The figures are in, and they ain’t pretty. Now that the National Assessment of Educational Progress – known colloquially as the “nation’s report card” is out, we know that fourth-grade students have made no advances in math or reading since 2012. Thirty-four and thirty-one percent respectively were “proficient” then, thirty-four and thirty-one percent now. For ninth-grade students, results have declined from thirty-one to twenty-six percent for math, and from thirty-two to twenty-nine percent for reading. More importantly, under current circumstances they won’t get any better. A few among thousands of examples show why.
A March 5, 2021 Daily Wire story reported an Arizona State University Associate Dean’s argument that grading students’ writing is a form of racism and white supremacy. In his 338-page book, Professor Asao Inoue encourages teachers to adopt a “labor-based” grading system wherein students earn grades based on their effort instead. The quality of a student’s writing would neither help nor hinder their course grade.
Yes, you read that right: 338 pages of psychodrivel is better than 160 pages of Shakespeare’s sonnets by a little more than half. 178 pages better, to be exact.
In Illinois, assign too many novels by white authors and you’ll be subject to CRT Advocate Bettina Love’s “anti-racist therapy for white teachers.” Buh-bye, “Moby Dick.” And, according to the National Review, new state standards encourage substitution of “social justice work” and “action civics projects” for more traditional graded work.
In Washoe County, Nevada, a school district training course on “cultural sensitivity” features an “Equity Guide Book” offering such assertions as “not acknowledging systemic oppression” and “benefiting from a sense of privilege and entitlement” will create “cultural destructiveness, incapacity and blindness.” It also claims that “racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism” are the principles in “systems of oppression” that exist right here, right now – making our national culture something questionable and ugly.
So if you’re a straight white kid, you wake up evil. Your successes were given to you not because of your efforts, but because they were taken from some other kid you oppress – even if you don’t know you’re doing it. If you’re a black or brown kid, you wake up a victim. You can’t succeed, because white kids oppress you and take all your opportunities away. No wonder striving for academic excellence is on the outs these days. Why bother? The fix is in.
A more virulent example in mathematics comes from Oregon, whose state Department of Education (ODE) encourages teachers to register for training on “ethnomathematics” and argues, among other things, that “White supremacy” manifests itself in emphasizing “finding the right answer.”
Another ODE publication advertises a “Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course,” designed for middle school teachers and offering a “toolkit for dismantling racism in mathematics.” The toolkit includes a list of ways “white supremacy culture” allegedly “infiltrates math classrooms,” including focusing on “getting the ‘right’ answer;” students being “required to ‘show their work;’” and more.
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so (sic),” the document reads. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of conflict.” Objectivity. Perish the thought.
Campus Reform and PJ media quote The National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) and TODOS: Mathematics for All as pledging to “ratify social justice as a key priority in the access to, engagement with, and advancement in mathematics education for our country’s youth.” The groups issued a joint statement that “a social justice stance interrogates and challenges the roles power, privilege, and oppression play in the current unjust system of mathematics education—and in society as a whole.” Math has “been used to educate children into different societal roles such as leadership/ruling class.”
Well, duh. If you can accurately calculate stress factors you can design safe structures and get paid a decent wage. And if you chose to cut algebra and trig, you might end up doing other stuff that may not pay as well, working for the nerds who stayed in class. Life. Who knew?
But in the Woke States of America, insisting that a certain level of competence be achieved is “white supremacy.” Finding the right answer to an equation is oppression and demanding coherent sentences is a violation of social justice. To a greater or lesser degree, these philosophies are now in most public schools across the country. And if you think all this sounds a bit like a Bizarro World version of Jim Crow, that century-long Democrat tool of first resort, you’re not alone. Because once again, racial tension is being wielded by Democrats to gain and retain power.
As a necessary adjunct, those Democrat tools to whom we have entrusted our children’s education have deliberately embraced the destruction of our country through the slow rot of ignorance, seasoned by a dollop of self-loathing and a large measure of racial division. Unless this changes soon, generations to come are doomed to misery poverty, strife and rule by others.
To change the course of this hot road to Hell, study what your local schools teach, and how. Then go tell your school board what you find objectionable. Better, run for the school board and bring your friends. The hour is late and if our country slips into racialized authoritarianism the fault will be ours, for failing to act when we could.
