According to her National Academy of Education biography, Ladson-Billings is “known for her groundbreaking work in the fields of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory.” Ladson-Billings once wrote that “we educators should align our scholarship with the philosophy of Marcus Garvey: race first!”
He found that she is the author most used in schools of education. The rest of the top ten authors seem to be equally hard left. The article links to his full study.
Some years ago, I remember seeing Larry Summers on Charlie Rose (remember him?) complaining about the threat to public education (IMHO, mostly imaginary and otherwise toothless) from “fundamentalists.” Meanwhile, the ed schools are turning out teachers imbued with the “philosophy” of Marcus Garvey. A good example of how the geniuses of our ruling class keep their eye on the ball.
Yes, the worst threat to America has been and always will be people who say promiscuity is bad, marriage and children are good, and you should try to act like Jesus. What if they pass those messages onto their children!!! Homeschooling can not be allowed.
I think Summers was more worried about the teaching of creationism. I don’t think the schools should be teaching creationism, but (1) I don’t think that’s ever been a serious threat and (2) creationism seems far less socially harmful than the kind of authoritarian egalitarianism and identity obsessions the schools are actually promoting.
This is certainly correct. If you found out your neighbors thought the world was 6,000 years old, I’m not sure how this would affect you. Heck if my surgeon thought the earth was 6,000 years old I’m not sure how that would affect me.
A person like Ladson-Billings is influential, but I imagine her role is relatively small in the broader cultural embrace of that type of far left politics and black racial natioanlism that would have been considered unthinkable a generation ago. I imagine Beyonce featuring black racial activism symbols in her super bowl performance or the Oscars focusing almost entirely on black racial messaging movies and featuring movie talent primarily by race, or the New York Times featuring regular recurring coverage of the Emmett Till story from 1955 is all far more influential than someone like Ladson-Billings.
The teachers and school principals who go through those educator education degree plans, generally have pretty low opinion of the content. It’s considered a rite of passage; it’s a formal ritual you have to go through to qualify for a K-12 job. The content itself is not important, which is another interesting topic.
Homeschooling maybe. Elimination of degree requirements for teaching work definitely. Actually, I would feel much better if ed school graduates were banned from teaching.
Nevertheless, Paulo Friere is well worth reading. And a man whose life rewards studying. Whenever I think of him, I think of Roger Scruton organizing underground schools behind the Iron Curtain. Freire too demonstrated the power of alternative learning methods and used them to subvert authoritarian rule.
With the Trump backlash gathering intensity on the political front and with the internet under the control of a handful of leftist gazillionairs, the time is fast approaching when civilization’s continuation will require a new crop of such heroes.
Unfortunately, I doubt that not one one ed school professor who assigned Freire and definitely not one ed school graduate this year will have read a word of Kenneth Minogue’s critique of the oppressor-oppressed paradigm embodied in Friere’s work. But equally unfortunately, all too many people might see the “Marxist” label and think that it necessarily was a bad thing. Marx and Hegel I think offer a lot of useful analytical tools to conservatives and others interested in the preservation of some form of civilization. Schalin’s article itself appears to be an example of Freire’s critical pedagogy, perhaps with unintentional irony. If civilization is to survive, those who prize it must use the openings their opponents offer. Turning critical pedagogy on the critical pedagogues is only all too easy. Something perhaps in keepings with the wise teachings of The Three Languages of Politics.
This struck me as somewhat hysterical for instance, one of the complaist is about Ellen Parsons, with the bio
“Eileen Parsons, a full professor, has research and teaching interests that include: Socio-cultural dimensions of science learning, Broadening participation in STEM, STEM Education policy, African American education, Cultural relevance and cultural responsiveness in science education, Racial equity, and Critical Race Theory.”
The above description doesn’t strike me as extremely objectionable – this looks like someone whose goal is to get African Americans interested in STEM. But the article makes the claim that “she is teaching that science is dependent upon the background of the learner rather than universal”.
I bet if you actually read her work, you would find something far more nuanced than that. I mean, what exactly do you mean by “science” here – you could be talking about the scientific method, or some sort of general terms for “the process of investigating natural phenomenon” or “how science is done”. I know conservatives often like to point out silly positions held by leftists, but if she was anti-science, why would she have a focus in STEM education?
…if she was anti-science, why would she have a focus in STEM education?
Many reasons.
I don’t know her particular case, but many such “realists” don’t like the authority accorded science; they have vague plans to co-opt it towards their ends; and vague plans to fill it with their disciples.
Academics are known to focus on things they are critical of. Those who purport to be interested in “inclusivity in science” tend to believe the very fabric of scientific reasoning is racist/sexist and needs to be upended and rebuilt. That’s the only thing, in their mind, that can explain why most scientific progress has been conducted by white men. I’m reminded of feminists complaining about the focus on electromagnetism and mechanics as a giant phallic analogy, while more ‘feminine areas’ like fluid dynamics are ignored. In reality, fluid dynamics is actually just really difficult because it requires solving unusually difficult systems of equations. The Navier-Stokes theorem proof still sits on the list of unsolved millennium prize problems. Critical race theory is built on this kind of post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking. “I see lots of white people here, so there must be some deep seated epistemological conspiracy at work” when it’s clearly just an accident if history and anthropology such as Europeans reaching dominance in maritime technology hundreds of years ago.
Right. Anti-techbro journalism isn’t coming from people with a love of science, broadly speaking. They’re wordsmiths who see STEM and its heavy maleness as something to oppose.
The result of anti-STEM journalism won’t be to get women interested in tech. It sounds awful, that bastion of misogyny! But it will help churn out more STEM-adjacent journalism.
Some more silliness:
Some of the other ideas commonly espoused in education schools today include: race and gender are social constructs;
Race isn’t a social construct?
meritocracy is unfair;
Maybe it isn’t. Certainly worth debating.
knowledge of dates, events, and great personages are unnecessary for the study of history;
I could certainly see how one could teach history without it being a bunch of rote facts about names and dates. In fact, that might make it more interesting to students.
all social knowledge is suspect due to racism and sexism being embedded in the language and culture;
What is “social knowledge”, are aren’t there a lot of stereotypes embedded in it? What’s wrong with this statement?
and to be white is to be unfairly privileged and must be atoned for.
Sure white privilege is a concept. Do progressives go around saying that white people should “atone” for it? I havn’t seen that.
Ya know, the track record of this guy in representing the opinions of progressives does not give me great confidence in how accurate his description of anything in this article is.
Well, no, race and gender aren’t social constructs. It is an unavoidable scientific fact that much gender dimorphism in human behavior is rooted in biology, going back to differential exposure to sex hormones in utero. Race clearly isn’t socially constructed too. Races tend to differ in skin tone, height, predisposition to disease, etc. for genetic reasons. The claim may be that the boundaries betweeen races are arbitrarily defined, but that’s not the same as social construction: the boundary between blue and purple is arbitrary, that doesn’t mean they’re not different colors; it just means we think of it as a discrete variable when it’s really continuous. Moreover, on race, our discrete thinking isn’t all in our imaginations. Which alleles are present at many loci of heterogeneity in the human genome genuinely do exhibit a great deal of clustering around several distinct clusters corresponding to Caucasian, African, East Asian, and Papua New Guinean, for example.
On the other remarks: the possibility of racism or sexism in ‘social knowledge’ doesn’t warrant the assumption of it. Also, Noah Carl has done research in stereotypes and found that they are often not mere oppressive fabrications but the product of people’s experiences; nationalities less likely to have jobs being more likely to be stereotyped as lazy; those more likely to have jobs – especially white collar ones – being more likely stereotyped as smart. There are reasons tereotypes of black people are so different, often opposite those of Asians. Progressive thought on racism in sexism is mired by the a priori assumption of a malicious conspiracy, when really it’s more a product of experience-based broad generalizations. Right or wrong, people get more concerned when they notice a black person walking behind them at night than an Asianfkr the same reason they get more concerned about a man than a woman: experience and data indicate they’re more likely to be attacked by a black person than an Asian just as by a man than a woman.
And I’m incredulous that you don’t see progressives demanding atonement by white people. Two leading Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed reparations for slavery; and have you heard of Spike Lee, Te-Naheesi Coates? Cornel West, one of the leading scholars of critical race theory? Angela Davis? Ever read an oped on race in the New York Times or Huffington Post? It’s hard to have a discussion with a progressive about race that doesn’t include claims about what “we” have done to “them” and what “we” need to do to rectify it. This implicit collectivism seems hard to miss in such discussions.
Google scholared Parsons and definitely get the helter skelter vibe: https://scholar.google.com.br/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=eileen+parsons&oq=eileen+parson
So lets see what might be inside:
“Although students from diverse backgrounds may have access to equal educational opportunity by occupying the same classroom space, they do not necessarily enjoy equal and fair access to the same quality of experience within that classroom. The inequalities and inequities are partially a result of privilege, an advantage afforded to individuals because of their similarity to the norms operating in the classroom. In this article, the ways in which the white male students in a diverse, urban fourth grade classroom exercise privilege are identified and the white teacher’s approach to mediating white male privilege, equality, and equity is examined. The teacher’s approach is evaluated in terms of fairness via the white male students’ perceptions of the classroom environment, viewed in relation to power and caring and is discussed with respect to implications for teacher preparation.’
“This essay addresses a call for research involving African Americans to interpret data from the historical, contemporary, and cultural experiences of African Americans. The essay argues for a science education research approach that explicitly considers the positionality of African Americans in the United States. This positionality involves the negotiation of three distinct and conflicting realms of experience that pertain to oppression, African‐rooted Black culture, and the dominant culture in the United States. The theoretical tool proposed in this essay accommodates the positionality of African Americans by superimposing it upon a model that synthesizes the ideas of Michael Cole (cultural‐historical activity theory) and Urie Bronfenbrenner (ecology of human development). ”
“This review essay addresses issues raised in Randy Yerrick’s paper entitled: Negotiating white science in rural Black America: a case for navigating the landscape of teacher knowledge domains”
Not sure Charlie Manson would have come up with anything more conducive to race war.
This seems to back up the point I made that the teacher seems to be interested in changing how science is taught so as to get African American students more interested in it.
She’s not talking some mumbo jumbo about science being a white male construct. She’s basically saying that African American students require different teaching methods and that classroom teacher preparation should be adjusted to take that into account.
That’s actually a message that many conservatives would agree with – if intelligence and personality and behavior are heritable, then why wouldn’t black students have different learning styles? Why shouldn’t schools adapt their classroom methods to the audience?
“She’s not talking some mumbo jumbo about science being a white male construct. She’s basically saying that African American students require different teaching methods…”
Because science is, in essence, a white construct. How data is interpreted, she suggests, is inextricably linked to one’s race, and how data is currently interpreted per the norms is in a manner that’s distinctly ‘white.’
And it’s all anti-empirical pseudoscience. “There is a disparity; ergo the disparity is a deliberate construct of a conspiracy by those favored by the disparity.” That’s not analytical reasoning; that’s conspiracy theorizing.
What would be the author’s interpretation of academic disparities that favor: female; tall people; people with two parents; people who haven’t been exposed to lead; people who live in the north; children of Asian immigrants?
I bet she’d say, for all such inconvenient disparities, “well, there are other factors…” and indeed there are.
The underlying premise of the default attribution of better or worse performance to inherent privilege is that, if ‘structures of privilege’ are absent or irrelevant to a particular variable, then no disparities should emerge with respect to the variable of interest. And this premise is false. And it’s not all about genetics either, much as you seem to insist that anyone who acknowledges the reality of heterogeneity is a genetic racist. The mere fact that families of one ethnic group tend to have more children per child-bearing family than another will alone have tremendous effects on academic and economic performance. We already *know* a host of factors explaining disparities – possibly most or nearly all of the disparity in many cases. Ethereal references to privilege are mostly redundant.
Cato taught his children to read because he did not want them to receive such a great gift from a slave.
“The teachers and school principals who go through those educator education degree plans, generally have pretty low opinion of the content. ”
It’s really impossible to overstate how true this is, and thus how the rest of the comments are kind of silly, to varying degrees.
Teachers are a bit like Hispanics–about 2/3rds Dem, but not progressive Dem.
I want to believe that, but if it were true, I would expect pushback from teachers. And there is virtually none. Zilch. Squadoosh.
Perhaps:
1. Teachers treat ed degree programs like an abusive fraternity initiation: I had to go through it; new members should, too.
2. Teachers realize they are “barriers to entry”, keeping down supply which makes it easier to keep wages up.
3. Even though part of each teacher’s brain knows how crappy the programs are, part of it thinks they makes graduates “professionals”, entitled to extra respect and compensation.
4. Teachers are “go along to get along” people.
5. The programs may be crappy but if you do the work and keep your head down, it is pretty much impossible to fail. So, yeah, it’s one more hoop to jump through but it’s only one.
Perhaps they tolerate it because ideological content makes for easy A’s, unlike more substantial content? ‘If I draw a picture of an interracial gay couple at a Free Palestine rally for art class, I don’t have to color inside the lines in order to get a good grade.’