No controversy in the nation’s occasional conversation about primary education – not Common Core, not No Child Left Behind, not Race-to-the-Top (remember that one?) nor any other meditation of an aspirant for the presidency comes even close to the intellectual debauchery of CRT/DEI evangelism. Most significant, this hijacking has been attempted and continues with little discussion, debate, or pushback from any component of the public-school universe; not parents, teachers, administrators, public employee-bargaining unit to any significant degree; at least, that is, until the present.
There is no New York State “mandate” requiring adoption of diversity and critical race agendas in local schools. The Board of Regents, the state’s day-to-day educational governing body in its “Call to Action,” April, 2021 refers to diversity goals as a “framework,” nothing more.
How to explain this previously unheard-of outlier (now, a political and media chattering- class obsession)? This raft of inexplicable and unexamined racial profiling and scare-mongering seems nothing more than an attempt to “change the subject”from the failure of the nation’s largest educational bureaucracies to deal with the Covid pandemic; Apart from the perfectly-timed technological perfection of remote-learning (called “Zoom” after the largest purveyor of the software), the inconsistent institution of substitute teaching measure and practices (masking/social distancing included) including so-called hybrid policies (remote alternated with in-person) the record of most public schools in the crisis was a cavalcade of inconsistency, incompetence and sad satire.
This is no screed against the honest exertions of most educators, administrators, and aides against this toxic enemy. What Is most troubling is the failure of our public educational bureaucracies to cope with the tragedy at any scale of success beyond the unique and singular; in particular, the failure to devise extraordinary tactics on-the-spot, on-the-run to deliver a minimum of substantive content. For instance, re-purposing of gymnasiums, other assembly and athletic facilities with the most sophisticated engineering and architectural software available; the extension of hours of school operations into a full-second or even third “shift” of classes. If further ideation is needed, imagine how a woodworking factory or automobile plant might have been re-engineered if faced with the challenge of a health crisis (as of course, many were), with calls by management for greater output in the same footprint. Even a layperson could conceive of mechanical and technological measures; redeployment of customary “tools of the trade,” addition of more and new machinery and tools, utilization of existing “air space” by erecting mezzanines and shelving, leasing more facilities space and hiring additional employees.
If there were examples of educational excellence amidst the chaos, where did they occur? Were there any innovations in the administration of primary instruction worthy of repeating in a future emergency? I have not heard of it.
Any data from America’s 16,000 public-school districts? Bureaucrats of national teachers’ unions (National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers) or from prominent schools have not been quoted. Are powerful institutional or private interests protecting themselves at the expense of public schools?
Towards the goal of restoring educational common sense, Westchester parents in several area districts have been combatting imposition of hard-left DEI and CRT instruction and teacher preparation. Petitions are being circulated seeking the protection of dissent: exemption of students from classroom racial-profiling and agitation and conjectural gender discussions. Parents are also seeking regular teacher recording, facilitation of student phone contact with parents and student “safe spaces.”
We insist: if most America’s kids are to be prepared for their futures in public schools that state laws compel them to attend, fundamental instruction in reading, writing, math and reasoning must hew to rigorously neutral, unbiased, and non-ideological “tried, true, and time-tested” intellectual standards. We must never allow ideologues of the left or right to wrest control of a historically successful system of academic and civic education that has functioned reliably for two centuries! (New York City’s P.S. 1 began teaching poor children in a small apartment on Henry Street in Lower Manhattan in 1806).
No special-interests like university departments, foundations funded by technologist-oligarchs, or political factions can be permitted a free “pulpit” at the altar of America’s state-Constitutionally-pluralist public educational tradition. Apolitical, non-partisan, non-sectarian, and secular teaching content and teacher prep are the necessary partners of the compulsory public education laws of the nation’s 50 states.
The introduction of radical political/social indoctrination of students in America’s public instruction systems required an earthquake. Covid supplied it. Corona Virus 2019 laid the groundwork for Critical Race Theory 2021. It is up to resident citizens, taxpayers, and parents to defeat this existential threat to our republican-democratic educational legacies.
Stephen I. Mayo, Esq. is managing director and counsel of Mayo Linoleum Works LLC, Port Morris, NY. With Lou Felicione he hosts a radio show at commercial station WVOX 1460 AM Mondays 5:30 pm.
