Post by addisona on Feb 23, 2022 10:37:59 GMT
critical race theory hysteria overshadows the importance of teaching kids about racism
It was a normal day in one of my 11th grade US history courses. During class, a kid, I’ll call him Billy, asked, “Why is it such a big deal that the police killed someone? Why is there so much fuss about this one? He should have just listened to the police.”
While this conversation could have happened this year, it occurred in the spring of 2015, amid the media uproar surrounding Freddie Gray, a young black man who died while in Baltimore police custody. But Billy didn’t understand why this was happening, and now I — a high school teacher — was tasked with explaining this national moment to my young student. So I took a deep breath and launched into a brief historical context about the history of police brutality, Black resistance to it, and how all of this goes back to America’s Reconstruction era.
These conversations take place often in my class. Young people want to understand the world around them, and it’s my job to do my absolute best to help them make sense of things, even if it’s just by providing them with knowledge of past events that created the inequalities they witness on a regular basis. Whether it’s police killing unarmed Black people, anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic, or viral videos of people making racist 911 calls, students want to know. I pride myself on helping kids to make connections between these kinds of events and our nation’s history.
This is one reason why I get so frustrated at all the bad takes circulating among politicians, social media, and the news related to critical race theory and the teaching of America’s racial history in K-12 classrooms. The reality is that kids are talking about race, systems of oppression, and our country’s ugly past anyway — from media coverage to last summer’s protests to even this very controversy itself, my students are absorbing these conversations and want to know more. I’m just one teacher, and there’s no way to generalize what’s happening everywhere. But I believe that my students are smart and mature enough to handle the truth.
www.vox.com/first-person/22568672/critical-race-theory-crt-education-racism-teachers
It was a normal day in one of my 11th grade US history courses. During class, a kid, I’ll call him Billy, asked, “Why is it such a big deal that the police killed someone? Why is there so much fuss about this one? He should have just listened to the police.”
While this conversation could have happened this year, it occurred in the spring of 2015, amid the media uproar surrounding Freddie Gray, a young black man who died while in Baltimore police custody. But Billy didn’t understand why this was happening, and now I — a high school teacher — was tasked with explaining this national moment to my young student. So I took a deep breath and launched into a brief historical context about the history of police brutality, Black resistance to it, and how all of this goes back to America’s Reconstruction era.
These conversations take place often in my class. Young people want to understand the world around them, and it’s my job to do my absolute best to help them make sense of things, even if it’s just by providing them with knowledge of past events that created the inequalities they witness on a regular basis. Whether it’s police killing unarmed Black people, anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic, or viral videos of people making racist 911 calls, students want to know. I pride myself on helping kids to make connections between these kinds of events and our nation’s history.
This is one reason why I get so frustrated at all the bad takes circulating among politicians, social media, and the news related to critical race theory and the teaching of America’s racial history in K-12 classrooms. The reality is that kids are talking about race, systems of oppression, and our country’s ugly past anyway — from media coverage to last summer’s protests to even this very controversy itself, my students are absorbing these conversations and want to know more. I’m just one teacher, and there’s no way to generalize what’s happening everywhere. But I believe that my students are smart and mature enough to handle the truth.
www.vox.com/first-person/22568672/critical-race-theory-crt-education-racism-teachers