Should DC second-graders be required to “analyze the daily lives of different individuals in ancient societies including history of same-sex relationships and gender fluidity in civilizations” and “compare societies of long ago to societies today with a focus on gender roles, technology, and relationship with the natural environment?” Should high school students be expected to “explain the historical context of ‘Eurocentrism’ and the lasting social, political, and economic impacts on countries and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean of sources from the past?”
This is all very dangerous to children as it upsets their natural grounding in reality and introduces theories that are usually reserved for college lectures. In a college lecture there can possibly be an open, vigorous debate. With young children they have no chance to reject theories. Children's innocence is being stolen and their futures are at stake. We must fight this at every point.
Some of the fuel behind all of this is a profound misunderstanding and misuse of anachronistic and biologically inaccurate ideas of 'race'. These erroneous ideas taint virtually everything that goes on in academia... even misguiding the most straightforward assessments of student performance:
However, having spent my life in academia — from special education, to high school science and math, to university professor in both psychology and biology departments — I have no hopes that things will change. Generally, educators take the easiest, least intellectually challenging approach to education, and usually the one that is most de rigueur. Of course, there will always be a small portion of highly talented, highly motivated teachers but, as in all fields, most will be mediocre and some will be very poor.
In any event, thank you for this essay. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
There is nuance here with CRT. It isn’t so much that it is taught in school as a philosophy, it is used as a tool or framework to teach students. That is what is being proposed here.
Subject: Re: Why the new K-12 Draft Social Studies Standards are wrong for DC students
I taught Social Studies and History classes for 30 years in grades 7 - 12.
The main point of argument that FAIR, and other such analysis, forget in their worthwhile critique of these disgusting "indoctrination" curricula, is the simple fact that there is zero time in the K - 12 Social Studies/History program to teach anything other than the mastery of the essential "time-line-+basic geography" essentials of US and World History.
Before kids, (or anyone else) can engage in analysis and context discussions on topics such as the repercussions of Eurocentrism, it's necessary to have some concept of the "names, dates and places" of the major consequential events including the sequence of ancient empires and elementary world geography.
Kids who have no clue where Africa is in relation to western Europe or the Americas, cannot comprehend these topics. Kids who have not learned what any of the ancient empires achieved in their various geographical regions, in relation to their influences on the development of European History - likewise cannot engage in these topics.
It takes all of grades 1 - 7 to successfully lay this "names, dates, places" foundation - if your lucky. Grades 8 - 12 need to focus on the same, "names, dates, places" approach to US History and Govt. keeping in mind that most kids can't name or place the 50 states on a map let alone do the same for rest of the world and understand how the changes in these maps from 1492 on, tell the story of the Americas in World History.
When kids have mastered these essentials, only then are they are ready to engage in the issues posed by these curricula.
Those pushing this agendas know damn well that skipping the foundation leaves kids as easy targets for indoctrination.
OMG. Divide and Conquer. And when the aliens arrive we will welcome them with open arms. The minority have been given the keys to the kingdom and their protective status is being weaponized against the rest of us with the elites rubbing their hands in glee.
Having a proper answer to any of these questions would require a PhD thesis. This stuff is not about knowledge, It's a debasement experience.These people ought to be ashamed of themselves, but I can guarantee that they are not.
When you assume that your readers won’t take time to actually fact check and read the 160+ pages of the Draft Standards, you can create a lot of outrage. Including that famous out of context piece of MLK jr’s speech as proof that society is supposed to be colorblind is classic denialist nonsense. We are a multiracial multicultural nation with families that are made up in various ways. Talking about truth with our kids is what education is supposed to be about. In fact, public ed was created to educate students about society & the world so that they could learn how to evaluate their own decisions for themselves.
This kind of curriculum comes from a worldview that is fundamentally religious in nature. Instead of blaming the world's problems on "sin", it blames it on "Eurocentrism" or "the gender binary". The "woke" worldview offers meaning, purpose, a sense of community, and ritual. While it is atheistic in nature, it meets all the sociology criteria to be a religion. Technically, it should be classified as being in the family of gnostic religions.
Parents have every right to convey their own religious beliefs to their children. Private religious schools are fine. However, it is not appropriate to use public school curriculum to provide religious instruction to other people's children. It would be wrong for public schools to teach second graders to "analyze how Biblical teachings improve society." It is equally wrong for public schools to teach second graders to "analyze the history of same-sex relations and gender fluidity in civilizations." Particularly given the age of the students, this could not possibly be anything other than religious indoctrination.
I oppose religious indoctrination in the school system. It's not any better from an atheistic gnostic religion than it is from a fundamentalist Christian religion.
This is a very strange article from a foundation "against intolerance and racism." It seems very biased against the new curriculum and uses a lot of fearmongering vocab like "force-fed witch's brew,"- it doesn't seem like a very "FAIR" evaluation.
There's not particularly strong connections between your evidence and your analysis. You quote the draft as requiring students to “evaluate the experiences of [...] life [...] from the perspectives of Indigenous Nations and European,” and then you say this means the draft believes Europeans and Indigenous people can't have anything in common, but that doesn't connect with what you just quoted. Your quote just says that we should look at life from two different perspectives. It says nothing about those perspectives being mutually exclusive. You also say that the quote suggests "each of these groups of people can be said to have a single, unified perspective", but your evidence doesn't show that, either. Then you bring up high school students having to learn about Eurocentrism, which seems fine and valid to me giving it's an important issue that affects a lot of people around the world to this day. You bring this up twice, but you never explain why you think it's bad. You just imply that it is and move on.
You also say "Students are given the misleading impression that non-European premodern societies shared the same liberal cosmopolitan values that are popular among certain segments of America today. For example, second graders are required to consider “gender roles” in Rome, Aksum or Ancient China and to discuss the role of “gender fluidity” in pre-modern societies. " This also makes no sense. Asking students to "consider gender roles in rome or ancient china" is not what you say it is- "assuming that european premodern socieites shared the same liberal cosmopolitan values popular among certain segments of america today." "gender roles" are not a liberal cosmopolitan value. Countless Ancient Greek and Roman writers explicitly wrote about how they believed the "role" of women to be as wives and mothers, for example, while the "role" of men was to fight, protect, philosophize, etc. I.E... they themselves had "roles" for different "genders." Basically every society that you list had some sort of distinction in what they thought was the "role" differnet "genders" should play, so when you say we shouldn't look at ancient societies with "liberal cosmopolitan" perspectives like "gender roles," I simply don't know what you mean, or how you could even study such intensely gendered societies LIKE Ancient Rome or Greece without considering gender. How could you study Ancient Greek ideals of democracy without mentioning that they didn't apply to women? How could you discuss daily life in Ancient Rome without mentioning all the areas in which women were explicitly barred from participating because it wasn't the "role" assigned to their "gender"? Would you just not tell the students that women weren't allowed to participate, because that would be "gender role" study? Wouldn't that be lying about history for the sake of avoiding an "ideology"?
Then you complain about second graders being forced to look at issues globally instead of locally, but in the very quote you provide to support your argument, the draft says "“identify a current question of sustainability and develop an action plan for increasing sustainability in your community or globally”. You added emphasis on "or globally," but the draft lists "a plan in YOUR COMMUNITY first." You don't mention this at all, even though it's extremely directly relevant to your argument. What's up with that?
Overall, very strange article. It seems like you've either decided to think one way about this draft and are refusing to interpret any of your evidence in any way other than what you've decided (ironically, this is what you're accusing the draft of doing) or you simply don't know what you're talking about. Either way, I have no idea how this article is deemed worthy of a "Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism" when it is so poorly argued and so obviously biased.
These are deep issues, perhaps abstract to a second grader (aged 7-8 yrs old) who has experienced very little of the world beyond their neighborhood. My main concern with this curriculum is the age appropriateness of the material.
Gender roles is one thing; we’ve been talking about the different roles for men and women in historical societies since at least 1990. Gender FLUIDITY is completely different and, despite a few cherry-picked examples that are force fitted into the paradigm, not a relevant concept anywhere or any-when prior to the 21st c. That’s the part that doesn’t belong in grade school.
Agreed. And as an aside it occurs to me that the title of the relevant class when I took it in high school in the ‘80s -- “Man in Society” -- would not be tolerated today.
This is all very dangerous to children as it upsets their natural grounding in reality and introduces theories that are usually reserved for college lectures. In a college lecture there can possibly be an open, vigorous debate. With young children they have no chance to reject theories. Children's innocence is being stolen and their futures are at stake. We must fight this at every point.
Except that open, vigorous debate is no longer tolerated in most colleges today.
Some of the fuel behind all of this is a profound misunderstanding and misuse of anachronistic and biologically inaccurate ideas of 'race'. These erroneous ideas taint virtually everything that goes on in academia... even misguiding the most straightforward assessments of student performance:
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/when-black-and-hispanic-students
However, having spent my life in academia — from special education, to high school science and math, to university professor in both psychology and biology departments — I have no hopes that things will change. Generally, educators take the easiest, least intellectually challenging approach to education, and usually the one that is most de rigueur. Of course, there will always be a small portion of highly talented, highly motivated teachers but, as in all fields, most will be mediocre and some will be very poor.
In any event, thank you for this essay. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
As a one-time second-grader in the District (circa early '90's), I am glad I didn't experience this.
Adults see this stuff and know better. Children are much more susceptible.
There is nuance here with CRT. It isn’t so much that it is taught in school as a philosophy, it is used as a tool or framework to teach students. That is what is being proposed here.
Subject: Re: Why the new K-12 Draft Social Studies Standards are wrong for DC students
I taught Social Studies and History classes for 30 years in grades 7 - 12.
The main point of argument that FAIR, and other such analysis, forget in their worthwhile critique of these disgusting "indoctrination" curricula, is the simple fact that there is zero time in the K - 12 Social Studies/History program to teach anything other than the mastery of the essential "time-line-+basic geography" essentials of US and World History.
Before kids, (or anyone else) can engage in analysis and context discussions on topics such as the repercussions of Eurocentrism, it's necessary to have some concept of the "names, dates and places" of the major consequential events including the sequence of ancient empires and elementary world geography.
Kids who have no clue where Africa is in relation to western Europe or the Americas, cannot comprehend these topics. Kids who have not learned what any of the ancient empires achieved in their various geographical regions, in relation to their influences on the development of European History - likewise cannot engage in these topics.
It takes all of grades 1 - 7 to successfully lay this "names, dates, places" foundation - if your lucky. Grades 8 - 12 need to focus on the same, "names, dates, places" approach to US History and Govt. keeping in mind that most kids can't name or place the 50 states on a map let alone do the same for rest of the world and understand how the changes in these maps from 1492 on, tell the story of the Americas in World History.
When kids have mastered these essentials, only then are they are ready to engage in the issues posed by these curricula.
Those pushing this agendas know damn well that skipping the foundation leaves kids as easy targets for indoctrination.
Roberta Gold
OMG. Divide and Conquer. And when the aliens arrive we will welcome them with open arms. The minority have been given the keys to the kingdom and their protective status is being weaponized against the rest of us with the elites rubbing their hands in glee.
Having a proper answer to any of these questions would require a PhD thesis. This stuff is not about knowledge, It's a debasement experience.These people ought to be ashamed of themselves, but I can guarantee that they are not.
When you assume that your readers won’t take time to actually fact check and read the 160+ pages of the Draft Standards, you can create a lot of outrage. Including that famous out of context piece of MLK jr’s speech as proof that society is supposed to be colorblind is classic denialist nonsense. We are a multiracial multicultural nation with families that are made up in various ways. Talking about truth with our kids is what education is supposed to be about. In fact, public ed was created to educate students about society & the world so that they could learn how to evaluate their own decisions for themselves.
This kind of curriculum comes from a worldview that is fundamentally religious in nature. Instead of blaming the world's problems on "sin", it blames it on "Eurocentrism" or "the gender binary". The "woke" worldview offers meaning, purpose, a sense of community, and ritual. While it is atheistic in nature, it meets all the sociology criteria to be a religion. Technically, it should be classified as being in the family of gnostic religions.
Parents have every right to convey their own religious beliefs to their children. Private religious schools are fine. However, it is not appropriate to use public school curriculum to provide religious instruction to other people's children. It would be wrong for public schools to teach second graders to "analyze how Biblical teachings improve society." It is equally wrong for public schools to teach second graders to "analyze the history of same-sex relations and gender fluidity in civilizations." Particularly given the age of the students, this could not possibly be anything other than religious indoctrination.
I oppose religious indoctrination in the school system. It's not any better from an atheistic gnostic religion than it is from a fundamentalist Christian religion.
This is a very strange article from a foundation "against intolerance and racism." It seems very biased against the new curriculum and uses a lot of fearmongering vocab like "force-fed witch's brew,"- it doesn't seem like a very "FAIR" evaluation.
There's not particularly strong connections between your evidence and your analysis. You quote the draft as requiring students to “evaluate the experiences of [...] life [...] from the perspectives of Indigenous Nations and European,” and then you say this means the draft believes Europeans and Indigenous people can't have anything in common, but that doesn't connect with what you just quoted. Your quote just says that we should look at life from two different perspectives. It says nothing about those perspectives being mutually exclusive. You also say that the quote suggests "each of these groups of people can be said to have a single, unified perspective", but your evidence doesn't show that, either. Then you bring up high school students having to learn about Eurocentrism, which seems fine and valid to me giving it's an important issue that affects a lot of people around the world to this day. You bring this up twice, but you never explain why you think it's bad. You just imply that it is and move on.
You also say "Students are given the misleading impression that non-European premodern societies shared the same liberal cosmopolitan values that are popular among certain segments of America today. For example, second graders are required to consider “gender roles” in Rome, Aksum or Ancient China and to discuss the role of “gender fluidity” in pre-modern societies. " This also makes no sense. Asking students to "consider gender roles in rome or ancient china" is not what you say it is- "assuming that european premodern socieites shared the same liberal cosmopolitan values popular among certain segments of america today." "gender roles" are not a liberal cosmopolitan value. Countless Ancient Greek and Roman writers explicitly wrote about how they believed the "role" of women to be as wives and mothers, for example, while the "role" of men was to fight, protect, philosophize, etc. I.E... they themselves had "roles" for different "genders." Basically every society that you list had some sort of distinction in what they thought was the "role" differnet "genders" should play, so when you say we shouldn't look at ancient societies with "liberal cosmopolitan" perspectives like "gender roles," I simply don't know what you mean, or how you could even study such intensely gendered societies LIKE Ancient Rome or Greece without considering gender. How could you study Ancient Greek ideals of democracy without mentioning that they didn't apply to women? How could you discuss daily life in Ancient Rome without mentioning all the areas in which women were explicitly barred from participating because it wasn't the "role" assigned to their "gender"? Would you just not tell the students that women weren't allowed to participate, because that would be "gender role" study? Wouldn't that be lying about history for the sake of avoiding an "ideology"?
Then you complain about second graders being forced to look at issues globally instead of locally, but in the very quote you provide to support your argument, the draft says "“identify a current question of sustainability and develop an action plan for increasing sustainability in your community or globally”. You added emphasis on "or globally," but the draft lists "a plan in YOUR COMMUNITY first." You don't mention this at all, even though it's extremely directly relevant to your argument. What's up with that?
Overall, very strange article. It seems like you've either decided to think one way about this draft and are refusing to interpret any of your evidence in any way other than what you've decided (ironically, this is what you're accusing the draft of doing) or you simply don't know what you're talking about. Either way, I have no idea how this article is deemed worthy of a "Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism" when it is so poorly argued and so obviously biased.
These are deep issues, perhaps abstract to a second grader (aged 7-8 yrs old) who has experienced very little of the world beyond their neighborhood. My main concern with this curriculum is the age appropriateness of the material.
Gender roles is one thing; we’ve been talking about the different roles for men and women in historical societies since at least 1990. Gender FLUIDITY is completely different and, despite a few cherry-picked examples that are force fitted into the paradigm, not a relevant concept anywhere or any-when prior to the 21st c. That’s the part that doesn’t belong in grade school.
Agreed. And as an aside it occurs to me that the title of the relevant class when I took it in high school in the ‘80s -- “Man in Society” -- would not be tolerated today.