What is wrong with Political Correctness in some cases?

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/te ... y-n1272945

I would have thought teachers know what they are teaching their kids better than republican politicians and dumb MAGA parents who spout the same nonsense.

Oh wow…big deal. So not ALL teachers teach CRT, that means NONE of them are? Where I live some school districts would fire teachers for it, a few would prefer teaching it. If a teacher knew she could lose her job for teaching CRT, would you really expect her to tell the truth? It is a fact that this is happening in some schools, and I hear from other teachers that this happens. I’ve heard from teachers who’ve quit their jobs over the issue. The NBC News article doesn’t seem to be entirely truthful. Media reporting isn’t always an adequate reflection of lived experience.

It's not NBC that ran the survey (please read the article rather than react)
the responses from more than 1,100 teachers across the country to a survey conducted by the Association of American Educators, a nonpartisan professional group for educators, appeared to suggest that the panicked dialogue on critical race theory made by lawmakers and the media does not reflect the reality of American classrooms.

I highly doubt the MAGA politicians are that knowledgable about what teachers are actually teaching. I prefer to trust the actual teachers.

The results of the survey suggest this is a non-issue and further proof this is being weaponised by the republican party to instill fear in ignorant parents,

I trust teachers, too. They tell me their districts are pressuring them to teach CRT.

News reports and supposed surveys are exactly the kinds of memory-holing kinds of behavior I was talking about earlier. CRT? In schools? We don’t teach that. We have NEVER taught that.

You find evidence to the contrary—well, that’s not possible. That never happened. But it doesn’t matter anyway since leftists and progressives are committed to a idea to the level they’ll never acknowledge that controversial things even happen. CRT in schools? Oh no, that is an issue in the justice system. Only law school students can understand what it means because it’s so self-referential. Yet white guilt, white fragility, privilege, and systemic racism (if you are white, you are a racist) are things that are taught in some schools at the elementary level.

Speaking as an educator, I know from teaching music that certain concepts are pretty heavy for middle school kids to grasp: phrasing, intonation, embouchure, not to mention a slough of Italian words. You start with the basics—reading notes on the staff, counting rhythms, and “pie,pie,choc-o-late pie.” Maybe you have the kids sing their parts before playing the instrument. Maybe brass players buzz their parts on the mouthpiece. You start simple with a few theoretical concepts, use monosyllabic words, tell stories, play games, role-play, master the basics before piecing individual parts together to create a more complex whole. Even kindergartners can grasp the concept that not everyone in class looks the same. They can understand that people of one color tend to live differently than people of another. It is possible to teach sets of concepts that all support a single conclusion and have the kids demonstrate comprehension over the course of their elementary years. Kindergartners may not possess the vocabulary to frame legal discussions and debates, but they are perfectly capable of understanding that they are white and that something is wrong with them because of it.

Oh please, show me one example where a teacher does this, The republican party is making this as a "national problem" when infact there was never any evidence of this.

How about the multiple teachers who have been fired in different republican states because ignorant parents complained to school boards that they "allegedly" taught CRT? That's rule of the mobs.

In many cases the teachers werent even properly consulted before getting fired. I would have thought you would have been sympathetic with your colleagues than with the MAGA parents.

I think it’s fair to say that some teachers are probably teaching about systemic racism. Imagine teaching children to analyse To Kill A Mockingbird without talking about systemic racism. Imagine teaching children about the British Empire (in the UK), the Civil Rights era, Civil War, or plantation slavery without discussing race. Imagine talking about whether violence is ever justified without talking about Martin Luther King. Imagine talking about black history without talking about racism. Imagine talking about trends in human geography without mentioning redlining, white flight, black flight, or racial self-sorting. Heck, even in music, it would be doing students a disservice to talk about the emergence of blues, jazz, calypso, reggae, or hip hop without talking about the social conditions that led to them.

When someone says they don’t want schools teaching CRT, and then when pushed says they specifically don’t want schools teaching about systemic racism, then at best they haven’t considered how this would affect children’s education.

Some of the anti-CRT laws are at least targeted towards banning rhetoric that could be viewed as racist. But the idea that schools shouldn’t teach about systemic racism at all is nakedly ideological.

Precisely. Take one example, popular music. Heavy metal is an exclusively white genre of music but was entirely invented by a black woman named Sister Rosetta Tharpe who also inspired pioneers of rock/popular music like Little Richard and Chuck Berry. At that point black music was completely hijacked by music producers who supplanted white musicians/bands in place of the black who wholesale copied black music to make it "palatable" to white audiences and made it the multi-billion dollar industry it is.

Wholesale cultural appropriation

“Never any evidence...” You can memory-hole it all you want, doesn't change the fact it happens.

Im for “cultural appropriation.”

I’m not for exploitation, though. The white men behind the scenes at record companies in the 50s, for example, denied royalties to the black originators of rock-n-roll and doo-wopp.

Even Alan Freed got royalties from songs he didn’t write—by claiming credit for writing them.

While the black artists frequently got chickenfeed for some iconic rock-n-roll and doo-wopp hits.

Heavy metal had many influences—both white and black.

Ultimately, though, it derived from black-originated music.

They SHOULD be fired. And no, school admins are not going to “consult with” teachers. By the way...if you ever teach in an American public school and a principal calls you in to “consult with you,” you best start sending out your resumé.

The most profound experience I had on the hiring/firing side was when a student became violent after I corrected him. The principal didn't give me a hard time about it, what happened was not my fault, but he did advise me on some ways I could handle the parents diplomatically should they get involved. The guidance counselor sat down with the student and me and we all agreed to do whatever it took to finish out the school year. Nothing more was said, we moved on with our lives.

I let myself get a little too comfortable until I got the news that a 6th-grade teacher had gotten fired. The short version is she was incompetent. She spent more time checking her texts, social media, and shopping than actual teaching. Bless their hearts, that school had the worst time getting 5th and 6th-grade teachers and subs who didn't traumatic the students.

And that's just the nature of at-will employment. Schools don't need an excuse to fire you. Why give them one? Why make it easy? Public school life is hard enough with compulsory attendance laws pushing kids and parents into these schools who at best don't care or, at worst, hate being there. The least teachers can do is make the classroom a welcoming environment and help all kids feel good about themselves and what they do. You can't reasonably expect white parents who form the majority in some of these districts to stand idly by while young women who don't even have kids of their own tell white kids there is something wrong with them because they are born with that certain skin color. It's more parsimonious to tell black kids that there is something wrong with being black. If it's inappropriate to dump on one race because of race, it's inappropriate to dump on ANY race.

Teachers who express racial hatred, including the idea that white people are born racists, don't belong in the classroom. If you want to teach systemic racism, find a school district that’s friendly to the idea. There are some upscale, ultra-liberal private schools that thrive on that sort of thing. Otherwise, keep your personal opinions out of the classroom.

[I do share my opinions with high school students. Then I ask them what they think. I don't always like the answer or agree, but I think it's important that they are encouraged to explore ideas free of judgment from me. My high school science teachers made a positive impression on me by explaining why the scientific method is agnostic with regard to religion. If we choose to believe God created the universe and everything in it, there's nothing wrong with that. The point of science is to explore the natural world and draw conclusions about it, hence big bang theory and evolution. CRT is an offshoot of CT which, in simplest terms is about hegemony and power structures in an attempt to explain why socialism has been a failure. CRT attempts to reframe this in the context of race. Why did Soviet communism fail? The CRT answer is who cares? That's white people problems. Black people cannot enjoy the benefits of socialism because white Democrats are too busy trying to solve all our problems, which means more benefit for them and not for us. We don't need white Democrats to “save” us. Black people don't mind mob rule (in the context of CRT); they just want to BE the mob. If you MUST teach CRT in school, show how oppressed black people can come to that conclusion. Teach colonial history and the slave triangle. Attacking the self esteem of students by trying to convince them something is wrong with whiteness is not the way to go or to keep your job.]

There is certainly a racist past history—and it continues in somewhat subtle forms today.

But—I do believe that we should move on from the past.

Emphasizing the “inborn” racism of people of European descent is dead wrong. Frankly, it’s a form of racism itself. It keeps alive the idea of racism, and doesn’t allow folks to learn from history and to move on.

My ideal is to move on from something like “affirmative action,” and start seeing people as people equally.

And you're talking about a time frame in which blacks really were exploited. Jazz and blues artists did very, VERY well commercially.

Music is one of those weird things where you've always had cultural interchange. There is no black and white here. Country music and rock were born out of black traditions, but somehow country never caught on with blacks in the long term. I grew up around rednecks who thought they were gang members and obsessed over rap music. I think it's hilarious how new country music blasts 808’s over twangy guitars. People ask me how this happened. I sigh and I laugh. I remind them that we were kids back in the 80’s, that we were sneaking tapes of NWA and 2 Live Crew while our parents weren't around. We bailed hay to this music on our Walkmans. Our kids don't remember a time when rap wasn't commercially successful. Our kids dance to this stuff at their senior proms. They’ve all seen 8 Mile. For us, it's not cultural appropriation. It's part of OUR culture, too, and our kids never had to deal with integration and the fallout from it. Rap music is just as normal as it is sitting next to a black kid in a classroom. Our children grew up not even knowing there is anything weird about it. They're regular people, just dark skin.

So you can't really be surprised when you hear 808’s in country music. What surprises me about using 808’s in country music is how long it took to get there! New country artists are Millennials. They like for their country music to go BOOM. About freakin time.

I 110% agree with you. Yes, teach history. Yes, there are still racists. And there will be kids with negative experiences with other cultures who might become racists. You can't win every one.

Do I think systemic racism exists somewhere? Sure. Slavery was systemically racist as practiced in America. The British practiced national and racial superiority across the empire. You have to have your head stuck quite far up your rear end if you can't understand why some black people might espouse CRT. If there is a pattern of unequal justice along racial lines, it's worth looking into. But expecting me to believe something is wrong with my being white is a bit much.

My main disagreement with the CRT isn't even about race. Logically, it confuses causation and correlation. Objectively, it represents yet another framing of oppressed victim class struggle as being ENTIRELY perpetuated by some “other” hegemonic force.

One positive is that CRT does not attempt to rationalize equality. Not all people are equal in all things. But the struggle to replace the hegemony is born out of class envy rather than ideas, ability, or merit. The only restraint Americans have as individuals is self. Forget about race, oppression, and opposition. Just do your thing, don't hurt people, and don't worry about anything else.