“Well-meaning, white teachers” should “talk about systemic racism,” not stories of individual achievement, advises Robert Harvey, superintendent of New York City’s East Harlem Scholars Academies charters, in an Education Week commentary.
“When we neglect to talk about how systemic racism is embedded within American structures — education, justice, employment, housing, and health care — we unintentionally teach students” that successful Blacks are “exempt from racist structures,” Harvey writes.
I can’t imagine anyone teaching that Black heroes were “exempt” from racism. They overcame it. Is it good to tell kids that racism is systemic — and impossible to overcome. “Abandon hope all ye enter here” is the motto for hell.
The commentary is a good example of the “lunacy unfolding on the ‘anti-racist education’ front, writes Rick Hess.
Harvey doesn’t want students to think that “individuals can shape the course of their lives,” writes Hess. Instead, he thinks “teachers should push students to view themselves as passive victims of circumstance.”
He also instructs teachers to “talk about history in today’s context,” meaning they should view historic content in light of today’s progressive dogmas. He explains, “What is it to esteem Frederick McKinley Jones’ refrigerated-truck ingenuity without discussing Trump-era cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program?”
Harvey urges teachers to “talk about navigating and disrupting racism” by teaching students “to disrupt language, writing norms, and even dress codes.” For example, he writes his first name as “rob” to show that people can “reimagine the recommended relationship between capitalization and proper nouns.”
They can. But should they? Hess is not impressed, and, as a former copy editor, neither am I.
Harvey is “encouraging educators to dismiss individual accomplishment and personal agency,” Hess complains. “Sophomoric theatrics” are not “a stand-in for rigorous thought.”