Just Two People In Virginia

Hans Bader wrote in some depth about changes to Virginia’s educational focus, requiring its teachers to demonstrate a “commitment to equity” as part of its performance standard and educational criteria.

This standard is full of vague buzzwords and ideologically-charged phrases that can be used to punish conservative teachers, or reward bad teachers for mouthing politically-correct platitudes. Its adoption will make it even harder to get rid of bad teachers and attract good teachers.

A “commitment to equity” sounds nice until you learn that “equity” means something very different from equality and non-discrimination, in “Virginia’s Roadmap to Equity.” In that book, “equity” is about racial “outcomes,” and it is not about equal “opportunities” or achievement based on “ability.” It describes “culturally responsive educators” as those who fight “injustice,” not just “racism,” or effectively teaching minority children.

For many, this sounds glorious. Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic is for squares, and shouldn’t public education focus on broader social issues, like whether you’ve met Jesus you’re culturally obsequious? You may well believe that this is what we expect of teachers, that they believe in things you believe are good and right, and dedicate their academic services to pursuing the indoctrination of their “good” beliefs to their students. But what if other people believe differently? And why is public education involved in the teaching of ideological purity rather than, say, math?

There was a time when the student’s answer to the teacher’s question of what that picture shows, “just two people chillin’,” would have not only been acceptable, but the best one could hope for, even if it’s unclear why either the picture or the question belonged in an academic setting. But as the teacher makes clear, that time is no longer now, and that answer is not only unacceptable, but wrong.

In updating his “Catching up with Coddling,” FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff talks about how curriculum has become catechism.

Problem w/ adopting social justice as absolute truth is that colleges are meant to be testing & questioning so-called "truth," not parroting it uncritically. As Lyell Asher observed, “It’s the difference between a curriculum and a catechism.” 4/11https://t.co/ne93ZDBiRx

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) March 29, 2021

On the one hand, the rigors of education have been dumbed down to accommodate more diverse students who lack the skills needed to do math. On the other hand, the curriculum has shifted away from subject matter mastery (who’s to say what the right answer to a math question is?) to morality. Maybe not your morality, but the morality of the people who will grade children, who spend the day talking and judging children, and in whose hands their futures reside.

For many parents, there is no other option but to send your child to a public school, where they will be taught what the school, what it’s teachers, deem correct. This was a problem when they were being indoctrinated into an exceptionalism that extolled patriotism even when the facts upon which it was based were “whitewashed.” This is a problem when the pendulum has swung way beyond reality to making equity an inherent component of all academics.

The problem, as Greg notes, is that this is hardly some flash-in-the-pan fashion trend, but rather a decade long trend in the educational institution, where the premier teacher factories such as Teachers College at Columbia University have been dedicated to shifting the pedagogy paradigm away from academics and into equity. The issue isn’t equal opportunity, but equitable outcome, and the problem is the children who, they are certain, must recognize and confess their sins.

It’s one thing for this to prevail at the college level, where one would hope students would be sufficiently far along in their adolescence to grasp that they are being weaned off one side of racism in order to be compelled to accept the other side of racism. But grade school kids? Kindergartners? And race is but one of the tenets at stake.

Last Wednesday, Brauer College in rural Victoria forced its male pupils, some only 12 years old, to stand at a school assembly, face the girls and apologize for rape, sexual harassment and all the other facets of male wickedness. All this was apparently some ghastly effort to promote gender reconciliation through gender self-incrimination.

‘I had girls behind me crying,’ one student said. ‘We had to apologize for stuff we didn’t actually do.’

No, it’s not this bad in all schools or classes. No, every teacher isn’t on board with either this ideology or the requirement that they teach it to their students. And most importantly, not every teacher has forsaken educating students in their academic studies, mastering the skills for which public school exists. No doubt there are plenty of teachers who just want to teach their students how to spell words correctly and, yes, that two plus two equals four in fifth grade.

But as Hans’ post shows, the educational institutions are formalizing this commitment to equity, and teachers will find their jobs and career prospects held captive to their personal commitment to woke ideology. At the same time, new teachers are steeped in the belief that this is not only good pedagogy, but the only “moral” way to teach their students. Parents and priests may be awful, so it’s their duty to instill a belief system that prays to their god of choice.

Once the educational establishment has been fully consumed by ideological zealots, and the future teachers of America embrace their duty to see that the charges believe the right things, this could prove almost impossible to undo. Own the minds of the children when they’re young and you own them forever. For those who believe that this is wonderful because this is morality, decency and justice, and what’s wrong with that, enjoy the revolution.