Are you okay with students learning abou CRT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My "kid" will be in 18, in college, and learning critical thinking. It won't matter what I think because it's not my job to shelter him at that point.

Even at 14, he had a teacher tell him LAST MONTH that the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about state's rights. I didn't put up a fuss because he is old enough already to use his brain and begin filtering bs.

You want to shield your kids forever, fine. But I'll teach mine to take in information and examine it critically.

Actually there is very little "critical thinking" going on in colleges right now (I have three in three different schools.) There is an approved narrative that each person must agree with or be 1) socially shunned; 2) shouted down; 3) graded down. Even things that have little to do with race, like support of labor unions. My DS was warned by a professor that in his major, it is an assumption that unions are positive, productive and necessary, and no criticism is allowed. Don't even ask about history classes, anthropology classes, etc. They have taken to assigning whole books written by journalists and other non professionals or memoirs rather than multiple peer reviewed articles coming from a variety of positions.

Frankly, it is shocking to me as someone who attended a top university where professors would challenge every idea and demand that you be able to argue your position with evidence. Instead, it is... read a book about how racist society was or is, then write a "critique" where you "agree" with the author, then discuss in a class where anyone who dares to disagree is silenced.

That is definitely NOT critical thinking.

I agree. What's going on is exactly the opposite of critical thinking. You must follow a political/ideological orthodoxy or else! And feckless college administrators put up with it. Even creeped into Math of all places. I assume the physical sciences are not as subject to this

Good lord, you are so full of it. I teach at university, and this is just a false narrative. In fact, it is NO DIFFERENT than the same bullspit I heard when I started teaching in the 90s about colleges being "liberal indoctrination" farms. The terminology has changed over the decades...first it was about economic liberalism (post Reagan), then anti-military USA hating elites," then came "the gay agenda." Now the boogeyman is "CRT." The playbook and the whining has never changed, though.

You would have been the parent of the kid who said he had to drop my Persuasion and Rhetoric class in 2014 because we were reading articles about gay marriage and his parents said it went against his religion. Or the kid in 2006 who objected to learning different things about the iraq war through reading, or the kid in my first class as a TA who told me that he thought college was going to try to teach him what to think, not how to think, because his parents had drilled it into him to be wary of his liberal, Clinton voting professors.

Nothing changes.

NP-- I don't agree they are full of it. They are presenting a different viewpoint than yours. As a professor I would hope you would be open to a differing viewpoint.

[Anonymous]

But it's not an informed viewpoint. It's filtered through her children from a distance. She is not experiencing it.

I have never been afraid of "teaching the controversy" and neither are my colleagues.

This is just more of the same old song that college is there to indoctrinate poor conservative children, who apparently. according to to their parent's handwringing, are too dumb or too pliant to push back in their thinking.

But now they are adding that teachers and students are getting cancelled--again, BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My "kid" will be in 18, in college, and learning critical thinking. It won't matter what I think because it's not my job to shelter him at that point.

Even at 14, he had a teacher tell him LAST MONTH that the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about state's rights. I didn't put up a fuss because he is old enough already to use his brain and begin filtering bs.

You want to shield your kids forever, fine. But I'll teach mine to take in information and examine it critically.

Actually there is very little "critical thinking" going on in colleges right now (I have three in three different schools.) There is an approved narrative that each person must agree with or be 1) socially shunned; 2) shouted down; 3) graded down. Even things that have little to do with race, like support of labor unions. My DS was warned by a professor that in his major, it is an assumption that unions are positive, productive and necessary, and no criticism is allowed. Don't even ask about history classes, anthropology classes, etc. They have taken to assigning whole books written by journalists and other non professionals or memoirs rather than multiple peer reviewed articles coming from a variety of positions.

Frankly, it is shocking to me as someone who attended a top university where professors would challenge every idea and demand that you be able to argue your position with evidence. Instead, it is... read a book about how racist society was or is, then write a "critique" where you "agree" with the author, then discuss in a class where anyone who dares to disagree is silenced.

That is definitely NOT critical thinking.

I agree. What's going on is exactly the opposite of critical thinking. You must follow a political/ideological orthodoxy or else! And feckless college administrators put up with it. Even creeped into Math of all places. I assume the physical sciences are not as subject to this

Good lord, you are so full of it. I teach at university, and this is just a false narrative. In fact, it is NO DIFFERENT than the same bullspit I heard when I started teaching in the 90s about colleges being "liberal indoctrination" farms. The terminology has changed over the decades...first it was about economic liberalism (post Reagan), then anti-military USA hating elites," then came "the gay agenda." Now the boogeyman is "CRT." The playbook and the whining has never changed, though.

You would have been the parent of the kid who said he had to drop my Persuasion and Rhetoric class in 2014 because we were reading articles about gay marriage and his parents said it went against his religion. Or the kid in 2006 who objected to learning different things about the iraq war through reading, or the kid in my first class as a TA who told me that he thought college was going to try to teach him what to think, not how to think, because his parents had drilled it into him to be wary of his liberal, Clinton voting professors.

Nothing changes.

NP-- I don't agree they are full of it. They are presenting a different viewpoint than yours. As a professor I would hope you would be open to a differing viewpoint.

Also, whether I agree or disagree with my students, my job as a professor is not simply to "respect" other viewpoints. It is to challenge students critically. I am open and I listen, but not passively.

[Anonymous]

"The president of the second-largest teachers’ union in America denied that critical race theory is taught in K–12 schools during remarks on Tuesday in which she vowed to fight “culture warriors” who attempt to censor a realistic telling of the country’s history.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said during a conference that the union is preparing litigation and is “ready to go.”

“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools. It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists,” Weingarten said, according to a copy of the remarks posted on the union’s website.

Experts say critical race theory “presupposes that racism is embedded within society and institutions.” The theory’s implementation in classrooms nationwide has drawn outcry from parents, some of whom have received emails from their children’s schools about “Decentering Whiteness at Home” or have elementary-school-aged children who have been read “a book about whiteness” that suggests “color matters” and encourages them to dissect “the painful truth” about their “own family,” regarding potential racist behavior.

“Culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history,” Weingarten said.

“Teaching the truth is not radical or wrong. Distorting history and threatening educators for teaching the truth is what is truly radical and wrong,” she added.

Weingarten’s comments come after nearly 20 states have floated proposals to ban CRT. Six states have already passed laws that limit how teachers can discuss race in the classroom, while nearly a dozen more are considering similar measures, according to the Daily Caller.

Meanwhile, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, voted last week to conduct opposition research on groups that oppose the use of critical race theory in school curricula.

During its virtual representative assembly this week, the NEA adopted an amendment that would see the union spend an estimated $56,500 on researching anti-CRT organizations.

“NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked,” the newly adopted business item reads.

“The attacks on anti-racist teachers are increasing, coordinated by well-funded organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. We need to be better prepared to respond to these attacks so that our members can continue this important work,” the item says, noting that the Heritage Foundation has pledged to reject CRT.

Yet the Daily Caller found last month that over 165 local and national parent groups have organized to combat CRT being taught in schools.

[Anonymous]

so professor: do you believe that students who are encouraged to get good grades are being subject to a white supremacist concept? This is directly from CRT. Do you want your kids to get good grades?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"The president of the second-largest teachers’ union in America denied that critical race theory is taught in K–12 schools during remarks on Tuesday in which she vowed to fight “culture warriors” who attempt to censor a realistic telling of the country’s history.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said during a conference that the union is preparing litigation and is “ready to go.”

“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools. It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists,” Weingarten said, according to a copy of the remarks posted on the union’s website.

Experts say critical race theory “presupposes that racism is embedded within society and institutions.” The theory’s implementation in classrooms nationwide has drawn outcry from parents, some of whom have received emails from their children’s schools about “Decentering Whiteness at Home” or have elementary-school-aged children who have been read “a book about whiteness” that suggests “color matters” and encourages them to dissect “the painful truth” about their “own family,” regarding potential racist behavior.

“Culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history,” Weingarten said.

“Teaching the truth is not radical or wrong. Distorting history and threatening educators for teaching the truth is what is truly radical and wrong,” she added.

Weingarten’s comments come after nearly 20 states have floated proposals to ban CRT. Six states have already passed laws that limit how teachers can discuss race in the classroom, while nearly a dozen more are considering similar measures, according to the Daily Caller.

Meanwhile, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, voted last week to conduct opposition research on groups that oppose the use of critical race theory in school curricula.

During its virtual representative assembly this week, the NEA adopted an amendment that would see the union spend an estimated $56,500 on researching anti-CRT organizations.

“NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked,” the newly adopted business item reads.

“The attacks on anti-racist teachers are increasing, coordinated by well-funded organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. We need to be better prepared to respond to these attacks so that our members can continue this important work,” the item says, noting that the Heritage Foundation has pledged to reject CRT.

Yet the Daily Caller found last month that over 165 local and national parent groups have organized to combat CRT being taught in schools.

So the NEA is doing what they can to help ensure a red wave in 2022?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so professor: do you believe that students who are encouraged to get good grades are being subject to a white supremacist concept? This is directly from CRT. Do you want your kids to get good grades?

Prove this to me. Show me where in CRT this is said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:so professor: do you believe that students who are encouraged to get good grades are being subject to a white supremacist concept? This is directly from CRT. Do you want your kids to get good grades?

Prove this to me. Show me where in CRT this is said.

I don't care if my kid gets good grades, by the way. I care if he learns the material. If he is learning, it is almost always reflected in the grade.

That said, as a professor, I have 25 students per class who have vastly different needs and learning styles, and I want them to both get the grades and to learn.

I try to account in my pedagogy for the different experiences that each student brings to the classroom so I can help them all succeed, not just the ones who mirror MY way of learning and MY experiences.

[Anonymous]

Well, Inoue’s HOWL, “Habits of White Language,” as the standard teachers use to grade students’ work, for one example. He recommended grading on “labor” rather than standards.

He denounces standard grammar, punctuation and spelling as racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My "kid" will be in 18, in college, and learning critical thinking. It won't matter what I think because it's not my job to shelter him at that point.

Even at 14, he had a teacher tell him LAST MONTH that the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about state's rights. I didn't put up a fuss because he is old enough already to use his brain and begin filtering bs.

You want to shield your kids forever, fine. But I'll teach mine to take in information and examine it critically.

Actually there is very little "critical thinking" going on in colleges right now (I have three in three different schools.) There is an approved narrative that each person must agree with or be 1) socially shunned; 2) shouted down; 3) graded down. Even things that have little to do with race, like support of labor unions. My DS was warned by a professor that in his major, it is an assumption that unions are positive, productive and necessary, and no criticism is allowed. Don't even ask about history classes, anthropology classes, etc. They have taken to assigning whole books written by journalists and other non professionals or memoirs rather than multiple peer reviewed articles coming from a variety of positions.

Frankly, it is shocking to me as someone who attended a top university where professors would challenge every idea and demand that you be able to argue your position with evidence. Instead, it is... read a book about how racist society was or is, then write a "critique" where you "agree" with the author, then discuss in a class where anyone who dares to disagree is silenced.

That is definitely NOT critical thinking.

I agree. What's going on is exactly the opposite of critical thinking. You must follow a political/ideological orthodoxy or else! And feckless college administrators put up with it. Even creeped into Math of all places. I assume the physical sciences are not as subject to this

Good lord, you are so full of it. I teach at university, and this is just a false narrative. In fact, it is NO DIFFERENT than the same bullspit I heard when I started teaching in the 90s about colleges being "liberal indoctrination" farms. The terminology has changed over the decades...first it was about economic liberalism (post Reagan), then anti-military USA hating elites," then came "the gay agenda." Now the boogeyman is "CRT." The playbook and the whining has never changed, though.

You would have been the parent of the kid who said he had to drop my Persuasion and Rhetoric class in 2014 because we were reading articles about gay marriage and his parents said it went against his religion. Or the kid in 2006 who objected to learning different things about the iraq war through reading, or the kid in my first class as a TA who told me that he thought college was going to try to teach him what to think, not how to think, because his parents had drilled it into him to be wary of his liberal, Clinton voting professors.

Nothing changes.

NP-- I don't agree they are full of it. They are presenting a different viewpoint than yours. As a professor I would hope you would be open to a differing viewpoint.

Also, whether I agree or disagree with my students, my job as a professor is not simply to "respect" other viewpoints. It is to challenge students critically. I am open and I listen, but not passively.

+1
Why would you pay for college that doesn't do this? I'm also a professor and I teach students to make an argument, examine the evidence through a well-reasoned chain of logic, consider and address counterarguments, and express a stance after that process. Like most other professors out there, I care least about the resulting stance they take, just the quality of the argument process. There's no one viewpoint students have to hold. But if they argue ridiculous things that are unsupported by evidence and make leaps of logic, I'm going to call that out and help them see it. Just because they can find a "source" that claims something doesn't make it evidence either. They have to look at the quality of evidence/argument for the source's claims too.

But many students don't even know how to make a claim that can be supported by evidence and/or reasoning--they state opinions, beliefs etc. that rest on their value system and then think when you critique it you are critiquing their values because you disagree with them.

Now as for the labor union point 1) your kid is interpreting what a prof said, 2) the "warning" might be something more like this--in this sub-field there's a lot of established argument and evidence for the advantages of labor unions for workers. (This is not my field so I have no idea about the specifics) If you want to take a stance against labor unions it may be a harder hill to climb because you'll have to find resources that make that point or you will have to successfully mount a counterargument to a lot of people who have carefully established argument and gathered data on this question.

In my field students will occasionally want to take an apriori stance on something and I'll tell them that it's not consensus on what the body of evidence/argument supports, but if they can find a way to make the argument and support it well to go for it--but it's a riskier, more challenging bet. I'll give points for taking the hard road sometimes, but if they can't make a good argument, that IS going to cost them because that's what I'm grading. Not because I'm biased against that opinion, but because of the quality of their argument.

I usually advise them to find a more narrow place to critique rather than make a global statement. So for the case of labor unions, I would probably advise that it's a whole lot easier to mount a counterargument about a specific negative impact that you have evidentiary support for--say some particular negative impact on hiring practices, than to try to claim they are "bad" for workers more globally.

[Anonymous]

^^ thank you. Good points and more articulate than I was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, Inoue’s HOWL, “Habits of White Language,” as the standard teachers use to grade students’ work, for one example. He recommended grading on “labor” rather than standards.

He denounces standard grammar, punctuation and spelling as racist.

First, that is not "teaching CRT" in school.
Second, what does that author's opinion about grading have to do with this conversation about learning about CRT is in college?



As an aside from the conversation on CRT, has any college espoused following that guy's opinion on paper grading or changed their curriculum based on it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, Inoue’s HOWL, “Habits of White Language,” as the standard teachers use to grade students’ work, for one example. He recommended grading on “labor” rather than standards.

He denounces standard grammar, punctuation and spelling as racist.

First, that is not "teaching CRT" in school.
Second, what does that author's opinion about grading have to do with this conversation about learning about CRT is in college?



As an aside from the conversation on CRT, has any college espoused following that guy's opinion on paper grading or changed their curriculum based on it?

NP. FYI, he's an associate professor at Arizona State. The story just came out yesterday I believe so no reaction from the college yet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, Inoue’s HOWL, “Habits of White Language,” as the standard teachers use to grade students’ work, for one example. He recommended grading on “labor” rather than standards.

He denounces standard grammar, punctuation and spelling as racist.

First, that is not "teaching CRT" in school.
Second, what does that author's opinion about grading have to do with this conversation about learning about CRT is in college?



As an aside from the conversation on CRT, has any college espoused following that guy's opinion on paper grading or changed their curriculum based on it?

NP. FYI, he's an associate professor at Arizona State. The story just came out yesterday I believe so no reaction from the college yet

correction, a professor of Rhetoric and Composition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so professor: do you believe that students who are encouraged to get good grades are being subject to a white supremacist concept? This is directly from CRT. Do you want your kids to get good grades?

LOL