the most…We live in a narrative that was created and fueled by family, schools, religious institutions and the media, and sustained to support the economic and social needs of white people.” […] “It is time for us to wake up to what being white really means in America, whether we personally intend it or not.  We are part of a system that has trained and developed us to see the world in a particular way. We benefit from that system.” Ross asserts that white people need to “work on reducing [your] own defensiveness. It’s understandable that being accused of racism is upsetting, but it is not as bad as being racist. Be willing to be uncomfortable and don’t let your attachment to your own sense of “wokeness” stop you from continuing to do the work that needs to be done.  Things need to get real before they get better…Racism is a problem that white people created, and it is a problem that we have to work to solve.”

In their latest issue of Music Education Journal, members can learn how to resist “whiteness in music education” in order to become anti-racist. 

More resources can be found at https://nafme.org/my-classroom/resources-for-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-access-in-music-education/. It will be interesting to see music teachers practicing equity in their seat/stand assignments for concerts.

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These organizations are the ones behind the trends and changes in education; what they declare trickles down into schools across the nation. Many teachers are members of these organizations; being a member of a professional organization is great for an educator’s resume and helps them stay relevant in their field. While teachers are members of unions, the union membership does not make it to their resume, nor into their classroom, as unions provide nothing but health benefits and political ads. The organizations listed above provide the real resources that real teachers are using in classrooms today; they provide professional development from experts in the field, lesson plans from practicing and effective teachers, and much more to help teachers achieve success.

Those opposing Critical Race Theory/Culturally Responsive Teaching/”Social Justice”/socialism must stop being distracted by red herrings and start paying attention to the real contenders. The radical left is always numerous steps ahead, and while their opponents focus on one thing, they move on to the next. Not only do we need to catch up to them, we need to get ahead of them. The work laid out before us will require money, time, and faith. We can save our schools, our children, and our country if we are willing to do the work that needs to be done. Learn more about how to stop the radical left’s control over education in the following article: https://lockesociety.org/the-three-steps-to-reclaim-education/. 

Learn how you can support The Locke Society at https://lockesociety.org/home/about-us/. Your help is sincerely appreciated.