[Townhall] I'm not sure how I missed this last year, but kudos to The Dispatch for flagging this lunacy as a prime example of how "anti-racism" wokeness is poisoning education. We've written about some of the madness, including stifling "woke" cultures at elite private schools, and some activists' efforts to inject identity politics into math. But this concession to the mob by a group of charter schools is about as cartoonishly illustrative of the problem as it gets. The insane ideologues are winning, and this is what their "victories" look like:
It’s more accurate to say that anti-racist education means something very different from what most observers bargained for. Last summer, the famed KIPP charter schools announced they’d be abandoning their longtime slogan: "Work Hard, Be Nice." Why? The announcement explained: "The slogan passively supports ongoing efforts to pacify and control Black and Brown bodies in order to better condition them to be compliant and further reproduce current social norms that center whiteness and meritocracy as normal." Those unfamiliar with anti-racist dogma are frequently surprised to see it invoked in this kind of assault on foundational virtues. They tend to presume that such instances are outliers. Unfortunately, it’s more accurate to say that KIPP’s move was a telling snapshot of contemporary anti-racist education in practice.
"Work hard, be nice" is some of the earliest advice I was given as a student and as I embarked upon my career. I've passed it along to countless young people in speeches to campus groups. Working hard and treating people nicely is a competitive advantage over people who will do one thing, but not the other — or neither. It's also just the right way to comport oneself. But apparently, this mission statement was thrown out by KIPP charter schools because it "passively supports" the 'pacification' of "Black and Brown bodies," whatever the hell that means. Furthermore, these concepts allegedly "center whiteness and meritocracy," which is a stunningly racist commentary unto itself. Hard work and kindness are white values? That's bigoted trash. One parent is quoted in the article above saying, "We did not immigrate to this country for our children to be taught in taxpayer funded schools that punctuality and hard work are white values." More: |