Let’s not make race and culture too hot for our teachers to handle
Talking about race, I have long observed, is like talking about sex: We know it’s important, we like to think we know all about it, and yet we’re reluctant to talk about it in mixed company or in front of the children.
So, for much of that challenging educational task, we turn — where else? — to teachers, for whom the challenging task of educating our offspring on the touchy topic is not made any easier by today’s superheated culture wars, even during Black History Month.
For example, a public charter school in Utah, which only has three Black students, made national headlines this month by allowing parents to opt out of the school’s Black History Month curriculum — and several parents did.
Sad! What could give parents pause about this annual observance of the contributions and heroic achievements made by African Americans to this great nation’s history?
Fortunately, the school reversed its policy, director Micah Hirokawa announced in a Facebook post Sunday. Families who had questions had resolved their concerns, he said, none were opting out and the option has been removed.
Hirokawa declined to tell reporters what questions or concerns the parents had or how many had them. But the controversy echoes disputes elsewhere in the nation between traditionalists and the “woke” in the nation’s recent wave of racial reckoning.
In Illinois, the Utah school’s problem looks like a minor dust-up compared with a proposed rule that a joint legislative committee is scheduled to decide soon. The proposed Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards would mandate all of the state’s public schoolteachers to “embrace and encourage inclusive viewpoints and perspectives.”
“Inclusive” in itself is a revision from the original language, which called for “progressive” viewpoints, a word that triggered conservatives to charge that the document would compel teachers to promote not just education but leftist political “indoctrination” by another name.
State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala insisted in a news conference last week that “Progressive meant making progress, but not in a political context.”
She also explained, contrary to the critics, that another controversial line that calls on “culturally responsive teachers” to “support and create opportunities for student advocacy” means teachers should help students find ways to be active participants of their communities, not that they “need to go to protests.”
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