CNN tackles CRT!

THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

The end of what once passed for journalism: Is it even possible? Is it possible that bad teaching is  occurring somewhere as individual teachers, schools and school systems engage in increased "antiracism?"

Is it possible that some bad teaching is going on? Stating what is blindingly obvious, Yes, of course it is! 

Bad teaching is easy to perform. Because this is a very large country, we can be fairly sure that it's happening all the time!

That's what's happening in the real world. That's not what happens in Dreamland.

In Dreamland, it's possible that bad teaching is occurring until Our Town's thought leaders check in. At that point, we tend to focus very strongly on the foolishness of The Others, and we tend to leave things right there.

For starters, Republican pols make easy targets. There's a lot of bad faith, and some world-class dumbness, to be found over there.

That said, we also tend to roll our eyes at the hysterical, very dumb parents. We tend to reject the possibility that these Others could ever have anything resembling a reasonable or valid concern. 

Instead, we go straight to their alleged "moral panic." So it went when CNN's Erin Burnett joined hands with the remarkably unskilled Elspeth Reeve to announce the end of American journalism this past Tuesday night.

Good God, this segment was awful! Concerning those stupid hapless parents, Reeve started up like this:

REEVE (7/6/21): This is a school board meeting in a suburb of Philadelphia, where a small group are speaking out against critical race theory, or CRT.

In the wake of protests of the murder of George Floyd, Republican politicians have been hyping critical race theory as a threat to the impressionable minds of America's children.

"Hyping?" That's a notably loaded term with which to start a news report. Within moments, Reeve had moved along to such presentations as these:

REEVE: Critical race theory is an academic framework that says racial inequality is perpetuated by racism embedded in American laws, not by individual bigotry. But relentless propaganda from some conservatives has created a panic that white people, and especially white children, are under attack.

[...]

REEVE: Anti-CRT propaganda is drawing crowds. More than 100 people showed up at this diner near Baltimore where local Republican groups held a panel on school COVID shutdowns and CRT.

It has to be "propaganda;" there can be no valid concerns. Later, as Reeve wrapped things up, she schooled Burnett as shown:

BURNETT: So, Elle, I know you spoke to parents and activists in Philadelphia for your story, but you've done so much reporting on this. How widespread is it?

REEVE: Yeah, we are seeing conflicts over CRT pop up across the country. For example, our crew just dropped by one meeting to see if someone might show up and talk about it, and two people did.

While this conflict and panic is based on misinformation, the fear these people feel is real. We saw a woman cry real tears at the thought that her child was being taught to be ashamed for being white.

BURNETT: Wow. It's incredible. Reports like yours make a difference. And, Elle, thank you so much.

In Reeve's wholly fair-minded assessment, the concern is really a panic. The panic is based on misinformation, but also on propaganda. 

On the brighter side, the tears of these Others are real. "Wow. It's incredible," the hapless Burnett exclaimed.

Reeve never showed the slightest sign of imagining the possibility that somewhere, someone might be overdoing the antiracism in some way or other. She never showed the slightest sign of imagining that some parent or parents might have something resembling a reasonable point of concern.

That doesn't mean that she didn't work hard to be completely sure! Pathetically, she interviewed one (1) high school teacher, Philadelphia's Keziah Ridgeway, to make sure that things were A-OK in the nation's several classrooms.

Nonsense like this ensued:

REEVE: Are you teaching white kids to hate themselves for being white?

RIDGEWAY: No.

REEVE: Are you teaching black kids that there is nothing they can do to improve their situation?

RIDGEWAY: Absolutely not.

That was quite a grilling! For ourselves, we felt much better once those key points had been settled. There are no problems anywhere in this best of all possible revolutions, as Ridgeway's responses made clear!

There are various issues to straighten out in the current non-discussion discussion about CRT and the schools. 

As a general matter, thought leaders in Our Town tend to ridicule GOP pols for the gong-shows they've been staging concerning the term "critical race theory." After that, we come close to matching them dumbness for dumbness as we proceed on from there.

Based on her writings and her upbeat point of view, Keziah Ridgeway seems like a very energetic, very good person to us. Reportedly, she isn't teaching white kids to hate themselves, and she isn't teaching black kids that there's nothing they can do.

(Earlier, she also answered no to this question: "Are you teaching children to hate America?" Ridgeway said no to that too!)

On the other hand, teaching values, and teaching our nation's history, is a much more challenging task than teaching reading or math. Here's part of an interview with Ridgeway concerning the Brown decision:

RIDGEWAY (9/23/20): If you want to truly revolutionize education, it has to start at the beginning with destroying white supremacy, which has always been a part of the framework of the United States.  

Even Brown v. Board of Education, a seemingly big win for abolishing school segregation, didn’t fix the entire problem because a lot of Black teachers lost their jobs since they were not wanted to teach white kids. Then on the flip side, you had Black and Brown kids being taught by white teachers who, by design of the slave trade, were never supposed to be granted education in the first place. 

Without this history, which is more nuanced than the surface level lessons students get about MLK, students are not able to make the connection between the events that happened in the past and what's occurring in the world today. We need to put things in proper context. 

By design of the slave trade, those black and brown kids were never supposed to be granted education in the first place. Plus, those black and brown kids were now being taught by white teachers! Without putting things in this proper, heavily nuanced context, our country will never be able to revolutionize education, as Ridgeway wants to do.

(Also, don't get Ridgeway started on the things Mr. Lincoln once said.)

Keziah Ridgeway seems to us like a very good, very decent person. We admire people who pour themselves into their classroom work, as she plainly does.

That said, you're really taking a roll of the dice when you let the nation's ten million teachers start expounding their own private views about such complex matters. It's always important to remember one point:

Those kids in those classrooms aren't theirs.

At one time, there was a Standard Americana which tended to prevail in the classroom and in public school history books. This produced homogenized teaching which was dull and often inaccurate, but at least it was standardized. At least on the surface, there was a widely-held agreement on the general Storyline.

That was then, and this is very much now. When we let every teacher start expounding his or her own specialized views, we're heading down a difficult, complex path. 

In the meantime, are you sure that no parent or parents out there has a reasonable concern or complaint? Putting it a different way, are we able to respect no one but ourselves? 

In our view, CNN's viewers have a complaint as the sort of thing we saw Tuesday night seizes control of the channel's gong-shows, which were never real strong to begin with. That report was perfect dumbness—dumbness all the way down. On a fairly regular basis (though not always), it's even worse with Tucker on Fox.

As CNN helped show Tuesday night, Our Town is coming come closer and closer to matching The Others for dumbness. Disconsolate experts glumly say there's no clear way out of this mess.


35 comments:

  1. Thanks again for documenting liberal-hitlerian atrocities, dear Bob.

    But don't worry too much please.

    When your liberal-hitlerian cult's political consultants realize that the backlash exceeds the gains, you'll see your cult switching into 'we never advocated it' mode. Like with "defund the police". No doubt about that, dear Bob.

    Just grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ‘At one time, there was a Standard Americana which tended to prevail in the classroom and in public school history books. This produced homogenized teaching which was dull and often inaccurate, but at least it was standardized. At least on the surface, there was a widely-held agreement on the general Storyline.’

    Incredibly, Somerby argues that an inaccurate ‘Storyline’ is preferable, as long as there is widely-held agreement that we should teach kids inaccurate but standardized Storyline.

    Much of the current debate is about correcting the inaccuracies in that ‘Storyline’, not to mention the myopic point of view that Storyline is/was based upon. It isn’t just about ‘antiracism.’

    Somerby has heretofore used the term ‘Storyline’ in a pejorative sense, decrying the fictions we humans tell ourselves. But here, he defends that practice when it comes to teaching history to kids.

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    Replies
    1. He wasn't defending the inaccuracies, he was defending having a standardized way of teaching, or guidelines. There are different ways of teaching about racism and slavery in American history. Some, which I think are in the minority, think that slavery was the main reason for the American Revolution. Some historians think that it was one of several factors. In my view, that would lead kids to think about America in significantly different ways, depending on which view is taught. Should it be left up to individual teachers, or should they have some guidelines?

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    2. Should read: "Some historians think that it was one of several factors, but not the main reason."

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    3. This isn't really a debate about whether there should be standards or let teachers go it alone. It is a debate about what those standards should be. Standards already exist and have done for quite a while.

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    4. Wrong on both counts. Those standards obviously don't exist, so teachers are going it alone, when they shouldn't have to. "Certainly it should be historians who are gathered at a national level to set national history standards that should be taught to all American children." Ibram Kendi

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    5. Of course standards exist locally. No teachers are permitted to wing it. The idea that teachers are doing this shows a profound ignorance of what the job of teaching is about. Teachers are given a curriculum, they develop lesson plans, which must be approved, and they are assigned textbooks. That means that the content of their courses is provided to them. It is different only at the college level, where teachers are expected to be scholars. At the K-12 level, teachers are expected to be instructors not researchers.

      Delete
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  3. ‘Is it possible that bad teaching is  occurring somewhere as individual teachers, schools and school systems engage in increased "antiracism?"’

    Somerby starts out complaining about the journalism, implying that we aren’t given enough information to know exactly what the conservative complaints are and how to judge whether conservative complaints might be valid.

    Then he rattles off his own list of complaints, apparently assuming what those complaints are and judging that they are valid.

    That’s called assuming the truth of what you are trying to prove, something he just got through accusing journalists of doing.

    I’d say Somerby ought to be asking for more information, not buying into the complaints he imagines conservatives are making.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is Somerby's old game of "anything is possible" therefore his preferred beliefs are possible. Never mind what is likely or what is actually true.

      It is fully possible that good teaching is occurring in those places where individual teachers, schools and school systems engage in increased "antiracism" and that worse teaching is occurring where "antiracism" is not present, especially if you consider the impact of ignoring racism on minority students (who are part of the group of students being taught).

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  4. CRT says there are inherent differences between races. CRT says that someone's race is terribly important. That's the essence of racism. It's the opposite of MLK, who preached in favor of a race-blind society.

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    Replies
    1. No, David, it doesn't say that stuff. You need to read CRT theorists themselves and not form your ideas of what CRT says based on what you hear on Fox News.

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    2. @7:53 - I am not talking about theory. I'm talking about the way CRT ideas are actually promoted in the real world of classrooms and business seminars.

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    3. David, anti-racists are not saying that there are inherent differences between races. If anything, they say there may be cultural differences based on race, just as there are based on other aspects of heritage. Further, anti-racists are not saying that anyone's race is "terribly important." They are saying that racism results in discrimination that can have a large impact on someone's life, and that this is unfair and needs to be changed. They are also recognizing that race can be part of someone's identity, to the extent that they identify with a racial subculture. Not everyone does that, but if they do, it should be recognized, just as you would recognize it if someone were an observant religious Jew or a third generation Irish person immersed in Irish culture as an aspect of their heritage.

      I don't believe that MLK was preaching a "race-blind" society but rather that race should not result in judgments against someone in contexts where it was not important, such as when assessing someone's character. I think it is wrong to attribute to MLK ideas he most likely did not hold, over-generalizing and rounding-off his thoughts until they fit your own ideas. If you want to say that MLK did preach in favor of a race-blind society, please quote something to support that assertion.

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    4. David, if you are not talking about CRT, please do not use that acronym. The letters CRT refer to critical race theory, which is a specific theory taught in grad schools and law school courses. It is not a catch-all term for anti-racism, the way Fox News uses it.

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    5. If one day people won't be judged by their skin color, but rather by the content of their character, which MLK was looking forward to, that is race-blindness regarding a supremely important aspect of a person. It follows that "race" would not be a factor in society in any meaningful way. Racism wouldn't exist. People wouldn't think skin color meant anything important.

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    6. No, that is race-blindness with respect to character. it is not race blindness in any other context. And it does not follow that race would be ignored in any other part of society nor that racism would cease to exist or that people wouldn't think about skin color. You assume too much.

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  5. ""Hyping?" That's a notably loaded term with which to start a news report."

    The rapidly increasing frequency of mention of CRT by Fox News has been noted by media watchers. That is what hype looks like -- when a topic is being pushed by right wing media in support of talking points and conservative political goals. "Hyping" is the right word for this behavior. Fox went from 0 to 500+ mentions per month in 3.5 months. In this case, hype is not a loaded word; it is an accurate word.

    https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-has-mentioned-critical-race-theory-nearly-1300-times-past-35-months

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Somerby says: "The panic is based on misinformation, but also on propaganda."

      Propaganda is what Fox News puts out. Those parents in Philadelphia are being fed lies by Fox News and that is generating the real emotion they bring to school board meetings. The discussion of CRT by Fox is not accurate, not true, but it is being pushed to manipulate parents and generate fear. That is propaganda. There is no other word for it (except perhaps evil lies).

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  6. "Reeve never showed the slightest sign of imagining the possibility that somewhere, someone might be overdoing the antiracism in some way or other."

    If the source of the information parents bring to school board meetings were video of teachers doing bad things, then Somerby might have a point. Instead, they are coming to such meetings full of misinformation gleaned from Fox News and other conservative sources.

    Somerby should know how to consider sources. He deliberately ignores them in this situation in order to claim that parental concerns are being dismissed without due attention. Where is the evidence of all of this so-called bad teaching?

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  7. "Plus, those black and brown kids were now being taught by white teachers!"

    In the context of the recent Brown v Board of Education decision, those black and brown kids were not likely to hear the details about slavery from a white teacher with little motivation to examine the unpleasant actions of white masters during slavery and Jim Crow. What kind of answer would a white teacher give to a child who asked questions about such things? It is hard to imagine such a teacher giving a complete and empathetic response. And based on what has happened in education up to the present, there is no reason to believe white teachers have done a good job conveying those parts of history to any of their students.

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  8. "At one time, there was a Standard Americana which tended to prevail in the classroom and in public school history books."

    This is manifestly untrue. Having come up during such times, I know that what I learned in my history textbooks in California was much different than what children in Texas learned. Textbook publishers know this too, which is why they produce different version for different sections of the country and different school districts. One version has never been the national standard.

    There was a concerted attempt to create a national mythology, beginning shortly after the Constitutional Convention and continuing into the 1800s. That's when myths such as Washington and the Cherry Tree were deliberately created. There has also been a concern for assimilation of immigrants by teaching them a standardized version of American history. That doesn't mean that all school children were taught the same thing, as Somerby asserts. Revisionism about the Civil War, for example, had a stronger hold in the South than in the Northeast. Somerby is longing for good old days that never existed.

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  9. "When we let every teacher start expounding his or her own specialized views, we're heading down a difficult, complex path."

    As Somerby should know, teachers do not use the classroom to expound their own views. A teacher with specialized education in history would be expounding views learned in acquiring a Master's degree in American History, for example, not personal opinions. But all teachers are expected to teach a prescribed curriculum using an assigned textbook, no matter how they might choose to give more life to that material.

    I shudder to think what Somerby did in his classrooms, if he thinks he is supposed to be standing in front of children and expounding on his own personal opinions. Maybe that is what substituted for training in Teach for America. It isn't what is expected in today's classrooms (except when the occasional underprepared substitute is hired at the last minute to cover someone's class).

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  10. "In the meantime, are you sure that no parent or parents out there has a reasonable concern or complaint?"

    If there exists one parent with a reasonable concern, does that justify all the rest of the noise being made by right-wing activists?

    Somerby never seems to ask how frequently such concerns might be justified, how many teachers are doing what kinds of things. How likely are the scenarios he cooks up? He doesn't care. Presumably if there is one bad apple then the whole barrel must be thrown out.

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    Replies
    1. You have to understand, when Somerby says liberals are dumb, he's talking about you. So, you can't expect to understand what is written here. That's why you are so confused.

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    2. At least I understand CRT, which is more than Somerby does.

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    3. Whether Somerby understands CRT or not, he's still going to repeat the Right-wing grievance about it, because the only value to TDH nowadays is learning what Right-wingers are crying about today.

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  11. Why is it OK for Somerby to reject out-of-hand the answers given by Ridgeway to reasonable questions? Does he think she is lying when she said what she did? Somerby assumes bad faith without providing any reasons or evidence to discredit Ridgeways responses. I don't see how he gets away with that, and yes, it is very disrespectful to treat someone that way.

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  12. Attending K-12 in Maryland during the 60s and 70s, I never heard the Civil War referred to as The War of Northern Aggression. I first heard that term in the late 90s when people who had attended K-12 schools in the South recounted stories about their US History education.
    There’s never been a National standard history curriculum in this country. The freak out over curriculum reform mounted by the Obama Administration, Common Core, tells you all you need to know about communities demand for local standards.
    Bob even blogged about Common Core when it was happening.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "CNN tackles CRT!"

    CNN does a way better job than Fox News!

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  14. Parents in Republican regions want the John Wayne movie/Jesus riding dinosaurs version of history taught to their kids. Any suggestion of an alternative version will make them hysterical.

    Parents in Woke-Dem regions want their kids taught white self-flagellation. They want little Chipper and little Molly taught how to lay on a bridge and pretend to be a dead black guy shot by a cop.

    The USA strives to perpetuate a nation of idiots and make itself the laughingstock of the world. Nobody does it better!

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