From "The College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies/After criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the official course looks different: No more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional" (NYT).
'Intersectionality' is cited eight times in the draft curriculum, but only once in the new version, as an optional topic for a project. But the concept seems to sneak into required course content, under the heading of essential knowledge, referencing the writers Gwendolyn Brooks and Mari Evans, who 'explore the lived experience of Black women and men and show how their race, gender and social class can affect how they are perceived, their roles and their economic opportunities.'"
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100 comments:
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
Should black cops beat black men to death on the streets? Discuss.
"show how their race, gender and social class can affect how they are perceived"
To their intersectional advantage, at least for educated black women.
Stick to math, engineering and business. These social sciences have always been wishy washy garbage. You want to research and write about how great a black leader was, and how much they had to overcome? Knock yourself out. Just don’t bitch at me if I choose not to read it, or if it doesn’t get praised as great literature complete with your Hollywood-like self congratulatory award and trophy.
We can all choose our own paths and “coexist”. Ah coexistence and tolerance… We’ve come a long way baby.
Black Studies is always about declaring and seeking out new forms of racism.
Gad, I hate the term "lived experience." What other kind of experience is there? And why is experience so important in these fields but carries no weight in things like, oh, running a business before attempting to run even a piece of a government?
Yes, Mr. Buttigieg, I am talking to you.
Now do a postmortem on why the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History in DC addressed Anita Hill but not Clarence Thomas for a full year:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clarence-thomas-finally-honored-at-african-american-history-museum
Museum. History. Taxpayer funded. Curated by federal Smithsonian officials in a building that is across the street from the White House.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/
Interesting that a class claiming to be at University level feels that students aren't mature enough to handle all the material presented in Universities in the same classes.
I guess Ron DeSantis gets to be judge for AP class content now that they have deferred their authority to his office.
I'm not opposed to teaching about it...I had a class in the economics series called Scams and Frauds which was mostly about business fraud but we did spend a week on government grifters. It would make for a great case study on how we get from companies like Apple et al suspending service to their customers (without refund) and giving billions of dollars to BLM, then to BLM leadership buying homes in the Malibu colony. It is a Ponzi level grift...
There are people who make headlines and then there are people who make everyone's life better.
I think the latter are more important and deserving of study.
Where I did my undergrad a 'diversity' semester was required of freshmen and sophomores in order to graduate. You could do 'african american' studies or 'women's studies'. I chose women's studies for a semester. I can't thank my alma mater enough for this mandatory experience. It has made me the conservative Hercules I am today.
All this apoplexy could be solved quite easily. Let people that want to study this shit study it. It's their money. Just stop making it mandatory. Take the program and the staff and the learned 'publishing' professors off the administrative teat. Extirpate it from all course and graduation requirements.
Baby steps DeSantis. Baby steps.
Critical Racists' Theory (CRT) presumed diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), notably in DIE policies under class-disordered religions.
African-American? Elon Musk is disfavored for exposing left-wing ideology.
The queer experience is not politically congruent ("="). Also the queer banner is notoriously albinophobic. Albinos are a white, historically discriminated minority, particularly in some African societies. Mengele, Levine, eat your heart out.
Feminism and masculinism are sex chauvinistic religions that deny the dignity and agency of women, men, children, and babies, too, and used by forward-looking authoritarians for their liberal indulgence and personal progress.
NYeT! Never, again, and, and again. #HateLoesAbortion
The better alternative than the heavy hand of government deciding on what should be taught is competing schools of thought. New colleges and universities are popping up that are a backlash to the indoctrination centers that most traditional colleges have become.
The new University of Austin had over 4,000 applicants to become professors.
However, the issue is the same cudgel the Federal government uses with states: take our money but here are the strings attached. DeSantis isn't really doing anything new or different here, Cook.
Baby steps DeSantis. Baby steps.
... and spare the baby. At least after six weeks when baby... fetal-baby (the 1-2 compromise a la 3/5) meets granny in legal state, if not in process.
Should black cops beat black men to death on the streets? Discuss.
In some African and Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter cultures, yes.
Mandela's Xhosa vs Zulu, and a transnational force with native collateral damage for redistributive change.
Hutu vs Tutsi vs Hutu in turn.
Kenyan elite vs deplorables.
Libyan natives in an Obama/Biden/Clinton Spring.
Diversity [dogma] including color blocs, color quotas, and affirmative discrimination exercise with liberal license in progressive cultures.
RideSpaceMountain said:
"Let people that want to study this shit study it. It's their money. Just stop making it mandatory."
I suspect if it was made optional few would take the course so it has to be subsidized else the department fail. Which would be embarrassing to all the Right-Thinking People out there.
Whine more, Robert.
My high school AP History Class just read essays about Silas Deane and the Mayflower Witch Panic.
CRT is racist.
CRT promotes and indoctrinates our kids to see everything thru the lens of skin color and race.
It promotes segregation and hate.
It is the opposite of what Martin Luther King Jr. wanted.
Anyone pro-CRT is a racist thug --- and a pro-segregation fascist liar.
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
Bold type is mine.
River Cook, be careful how you throw words around. Yesterday, I think it was, you posted a bunch of stuff that made me giggle, it was so '60s retro college freshman, as if you had checked yourself into a time capsule back then and recently busted out. This today just (or "again"?) makes you sound like a petulant teen.
So, the College Board - not DeSantis - cut certain topics back and added others. Could DeSantis be reflecting a new zeitgeist you don't agree with rather than driving the entire thing? Or do you contend either that (1) African American Studies is integral to or even an important signifier of a kid's university aptitude, or (2) everyone who happens to agree that African American Studies is not all that vital to a high school kid's preparation for college is also a "thug and a fascist"?
“Strips Down” - how to embed an op ed in a news headline.
CRT is the evil twin to the left's inappropriate Sex Ed for 1st graders.
It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
Yes, why should a state's government have any say on what is taught in the schools within its borders? Its like they think that just because they have a state charter and receive funding from the state they should have a voice. Next thing you know parents might want to have a say in what their kids are taught. And that is the definition of fascism, people having a voice in their government and the education of their kids.
BLM should probably be mentioned in a course on protest movements of the last 50 years, but that's about it. On its own, it's not very significant; the most valuable lesson to come from it is the power of the "racist" accusation, which has been very effectively wielded by the left to cow honest decent people and give the impression that "movements" like BLM are more important and legitimate than they really are.
Robert Cook said...DeSantis is a thug and a fascist
If by "thug and fascist" you mean democratic leader doing what his constituents elected him to do. But, of course, that's not what you mean. You mean he is effectively hindering the brutish thugs and fascists of the left, who want to destroy the achievements of the Enlightenment, especially its extending of comfort and safety beyond the walls of the lord's castle out into the village and the lives of the peasants who live there.
No,Robert. Refuting that hatred referred to as Critical Race Theory is not fascism. At the same time, if you are looking for thugs look no further than Minneapolis Minnesota and what is left of downtown.
Jamie asked, "Gad, I hate the term "lived experience." What other kind of experience is there?" Well, we have faked experience and experience recalled by someone with some mental defect.
Jamie said...Gad, I hate the term "lived experience." What other kind of experience is there?
It's the difference between book smarts and street smarts.
In the medical field, where I work, the doctor has clinical experience and the patient has lived experience. You need both to make decisions and set priorities. The doctor can tell you what the symptoms and side effects are and the patient can tell you which ones aren't important and which ones really suck.
CRT and Anti-white racist Professors who push this crap are thugs and fascists. They need to stopped by any means neccessay.
Thank God for De Santis.
McWhorter and Loury remark on how smart they are a lot and, give them full credit, don't think that whites are necessarily the problem. They refuse to consider that there's a large intelligence difference on the average between blacks and others because it would be too depressing.
Yet they're really happy about how smart they are, not realizing that that's mostly compared to other blacks. They're okay but not remarkable as whites.
So they get a lot right, and a lot of extra credit for it. Curious dynamic. To keep the black experience but not all of it. They're really leaving out need for good character as the vital thing, instead opting for some undefinable thing that's somehow keeping blacks on the average from advancing having to do with test taking skill.
Leon County Commissioner African American liberal Democrat about original AP course:
“Well frankly I’m against the College Board’s curriculum. I think it’s trash. It’s not African American history. It is ideology,” Proctor continued. “I’ve taught African American history, I’ve structured syllabuses for African American history. I am African American history. And talking about ‘queer’ and ‘feminism’ and all of that for the struggle for freedom and equality and justice has not been no tension with queerness and feminist thought at all.”
"Robert Cook said...
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary."
DeSantis is far from left-wing, so how can he be a fascist? The totalitarians are and have always been on your side of the aisle. Was Stalin right-wing? Pol Pot? Mao? Hitler was a vegetarian, against animal experimentation and vivisection. Doesn't sound right-wing to me. God, you project your fascism on everyone it doesn't fit, and ignore in your own heroes. FJB.
Thank God for Governor DeSantis.
Robert Cook said...
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
2/1/23, 9:41 AM
There's a reason they wont and can't: your acidic commentary is an example of why. Read the bill text and explain why, or do you believe that white people are inherently racist, purely because of the color of their skin?
"After criticism" isn't the same as "because of criticism".
Of course who you are (race, sex, age, social class) affects who you are. Problems happen when you think that every negative interaction you have with people is because of one or more of those characteristics. Sometimes people are just assholes.
What CRT is all about:
"Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy. Yet most Americans have never heard of it — and of those who have, many don’t understand it. This must change. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.
To explain critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism.
Originally, the Marxist left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Karl Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: The workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class and usher in a new socialist society.
During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million people. They are remembered for gulags, show trials, executions and mass starvations. In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities."
more...
"By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. They recoiled at revelations of Soviet atrocities and came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, which had large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living. Americans in particular had never developed a sense of class consciousness or class division. Most Americans believed in the American dream — the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work and good citizenship."
"But rather than abandon their political project, Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
Fortunately, the early proponents of this revolutionary coalition in the US lost out in the 1960s to the civil rights movement, which sought instead the fulfillment of the American promise of freedom and equality under the law. Americans preferred the idea of improving their country to that of overthrowing it. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision, President Lyndon Johnson’s pursuit of the Great Society, and the restoration of law and order promised by President Richard Nixon in his 1968 campaign defined the post-1960s American political consensus."
more...
The College Board itself should have controlled this particular AP course.
A state governor should not have to do it.
It seems that, belatedly, the College Board did accept DeSantis's criticisms as valid and did make significant corrections.
"But the radical left has proved resilient and enduring — which is where critical race theory comes in.
Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s and built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions over the past decade. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks and school curricula.
Its supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion” and “culturally responsive teaching.”
Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds nonthreatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, critical race theorists explicitly reject equality — the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy and oppression.
In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA law professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines."
"Critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, has proposed the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism. This department would be independent of (i.e., unaccountable to) the elected branches of government and would have the power to nullify, veto or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others deemed insufficiently “antiracist.”
One practical result of the creation of such a department would be the overthrow of capitalism, since, according to Kendi, “in order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anticapitalist.”
In other words, identity is the means; Marxism is the end.
An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination and omnipotent bureaucratic authority.
Historically, the accusation of “anti-Americanism” has been overused. But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation: Critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution."
"What does critical race theory look like in practice? Last year, I authored a series of reports focused on critical race theory in the federal government. The FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees that they were committing “microinequities” and had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” The Treasury Department held a training session telling staff members that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that they must convert “everyone in the federal government” to the ideology of “antiracism.” And the Sandia National Laboratories, which design America’s nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day re-education camp where they were told that “white male culture” was analogous to the “KKK,” “white supremacists” and “mass killings.” The executives were then forced to renounce their “white male privilege” and to write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color.
This year, I produced another series of reports focused on critical race theory in education. In Cupertino, Calif., an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Mo., a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy.”"
more...
"In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgment of [their] thieved inheritance.”
I’m just one investigative journalist, but I’ve developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating — from the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down."
"This is a revolutionary change. When originally established, these government institutions were presented as neutral, technocratic and oriented toward broadly held perceptions of the public good. Today, under the increasing sway of critical race theory and related ideologies, they are being turned against the American people. This isn’t limited to the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, DC, but is true as well of institutions in the states — even red states. It is spreading to county public health departments, small Midwestern school districts and more. This ideology will not stop until it has devoured all of our institutions.
So far, attempts to halt the encroachment of critical race theory have been ineffective. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, too many Americans have developed an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. According to a recent Gallup poll, 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. Worried about getting mobbed on social media, fired from their jobs or worse, they remain quiet, largely ceding the public debate to those pushing these anti-American ideologies. Consequently, the institutions themselves become monocultures: dogmatic, suspicious, and hostile to a diversity of opinion."
"Conservatives in both the federal government and public school systems have told me that their “equity and inclusion” departments serve as political offices, searching for and stamping out any dissent from the official orthodoxy.
Second, critical race theorists have constructed their argument like a mousetrap. Disagreement with their program becomes irrefutable evidence of a dissenter’s “white fragility,” “unconscious bias” or “internalized white supremacy.” I’ve seen this projection of false consciousness on their opponents play out dozens of times in my reporting. Diversity trainers will make an outrageous claim — such as “all whites are intrinsically oppressors” or “white teachers are guilty of spirit murdering black children” — and then, when confronted with disagreement, adopt a patronizing tone and explain that participants who feel “defensiveness” or “anger” are reacting out of guilt and shame. Dissenters are instructed to remain silent, “lean into the discomfort” and accept their “complicity in white supremacy.”
Third, Americans across the political spectrum have failed to separate the premise of critical race theory from its conclusion. Its premise — that American history includes slavery and other injustices, and that we should examine and learn from that history — is undeniable. But its revolutionary conclusion — that America was founded on and defined by racism and that our founding principles, our Constitution and our way of life should be overthrown — does not rightly, much less necessarily, follow.
Fourth and finally, the writers and activists who have had the courage to speak out against critical race theory have tended to address it on the theoretical level, pointing out the theory’s logical contradictions and dishonest account of history."
"These criticisms are worthy and good, but they move the debate into the academic realm — friendly terrain for proponents of critical race theory. They fail to force defenders of this revolutionary ideology to defend the practical consequences of their ideas in the realm of politics.
No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power. To borrow a phrase from the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, it is fast achieving cultural hegemony in America’s public institutions. It is driving the vast machinery of the state and society. If we want to succeed in opposing it, we must address it politically at every level.
Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts. Do they support public schools separating first-graders into groups of “oppressors” and “oppressed”? Do they support mandatory curricula teaching that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support public schools instructing white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? Do they want those who work in government to be required to undergo this kind of re-education? How about managers and workers in corporate America? How about the men and women in our military?
How about every one of us?"
-Christopher F. Rufo (real journalist)
We can count on Robert Cook supporting the actual thugs in any given scenario, as long as they are on the left.
Cookie, did you miss that this is the Florida State University that we are talking about? The ones funded and, ostensibly, governed by the people of the state of Florida? I don't see the slightest moral imperative for these folks to support an institution whose members seem committed to overturning the system.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
It's always ironic when the blithering hysterical left (which resembles quite accurately the SA) screeches "facism" when Desantis i dismantling a system which is based largely on antisemitism.
Frantz fanon, the martinique born radical who considered african americans as an internal colony, and robin d g kelley, another marxist
When I was in high school, I took an AP course in American History. Based on that experience, I perceive such a course as being similar to a college freshman course in American History.
A college freshman course on "African-American Studies" covers a lot of ground.
From what I have read about this particular AP course, I have an impression that there is far too much emphasis on several narrow topics -- such as African-American homosexuals, Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, etc.
(Maybe my impression is wrong. Maybe too much criticism has been voiced about those several narrow topics.)
If too much emphasis indeed has been placed on such narrow topics, then lessening such emphasis is a worthwhile correction by the College Board.
I learned how to work my way through the dialectic in my required semester of "AvC" Americanism vs Communism, taught to all Florida HS seniors from 1962 until 1983.
It was valuable instruction in economics (Americanism = Capitalism) and history. We can thank Fidel Castro for inspiring this move by our State legislature. And the beat goes on...
Why did they put CRT in?
Because they wanted to sell course materials.
Why did they take CRT out?
Because they wanted to sell course materials.
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
Cook will look back on comments like that and be as embarrassed as all hell. Sort of like old Germans who, at the time, thought the Reichstag fire was a terrific barbeque.
- Krumhorn
@Mark: Interesting that a class claiming to be at University level feels that students aren't mature enough to handle all the material presented in Universities in the same classes.
It is also interesting that a class claiming to be at the University level did not include James Lindsay's and Helen Pluckrose's "Cynical Theories."
Why do you suppose that is?
@Robert Cook: why are you in favor of teaching racial essentialism?
The "Black Studies" scam has paid for a lot of barely literate college "graduates" to find jobs. If someone wants to take such classes, they should be able to do so but they are not academic subjects that should be required. The whole "White Supremacy" thing is merely one race claiming to be inferior. The further insanity of claiming that math and science must be watered down to accommodate such people is the way to lose wars and become subjugated by those who are not so deluded. China, for example.
High school kids take AP classes for two reasons. One is to get classmates at the same intellectual level and interest and the other to get college credit. Most kids are smart enough not to try to skip course 101 in their major so it's the general education courses they try to get credit for. Many kids never get college credit for an AP course either because they don't get a high enough score on the test, or didn't end up taking it, or because there is no course at the school they choose that maps to their AP course. College credit is nowhere near guaranteed.
But this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. All DeSantis had to do was engage the folks in charge of Florida's curriculum standards and ask them to map all of the AP course syllabi to the standards. Don't approve any courses that don't meet the standards. The Black Studies course won't. Some others may not as well. So just don't offer them. How many schools in Florida offer AP Chinese? It's not the end of the world if the kids have to wait for college to take the Black studies class. Or Chinese.
DeSantis was just overwhelmingly reelected in the third largest state in the country, and it was because he is not afraid to lead. The downside is the endless stream of blue staters flooding into our state. On the other hand, given the leadership vacuum in D.C. and elsewhere, DeSantis is already pretty much setting the national agenda from Tallahassee.
It's all so tiresome.
Zzzzzzzz....
"I suspect if it was made optional few would take the course so it has to be subsidized else the department fail. Which would be embarrassing to all the Right-Thinking People out there."
What?
No way.
Perish the thought.
Lol, embarrassing for you!
That would break my heart.
How could you be so cold?
It's super necessary.
Students aren't being forced!
Are they?
Critical race theory — whether it's accurate or good — is part of black history. It should be taught as the history of ideas is taught, as, for example, Marxism is taught and religion is taught. You should understand and know about it, know what people have tried to do with it, who has been activated by it and what they achieved and who has opposed it and with what arguments. It's ridiculous to exclude it as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed.
"I suspect if it was made optional few would take the course so it has to be subsidized else the department fail."
Nah. Stupid white chicks eat this shit up.
It's ridiculous to exclude it as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed.
There was a time when American schools could be trusted to teach material without ideology.
Too few people believe that’s possible today.
Ann said...
Critical race theory — whether it's accurate or good — is part of black history.
It is?
I would say that black history is separate from an agenda driven and harmful, politically charged "everyone is a white supremacist unless you obey" CRT criteria.
It's ridiculous to exclude it as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed.
That!
- Krumhorn
History is filled with facts. Teach the facts... All of the facts... the good, the bad the ugly... That's how we learn.
I can learn about Emmett Till and be horrified all on my own without some leftwing liar calling me a white supremacist just for breathing.
I would never let my children near racist CRT-hate or the Woke Sex-obsessed left.
Lets get back to fact based education. What the totalitarian left want is a re-written history where they can shuffle the facts around and turn those facts into weapons and BS.
A doctor's clinical experience is his "lived experience." It's not the patient's experience but it is experience. Experience is not "book smarts." You can learn from books and their equivalent but it's not the same thing as experience - that was my point.
Secondary point: say you want to make "lived experience" count for more than, for example, a doctor's clinical experience. You still wouldn't want the patient to diagnose herself or anyone else.
DeSantis is a thug and a fascist. - some thug communist
Yawn.
You think anybody pays attention to your 'fascist' horseshit anymore?
I understand it's all you've got, but really. Give it up.
Robert Cook,
It is shameful the state's university system is not fighting him on this by every means necessary.
If I take you at your word, you're recommending assassination -- of De Santis, or of the new trustees at New College, or both. Only if other methods fail, I presume, but "every means" does mean "every."
Ann,
It's ridiculous to exclude it as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach it as an article of faith that must be believed.
Well, exactly.
I read a lengthy article the other day (cannot remember where, now) that spelled out De Santis's objections to the AP Africana Studies program. There were three units (i.e., the majority of the course) with which he had no quarrel at all. The problem was the last unit, which was all about recent-ish figures like Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, Huey Newton, &c. Basically, the portrayal of Black life since the 60s was that every Black worth mentioning was a literal Communist. That seemed unbalanced to him, as it does to me.
Critical Racists' Theory presumes diversity [dogma] under the Pro-Choice ethical religion in Progressive sects, a class-disordered religion a la Marxism exercised with liberal license. Teach it, known it, don't repeat it. Never again, and again, and again. #HateLovesAbortion
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
Critical race theory — whether it's accurate or good — is part of black history.
No it is not. It is a recent invention by race hustlers like Al Sharpton.
Here is an example.
My high school AP History Class just read essays about Silas Deane and the Mayflower Witch Panic.
And the pilgrims' socialist experiment that nearly ended with a mass extinction, if not for the individual will to strive for fitness.
"I learned how to work my way through the dialectic in my required semester of "AvC" Americanism vs Communism, taught to all Florida HS seniors from 1962 until 1983."
Yes, I had to take that class. It was a bullshit class, at least in our school. As I recall, it was only a half year course, with half the students taking it in the first part of the year and the other half in the latter part of the year. On more than one occasion the teacher had us watch Laurel and Hardy comedies via one of the school's 16mm movie projectors, so barren was the class of any substantive content. But, that's what DeSantis wants, bullshit courses that will leave Florida students as uninformed as they were before entering school.
If DeSantis were not a fascist thug, he would encourage schools to create additional classes to complement or challenge the material taught in those classes to which he objects. Provide the students with a variety of perspectives on our historical and contemporary society, and let them come to their own understanding and conclusions. But to the fascist, this is intolerable, as only one body of information and belief is permitted.
@Ann: Critical race theory — whether it's accurate or good — is part of black history.
No, it isn't part of Black history, anymore than queer theory is.
That CRT is a practical fact (that is, correctness aside, CRT has a meaningful existence) is undeniable. And by that light alone, it should be taught. But any course that spends time on Robin DiAngelo and Ibrahim Kendi also needs to devote equal amounts of time to James Lindsay and Shelby Steele.
Otherwise, it is just propaganda.
I was kinda on the fence about DeSantis, until I realized the Robert Cooks of the world despise him. (Cooks spoil the broth!)
It's ridiculous to exclude (CRT) as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed.
Except, of course, that the people who are pushing it (and Marxism) are doing exactly that.
Hostess Althouse said regarding CRT "It's ridiculous to exclude it as a subject, but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed."
There is no effective way to debate CRT within current institutions, including corporate HR departments. It is presented and can only be met with acceptance or silence.
Keeping it out is the only way to keep it at bay.
A history of bullshit fads in American Intellectualism would be an interesting course.
Can cover Social Darwinism and Critical Race Theory along with Transgenderism and Globalism
Academia has long since beclowned itself, and the worthless pieces of paper it hands out as being worth anything.
Venture to predict that in a generation or two, the vast complex of colleges and universities that have built up like plaque in an artery will go the way of all things useless and obsolete, and having some random paperwork from them will be regarded as a quaint anachronism.
What is most amusing about it all? They've done this to themselves.
When something like AOC has an "economics degree" from a "prestigious institution", the value of that degree is directly proportional to the amount of idiocy she puts on display. I know of parties that are already actively avoiding the hiring of degree-holders from similar "prestigious institutions", and I don't see that getting any better going forward. If anything, there's going to be a preference cascade coming down the pike, and people are going to figure out that the vast sums demanded for the things that colleges confer will have limited to no value at all to the majority.
Also, be looking for vast grab-backs on the inflated tuitions they've all been charging; the voters are going to be 100% on-board for stripping endowments to pay the Feds back for all those "education loans", especially when all the graduates can't find the work that they were promised preparation for...
It's a vast intergenerational fraud that won't stand, once the victims attain enough power in the electorate. If you've got a pension backed by one of these institutions, divest yourself or face poverty in your old age. The whole scheme is entering the endstages.
Elections matter?
"...but it's pernicious to teach is as an article of faith that must be believed."
Now do transgenderism in grade schools...
It's black history month. Amazon prime video features black series plays and more, as if that were a plus. If it were a plus, it would be all the time, wouldn't it.
Non-existent module in CRT - Contributions of black mathematicians.
CRT is not being discussed as an arguable theory. Beginning in elementary school and proceeding thru high school it's being taught as an inarguable fact!
is part of black history.
Tutsi or Hutu?
Zulu or Mandela's Xhosa?
Kenyan deplorables or elite?
American conservatives or progressives?
Attribute or bloc?
Diversity of individuals, minority of one. #BabyLivesMatter (BLM)
On more than one occasion the teacher had us watch Laurel and Hardy comedies via one of the school's 16mm movie projectors
Cook missed the point of the lesson, which was that the Communist system produced neither Laurel and Hardy nor 16mm movie projectors.
It is, and ought to be, far more important to Black Americans that they are American than that they are Black. Ditto all the other race, sexuality, class, and gender categories that go into the stew of resentments loosely called intersectionality aka CRT. That is why intersectionality is a snare, a delusion, and a perpetual social irritant that should be rejected. If the progressives hadn't systematically set out to destroy the Black family in the 1960's, we would have less toxic race relations in this country.
Given its current and future prevalence, however, intersectionality is unavoidably on the menu in every Grievance Studies department of every university. I suspect that any effort by DeSantis or anyone else to downplay CRT will be so utterly futile that it will be a great big nothingburger. Grievance Studies give lazy, mediocre minds the illusion that their problems have nothing to do with their laziness or mediocrity. For some, that's as good as heroin.
Hope I'm not overdoing the harshness. But it seems to me that every effort to damp down intergroup conflict by enacting some sort of Grievance-based palliative inevitably exacerbates group conflict. Maybe we'd all be better off if everyone just got on with their lives without picking at the unhealable scab of Grievance.
The screening test for people allowed to teach CRT AP (time allowed-three hours):
Which is more important, the color of one's skin or the content of one's character?
Discuss with particular reference to Barack Obama and his father and mother; Malia Obama and her father and mother; Meghan Markle Windsor and her husband; Thomas Sowell and Rev. Al Sharpton; Candace Owens and Joy Reid; and Clarence Thomas and Joseph R. Biden. All of these must be assessed on both racial heritage and character. Analyze the inherent nature of skin color and its impact on on the character, intelligence, and ability of those with one or more white ancestors within the past four generations.
For extra credit, discuss the flaws and virtues of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Discuss the views of Theodore Roosevelt, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., W.E.B. Dubois, and Margaret Sanger on eugenics. A critical eye will be rewarded.
"If I take you at your word, you're recommending assassination -- of De Santis, or of the new trustees at New College, or both. Only if other methods fail, I presume, but 'every means' does mean 'every.'"
Nope! I was making an obvious allusion to Malcolm X's statement from half a century ago, a part of black history, appropriate given that this involves contention over teaching black history in the US. Obviously, the "state's university system" can and should pursue "every (legal) means necessary." No professors or University Presidents are going to engage in violence, and such tactics would be obviously counterproductive, thus not effective means to fight DeSantis at all. Jeezus, aren't "you people" (another allusion) capable of any discernment? (That's a rhetorical question.)
I was making an obvious allusion to Malcolm X's statement from half a century ago
..."by every means necessary." If you're interested in context, you might consider how other Marxists have employed that phrase.
At least Malcolm X did argue for self-sufficiency. Unlike the proponents of CRT.
Our host suggests that CRT should be taught in history class the way Marxism and religion are - that is, by allusion to them and by facts about their history, not as foundations for the class, much less the curriculum. History class level teaching about, say, religion, doesn't require a profession of faith or performance of penitential rites.
No surprise. AP courses have always been an instrument of structural racism.
Nazi race theory – whether it's accurate or good – is part of European history.
Not teaching that Naziism existed is ridiculous.
But we don't want it taught by Nazis.
Cookie wrote: No professors or University Presidents are going to engage in violence, and such tactics would be obviously counterproductive, thus not effective means to fight DeSantis at all. Jeezus, aren't "you people" (another allusion) capable of any discernment?
We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years, and cost millions of lives. No... This situation absolutely requires that a really stupid and futile gesture be done on somebody's part.
It’s too bad the radical leftist writers were eliminated. Students should study critical theory (including critical race theory), post-colonial theory, anti-imperialist theory, gender theory, queer black theory, and all the other detritus of post-modern Marxism, but under a microscope, like any pathology, to be critically analyzed, deconstructed and interrogated.
To amplify on my comment above, leftist theory of whatever form or shape interprets the world as a product of the battle between oppressors and the oppressed. Other possible explanations are ignored or dismissed. A great deal of attention is paid to determining who is oppressed and who is a member of the oppressor class. We can see this quite clearly when we look at the history of the Cultural Revolution in China, and the struggles and battles over who was a class enemy and who was a virtuous worker or peasant. Today’s so-called anti-racism and the critical race theory from whence it came are exactly the same, with their division of the world into racists and victims. We should encourage students to analyze these leftist theories, to see their common roots and deficiencies, and then expose them to more serious scholarship that analyzes the black experience in America from a variety of perspectives.
Cookie wrote: No professors or University Presidents are going to engage in violence, and such tactics would be obviously counterproductive, thus not effective means to fight DeSantis at all. Jeezus, aren't "you people" (another allusion) capable of any discernment?
We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years, and cost millions of lives. No... This situation absolutely requires that a really stupid and futile gesture be done on somebody's part.
Robert Cook making his small contribution to the devolution of "fascist" to a nonsense word.
I was booted out of my grad department teacher training program for suggesting that in the survey course, "Women in the 20th Century," maybe one of the three films we were showing should be about something other than lesbianism, because other things happened to women in the 20th Century.
In 1994.
I went over to English and taught the only traditional composition course that semester: Poetry, Fiction, and non-Fiction. Some of the male students appreciated a composition class that wasn't, like the rest, about some -ism.
Robert Cook: I went to New College. In the 80's. A psychology professor, plus a very rich dude, Rick Doblin, who had somehow been there 12 years as an undergraduate, and child molester Timothy Leary were fake "testing" new variations of Ecstasy on 18-year olds, even back then. One woman went temporarily blind; several ended up in mental institutions. Rick Doblin's group, MAPS, still has a big presence there, and the school is crawling with anorexic boys associated with MAPS.
They now use even more of the taxpayer's money for things like S&M clubs, identity politics extremism, literally advocating drug use, and less for whatever is left of academic standards. I don't approve of the way Chris Rufo and a few (not all) of the new trustees are making this about themselves (Jordan Peterson they are not) but the school has been in an expensive (for taxpayers) death spiral for years. Even the local lefty daily papers think it needs radical change. Academic standards have plummeted, as have test scores. They can't even fill the classrooms we pay for. They used to be highly competitive. Now it's a joke, locally and throughout Florida.
The students, when they wipe away their absurd tears, will only benefit from real academic rigor. And the Florida taxpayers who are paying for this drug-addled Maoist nuthouse may gain an institution where they will be both able and proud to send their children -- all taxpayers' children, not exclusively the sliver of hard left ones who are the only ones welcome there now. Male/female ratio is 30/60ish.
The Governor appoints a percentage of the trustees. That's the law, not fascism, you mental twerp. Elections have consequences. The school will eventually benefit. It was once an intellectually stimulating place. Now it's a tinseled gulag of speech repression, acting out, and perverted political activism. We have every right to refuse to subsidize that.
And stop threatening to kill public officials.
Any African-American course worth doing should include a chapter on George Schuyler, the great black columnist and anti-communist John Bircher who was, in his day, the must-read editorialist in black dailies in the great era of such publications (for all ethnic cohorts).
His daughter and only child died in the Vietnam war and was a concert pianist. Fascinating and suppressed history.
The Communist Party's betrayal and exploitation of the black rights movement, from Richard Wright to Paul Robeson, is the sort of thing we should be teaching to expand young minds. Finally someone credible, Mary Grabar, is writing a book about Schuyler.
1 governor in 1 state dares to push back against decades of Leftist dominance in education and people lose their minds. It's hilarious to watch.
How dare he; how dare he! That's OURS!
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