A majority of teachers who know CRT favor it, whereas a majority of parents reject it.
A recent report from the Heritage Foundation has found that a majority of teachers familiar with Critical Race Theory support it, while at the same time a majority of parents are unfamiliar with this ideology. However, of those parents who are familiar with CRT, the majority are either undecided or reject it.
The study observed that 43% of teachers are familiar with CRT and, of those, 55% believe it should be taught in schools. Meanwhile, some 65% of parents are unaware of or unfamiliar with CRT. Adam Kissel, senior fellow at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia, observed, “A lot of parents and teachers remain unaware of the Critical Race Theory in American classrooms, but that has started to change with the great work of parent organizations such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.” Lack of awareness is where much of the problem lies.
In fact, we’d question whether most of the teachers who “support” CRT actually understand it. Either way, it’s dangerous.
While ignorance may be bliss, at least for a time, the ramifications of this ignorance have started hitting Americans and parents specifically in ways they may never have imagined. In short, we’re witnessing a new generation that has been groomed to essentially hate America and what it stands for. In schools across the nation, children are being indoctrinated by a “social justice” worldview that condemns America as a “systemically racist” nation developed primarily to promote a system of perpetual white supremacy.
“Fundamentally,” argues National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, “the conflict is about whether students should be educated to have an allegiance to the historic American nation and its institutions, or whether they should be educated to have an allegiance to a notion of ‘justice’ and to an egalitarian ethic that fundamentally seeks to critique those institutions, radically reform them, or replace them altogether.”
We have noted that parents are beginning to awaken to the “woke” ideology of CRT being propagated in their local schools and are starting to speak out against it. Loudoun County, Virginia, is one recent example. The difficulty is the increasingly prevalent dynamic in which teachers, specifically represented by their unions, have become increasingly antagonistic toward parents and their concerns. When parents voice their objections to CRT, the common response from the teachers unions is to assert that parents really don’t understand it and are being misled by right-wing conspiracists.
Yet as the Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke notes, “One of the big take-aways from this survey is the need for transparency around what is taught in taxpayer-funded K-12 schools across the country.” She adds, “Too often, it is difficult for parents to get clear information about the curriculum and materials employed in their children’s schools.”
The Heritage study puts it this way: “Young Americans are taught not to be proud of their country, but to see it as an oppressor. In order to reverse this destructive and dangerous trend, it is essential that schools teach America’s founding principles, while at the same time build strong relationships between parents and teachers.” This requires parents to educate themselves on CRT with its Marxist ethic and intentionally destructive agenda. It also may necessitate that parents remove their children from schools that have so embraced CRT as to become little other than centers for “woke” indoctrination.
The fact of the matter is that CRT is the front line of the culture war that is raging across this nation, and the leftist proponents of CRT are targeting America’s youth to indoctrinate and to add to their ranks.
Written by Thomas Gallatin for The Patriot Post – June 15, 2021