Banning Critical Race Theory Isn’t Working – Opinion

We didn’t need a crystal ball to see this coming. When the right wanted to prohibit the teaching of Critical Race Theory concepts in schools, last year I cautioned that this was not the end of the road. Although legislation might be helpful in curbing some unsavoury teachings that are common in classrooms, I was aware that teachers and administrators will find other methods to communicate these concepts to their students.

Yup.

Another reason we should not assume that we win when we ban it.

We must not be averse to the idea and advocate solutions to the issues CRT is trying to address. https://t.co/reDgzGjVhh

— Jeff Charles, Social Media Biologist (@JeffOnTheRight) June 10, 2021

Turns out, I was correct.

According to a recent study, teachers from different school districts continue to incorporate these ideas into their teaching. To make it appear that they comply with the law, they have simply changed the way the information is presented.

A conservative watchdog, Accuracy In Media (AIM), conducted a series undercover interviews with officials from school districts in red states in order to assess the effectiveness of anti-CRT legislations. These results are telling.

Melissa Langan, principal of Van Buren Elementary School and chief academic officer of the Caldwell School District in western Idaho, told Adam Guillette of AIM that her district subverted the state’s law banning CRT by renaming parts of the curriculum.

Langan explained that since schools in her district can no longer use “social-emotional learning,” which has been used as a covert vehicle through which to present far-left ideas in classrooms, they simply gave it another moniker: “Behavior adaptations.”

“I just went to a superintendent’s meeting last week and the district was intending to switch out social-emotional learning to ‘behavior adaptations.’ Changed the label, same stuff,” she said in the video. “And I thought, it’s kind of a bummer they have to do that, but at the time I thought it was kind of brilliant. Because they don’t care about this even though it’s the same as this. But it’s the label. So, I thought it was brilliant on their part.”

Cindy Dion from Nampa School district in Boise stated that schools in her area have also responded to the anti-CRT legislation. Similar to Langan’s district, they simply renamed social-emotional learning and are now calling it “mental health.”  She said: “Social-emotional learning, we can’t say that here anymore. It’s mental health . . . It was already an ugly situation. So, it’s just, you know, our mental-health curriculum.”

She continued:

So, we’re trying to make that transition to, you know, no, we’re not doing social-emotional learning. It’s all mental health. It’s just all the different words you have to use, and of course, we don’t do CRT. We don’t. We’re just learning how to worm around all of those weird things out there.”

Pretending to side with her, Guillette asked, “So this dumb new law doesn’t mess with you guys?”

Dion replied, “Not yet, no.”

The 1619 Project, which teaches that America’s founding was based primarily on slavery, is another issue that arose during the national debate over CRT. The controversial project has been banned in several states including Idaho. Guillette discovered that the teaching methods of this project have been successfully integrated into schools’ curriculums.

Using a program called “Newsela,” teachers can simply use other sources that pull its material from the 1619 Project.

Based on National Review”

Newsela publishes articles that have been published by outlets such as The Washington Post, Associated Press or the Guardian and rewrites the content to be suitable for different levels.

Guillette heard from Amy Vagnier in Tennessee as assistant director for Maryville City Schools that Newsela was being used at least by some teachers. “We have a subscription,” she said. “We do have a few teachers who use, I think, still the free portion of that. Yeah, and then I believe we’ve got a couple of teachers at the junior high I think that’s using Newsela. Maybe the intermediate school.”

In Metro Nashville Public Schools, director of instruction for K–12 Todd Wigginton said that Tennessee’s law prohibiting CRT “was really well crafted and accomplishes nothing.”

Guillette acknowledges that not all teachers have bad motives regarding the curriculum. He added:

“Now, let me be clear. Not all of these administrators are villains, and I’m sure there are districts where critical race theory isn’t actually being taught. I’m also confident there are districts where the administrators don’t realize it’s being taught because many of them told us that at the end of the day, these teachers can close the door and do whatever the heck they’d like.”

However, CRT banning isn’t the panacea. Guillette has reached the same conclusion that I have and others. “It’s clear that the only solution to this is school choice,” he says.

He’s right. Only laws can go so far. The battle must be won differently. It is a great step to get conservatives elected on school boards. They are closer to state government. RedState’s Kira Davis is one of many who are taking up this charge.

The best solution for both the short- and long-term is to allow parents to decide how to educate their children. Many have called for an exodus of public schools, where parents could choose to homeschool their children or send them to charter and private schools. This would not be in line with progressive ideologies. Conservatives should push the states to allow school choice, as this is better than banning. Otherwise, the indoctrination will continue, and we will have wasted our time pushing measures that don’t address the problem.

Here is Accuracy in Media’s video: