There Is No Apolitical Classroom
Do you know what’s going on in your kid’s school? The three R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic – have taken a back seat to a fourth R. Max Eden, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explains what that fourth R is, and why it’s so destructive.
FOLLOW us!
Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru
Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru
Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/
SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/
To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/there-is-no-apolitical-classroom
Join PragerU’s text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru
Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful.
SHOP!
Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/
Script:
Do you know what’s going on in your kid’s school?
If not, now would be a good time to take a look.
Here’s what you’re likely to find:
According to the education establishment, the purpose of public education is no longer just to teach “the three R’s” — reading, writing, and arithmetic; it is to awaken students to the fact that they live in a country that has been, remains, and will probably always be… racist.
Here’s how the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) recently described its mission:
“…At a time of obscene inequities…merely trying to compensate is not enough… AASA’s work… must go further and become actively anti-racist.”
Being anti-racist sounds simple and laudable: treat everyone the same—a version of the Golden Rule.
What could be wrong with that?
Nothing.
Except that’s not what the educational elite means by anti-racism.
Anti-racism, in its current formulation, does not mean equal treatment of others; it is an all-encompassing ideology that demands that white people accept that their behavior is either implicitly or explicitly racist—and has been for at least 400 years. The Catch-22 here is that to say you’re not racist only proves how racist you really are; that is, you are so racist you don’t even know it. And if this accusation upsets you, that’s proof of your white fragility.
Education Week’s “Classroom Q&A” blog tells teachers that “As Ibram X. Kendi (the author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist”) would say, there is no ‘not racist.’ There is only racist and anti-racist. Your silence favors the status quo and the violently oppressive harm it does to black and brown folk everywhere.”
What Kendi is saying is, if you don’t voice active agreement with him, you are a racist. And if you treat people equally regardless of race, you’re also a racist.
Anti-racists embrace racial discrimination, as long as it’s done on their terms. As Kendi has said: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” I understand how wrong this might sound. It turns the Martin Luther King concept of racial equality on its head.
But that’s exactly the point. Lorena German, who chairs the Committee on Anti-Racism for the National Council on the Teaching of English, makes this clear.
At the height of the recent urban unrest, German wrote that arsonists should serve as a model for teachers: “Educators, what are you burning? Your white-centered curriculum? …The school’s racist policies? Your racist ass principal? The funding for the police in schools vs. counselors? WHAT ARE YOU BURNING???!!?!?!?!?”
German’s call to commit arson may have been metaphorical, but her call to get rid of the traditional school curriculum is not.
A lesson plan created by the New York City Culturally Responsive Education Working Group, “Transforming Our Public Schools: A Guide to Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education,” tells teachers that “the whole Western canon is rife with horrible stories and atrocities of who we are as people of color.”
For their part, the National Committee on Social Studies has promised to “flood our children with counter messages…until there is no racial inequality in economic opportunity, no racial inequality in education, no racial inequality in incarceration rates, and no brutality from police and others.”
If that sounds to you a lot more like political indoctrination than education, you would be right.
New York State now encourages teachers to “incorporate current events, even if they are controversial, into instruction” and to “utilize tools… that encourage students to engage with difficult topics (power, privilege, access, inequity) constructively.”
For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/there-is-no-apolitical-classroom
source
I wasn’t required to do any explicit/implicit anti-bias training stuff until college.
Teech the 3 Rs, reeding, riting and rithmetic.
i agree, there is no Apolitical classrooms. I just don't agree that there should be…
As with every issue, I believe that there is a middle ground. While simply treating everyone equally regardless of race sounds like the best solution, it completely overlooks the inequality of the educational system as a whole. Yes, teachers should treat everyone the same. But because the funding and educational standards in schools are massively unequal, this is not a good enough solution.
That said, it is also important to realize that the classroom never was completely "apolitical" as this video claims. The literature that was chosen, the history classes that were required, the understanding of governmental systems that each and every student was taught were inherently biased. Bias in schools cannot be escaped, it just isn't possible. I believe that the best solution is exactly what this video cries against: discussion. Having discussion about controversial political topics and world events is the only way that we can hope to raise up a new generation of independent thinkers. I personally want to live in a society where everyone has an informed opinion (whatever it may be) and is able to express it in a civilized manner.
Of course I realize the down-sides of the "anti-racist theory." Of course I see the opportunities for indoctrination and restriction on freedom of speech. But my point here is to say that there is always a middle ground. It's good to consider the other side every now and then.
Great video
I love how he quotes people and then entirely misses what they said.
It's almost impressive how much bs prageru can make up to make some vague meaningless point. From what i can gather, they're trying to say classrooms should be apolitical, and that racism is political, and therefore shouldn't be taught?
And then they go on with "Anti-racists embrace racial discrimination, as long as it's done on their terms. As Kendi has said: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination." I understand how wrong this might sound. It turns the Martin Luther King concept of racial equality on its head." From what i can tell, this kendi fellow was advocating for discriminating against racists, and prageru is saying "well if you want to discriminate against racists, that's basically racial discrimination!!" Since when are racists a race? You're comparing discriminating against someone based on their ethnicity to… Discriminating against someone who does exactly that. Those aren't even remotely comparable.
I love the irony that they complain about schools politically indoctrinating people when prageru has an entire series dedicated to indocrinating kids. I'd call them hypocritical, but they know exactly what they're doing. They just don't care about morals or consistancy or even having cohesive claims, because their audience will eat it up no matter what, and they keep getting that sweet, sweet fracking money.
I could keep going, but i'm tired enough as it is. One final note though: if you believe that anti racism is the biggest issue in our public schools, or that it's inherantly political and therefore bad, maybe you're the reason why it's taught.
3:44 in theory though, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, race doesn’t exist. You literally don’t see race (except for respecting their culture, which just means, at its essence, stop picking on kids what what they do at home, and subsequently in public), and you’re just dealing with people. I don’t know why, but this part makes me think Prager supports Racial Inequality in economic opportunities, education, and incarceration rates. Opportunity should be equal, but outcome is impossible. In every way you look at it. My buddy gets in arguments about wealth inequality, and how it should be redistributed. It will always, eventually, be uneven, even just a little bit. Then it starts to tip in their favour. That’s how it works. “Oh well change the system to not run on money. Everyone gets the same things and comfort but they have to work their time”
This sounds like a good idea. If you work X allotted hours at whatever job, doesn’t matter what, one guy a doctor, another a janitor, you qualify for all the things Universal Basic Income could buy you, or you can save those hours, and redeem them later, and the doctor makes ‘the same’ as the janitor, only probably more because he might work way longer hours than a janitor. But that’s no different from money, eventually someone will have more Time-Bucks to ‘spend’ and they’ll have lambos and penthouses and shit. There’s no getting rid of it. Everyone can’t be equal. Sure maybe redistribute because it’s actually egregious how much wealth most people don’t have, but just let it runs it’s course. Without it, people won’t have the gusto they need. When you work just to work, you don’t feel accomplished you lose your spirit.
Everyone is beautiful and valid
Schools ARE apolitical, you're just fearmongering.
i went to a Massachusetts high school and got an unbiased education in history. Education isnt left leaning. The Left is Education and facts leaning
the fact that people are advocating for apolitical classrooms is concerning. politics are a part of our world and should be talked about in an educational environment where children can be exposed to different opinions. If not, children will be stuck in an echo chamber with what they hear at home or whatever ideology they stumble onto on social media (liberal or conservative). this is not what we should want, for children to not be exposed to different opinions and unable to form their own because they only heard the same things all their lives. Politics in the classroom are a necessity in order to better educate children on current events "they're there to learn the three r's" that's the problem. there is so much more that children need to be taught before going out into the real world that's not the three r's. how to apply for jobs, how to do taxes, how to take out a mortgage, current events, the real world itself. the real world does not revolve around the three r's for every single person, for every single occupation. Politics in the classroom are needed in order to have healthy communication of opinions and to learn more about current events in an environment not created by an echo chamber
There is nothing wrong the politics in school. as long as you see both sides of the coin and not forced to believe or learn anything.
I'm a relatively new teacher and I have to agree with the sentiment that there is no apolitical classroom. As much as one aspires to keep ideology separate, it seeps in. Of course my subject area might be making me biased. As a history teacher controversial topics are a constant struggle.
I want to share this on my social media, but I’m studying to be a teacher right now and I can’t afford to get cancelled.
This has been going on to some extent for decades. I went to a mostly white, Republican voting, large public school system in the 1990s and the curriculum was pretty similar to the ideological indoctrination described here – separate racial clubs, "A People's History of the United States", proud socialists and green party members in the tenured teaching faculty, etc.
This is my assignment for my psychology class this week:
"Please give an example of how a bad leader's behavior places him/her in one of the following categories:
Theory X
Derailed
Abusive
Tyrannical
Supportive-disloyal
Charismatic
The leader can be someone you worked with, someone you heard about, or someone many of us might know from the news (for example, a nationally/internationally known cult leader), but let's be respectful of political differences and stay away from lambasting US politicians, even though many of them might really deserve it."
Can a veil be any thinner?
ohhh nooo they’re teaching your kids about topics and issues that will affect them in their daily lives and allowing them to discuss and form opinions about things that really matter, those darn educators, educating the youth!
Anti-racism is SUPER racist. It just attacks all white people as racists… whether they are or not.
How is wanting no racial inequality in economic opportunity, education, incarceration rates, and no police brutality "political indoctrination". Dont say the quiet part out loud prager u