Here we’ll have different interpretations, and we’d have to ask him to know for sure. I take a more generous interpretation, that he is using ‘private school’ as the stuff outside the ‘public school’ system, and that would include charters. Does he say anywhere that he doesn’t want schools to have any accountability whatsoever, or is that only coming from your interpretation?
At this point, though, I’ll agree that he should have mentioned where charter schools fall into his thinking, but since I know Republicans like Betsy Devos and Jeb Bush are pro-charter via vouchers I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s including charter schools as a type of non-public education.
Just my interpretation, for sure. But really, taking an article that says “private schools” nine times and saying “well, he probably means charter schools, because that would make more sense” seems like a pretty generous act of interpretation to me. Unless we’re supposed to think he doesn’t know the difference, or doesn’t think his readers do.
But to move on from this point (which I realize you’ve been trying to do already), honest questions (because I don’t know): Do you think the charter school system is a way out of this mess? Do teachers at charter schools not have the same dogmas built into their approach? And how do anti-whatever-it-is laws at the state level affect them?
So this is one of those gaslighting things, I guess. Despite its bafflingly confusing acronym, Culturally Responsive Teaching (CR-T!?) seems to be much less confrontational (and unlikely to be covered by any of those anti-CRT laws): Page Not Found
This seems to be the basis of the new curriculum at Providence: https://annenberg.brown.edu/sites/default/files/PPSD_Turnaround_Action_Plan_6.23.20.pdf . One thing I do like about it is that it’s very data-driven: it identifies measurable metrics and ties each initiative to a measurable improvement in those metrics. It also says literally nothing about race.
The identity exercise that she calls out does seem like it might upset some people: Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilege | MSW@USC … but I think it’s worth noting that it doesn’t define identity in terms of race (or anything else external), and that it also talks about gender, sexuality, ability, religion, and verteran status.
Beyond that … who knows. She doesn’t provide a photo of any of those sinister booklets which makes it possible to identify them. And I can’t find any other discussion of them on the web, which seems a little curious for how divisive she makes them out to be.
Still, individual stories are how we determine truth, right?
I think public schools should stick to the facts, and leave the dogma to the charter schools. I think that teaching certain races (or whatever birth circumstance) are fundamentally this-or-that and individualism is a lie is not just wrong but heinous. Enlightenment values and egalitarianism should be the backbone of an educational system, not a target.
And if the bulk of people running the public education system (professors, unions, teachers) can’t agree, I think parents asking for the option for their tax dollars to be spent on more education and less indoctrination is the next best thing.
That is to say, I think the best solution would be for educators to ditch the dogma; I just don’t think it is as easy or as likely as letting people take their children/taxes elsewhere. And if they can’t have either, they’ll vote for politicians who promise change and maybe make things even worse, which is looking more and more like the most likely.
Depends on the school. Religious schools, certainly less so. Predominantly wealthy and white schools, also seems unlikely. Schools that genuinely value enlightenment values and critical thinking, again no. Some are going to have teachers who are full on woke, sure. Teachers are not a monolithic group, although unions like the NEA might prefer if they were. I believe the NEA members are mostly public and less-so charter/private school.
That would depend on the state, the laws, and the teacher. I’m not sure how to give an opinion, but I’ve given you lots in this post and your policy of not doing the line-by-line quote thing is totally understandable
Fair enough, and thanks for the other answers. They all sound sensible, as usual. For what it’s worth, I don’t do the line-by-line thing because when I do, I tend to end up being very pedantic and argumentative (I mean, even more so), and my conversations devolve into infinite trees of close-reading. Some posters here manage to do it and avoid that trap. Others less so.
I think I’m generally in favour of charter schools as a concept, and of parents (perhaps even children) having choice in what kind of schooling they get. This seems to work pretty well in Taiwan, with a variety of experimental schools and homeschooling associations which can pretty much do what they like so long as they meet some meta-standards.
I remain pretty sceptical about having public schools teach “the facts”. Even if it’s possible to establish the facts, I think the role of a teacher is also to help kids interpret and understand those facts. Otherwise we wouldn’t need schools at all (arguably, we don’t).
Perhaps a better way would be to lean harder into the charter school idea: give all (public) schools more freedom, if we can also ensure that parents have choices. But that goes against the general push toward standardization embodied by the NCLB / ESSA, I guess. I’m pretty sceptical of that too.
21 minutes into that james lindsay piece and it is sooooooo good.
I did a search of ‘critical pedagogy’ on this thread to see how many people know what they’re talking about. Surprisingly, @mups didn’t come up at all…
“it’s not about paying attention to their arguments, they don’t care about their arguments either”
Must’ve missed it. I don’t have time to read a 100-page report, but from a look at the summary the findings seem to be more of “racists in the system” than a “racist system,” and the recommendations of more implicit bias training seem off the mark, considering that this type of training hasn’t been shown effective in actually reducing bias.
