Salon drums up furor over firing that wasn’t
April 14, 2022
Salon tells us of a school teacher fired over using Critical Race Theory in the classroom. This isn’t quite true: The contract will not be renewed for next year, which isn’t quite the same as fired.
Of course, the real point of the article is to say that CRT isn’t used in a classroom, it’s nothing to do with K-12. Purely some abstract theory used in graduate law classes — of course it is. In doing so, Salon brings out the point that many of us have been making about CRT all along.
“The decision came last week after Kim Morrison, an English teacher at Greenfield High School, read the book ‘Dear Martin,’ a young adult novel by Nic Stone,” the piece said. “The book features a Black high school student attending predominantly white preparatory high school who falls victim to police violence.
“According to the News-Leader, Morrison used a supplemental 15-question worksheet called ‘How Racially Privileged Are You?’ as part of the book’s lesson plan.”
That’s not, we can all agree, a graduate law school class. But that’s not the point about Critical Race Theory at all. It’s taught in graduate school, yes. Teachers in the United States go to a post-graduate course before they become teachers. Which is where CRT enters the system. It’s not that all children at taught CRT itself, it’s that all those doing the teaching have been taught it, and then incorporate it into their own teaching.
As here: “Morrison was reportedly called into the principal’s office back in February after a rash of complaints from parents over her curriculum.”
That’s really what the fight is about. Should children be taught what their parents want them to be taught? Or what the education establishment – guided by those graduate school theories like CRT – think they should be taught?
Salon is something of a beacon for the progressive Left in the media. It ranks around 60 in sites in the law and government sector and gains some 9 million visits per month. Within that progressive community, this is enough to have significant influence.
Which is what makes this so sad: “Despite the conservative furor around CRT, surveys and interviews have consistently shown that teachers do not believe CRT is being taught in classrooms across the country.”
It would be worth a media outlet recognizing that that’s not the argument at all. It’s that those doing the teaching have been influenced by CRT in how they teach.