WASHINGTON, DC, Jan 13 – Can it be that COVID distorts the thinking process in some mysterious way? What else can it be that prompts purportedly educated individuals like author Nikole Hannah-Jones and former Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to tell us that parents have no say when it comes to the education of their children?
Hannah-Jones says she doesn’t “understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught … We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area.” McAuliffe agrees with her. He says that parents shouldn’t be telling schools what they should teach; it’s part of the reason that he lost his job a few months back when voters in Virginia fired him and picked Republican Glenn Youngkin to be their Governor.
It makes one wonder what they gain by backing what is widely considered an obviously un-American notion– the Critical Race Theory [CRT], which fosters the belief that parents should not determine what can and what can’t be taught in school. For Hannah-Jones the reason is likely the popularity of her book, The 1619 Project, which gave birth to the CRT movement among the would-be communists among us. It was a best-seller, earned her big bucks, and made her the sweetheart of the Left. As for McAuliffe, the pundits tell us he lost the election when he made his remarks during his campaign that moms and dads have no say in what their kids are taught in school. It sure looked like he was promoting CRT. So, perhaps, he misjudged Virginia’s Democratic voters and sought to curry their favor, at least among the progressive elements among them. However, it turned out that even loyal Democrats have a limit when it comes to the American way of life.
Xi Van Fleet knows the CRT drill, perhaps better than anyone; she experienced it firsthand in Communist China growing up during the reign of Mao Zedong. She delivered remarks last summer at a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board in Virginia. Her insight as to what CRT is all about is worth noting: “Critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism — it should have no place in our schools … You are now teaching, training our children, to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history … Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this seems very familiar … The Communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people. The only difference is they used class instead of race.”
And then there is NYU Professor Mark Crispin. He’s always been what we call a progressive. He still considers himself to be a liberal. But he apparently has concerns for moms and dads, America’s vulnerable children, and the extreme lefts turn that some of his liberal colleagues have taken when it comes to the CRT crusade. In an interview with the Epoch Times, Crispin said the “academic left” has become “a tribalist mob,” pitting Black against White, creating a new era of segregation.
“The point is the Black Lives Matter and the whole critical race theory movement, comprise a gigantic step backward. Because we now have on college campuses all over the country, segregated dining facilities and segregated graduation ceremonies. To someone like me, who comes out of the 60s, who remembers the civil rights struggle and was deeply sympathetic to it—and a believer in it—this is stunning, just mind-boggling. All of a sudden now, there’s just a new reassertion of racism, which also entails this notion that all white people are white supremacists, which is a profoundly racist idea.”
Parents have been an important part of the education of America’s youngsters since before we became an independent nation. Certainly, it has been a major part of the reason that the U.S. has prospered over the centuries. It is essential, particularly in these days of political distress and tensions, that we carry on this tradition. It works.