A reader points me to this poll.
The first national poll to ask detailed questions of American voters about efforts to impose Critical Race Theory and “social justice” curriculum on K-12 schools found overwhelming opposition to it and strong support for a de-politicized curriculum.
The poll seems to have been commissioned by a parent’ group that opposes CRT in the schools. You can discount the results if you like, based on the theory that when it comes to polls wording is everything, but you cannot discount the fact that there is an organized parents’ opposition group.
Such organizations seem to be sprouting up daily. Here is an organization focused on Jews. I think it is rational for Jews and other ethnic groups to walk away from the Woke left, which has nothing constructive in its agenda.
Here is one of the next one’s to watch:
https://twitter.com/fairforall_org/status/1394309033507659778?s=21
Please consider contributing to FAIR (link above) and Parents Defending Education (link in the OP) They both recently launched, but are already getting tons of traction and attention. We are proud contributors of both.
The more parents find out about CRT, the more they know they don’t like it. James Lindsay (“Cynical
CriticalTheories) continues explaining it, in detail, in podcasts. (One of my April intellectuals)Bari Weiss (a May pick, and April) was an early publicizer of parental objections and K-12 teacher objections.
I’m 90% sure the Dems will be explicitly moving away from CRT by 2024 election campaign – tho this includes claiming what they favor is “not CRT”, but with many aspects of it relabeled.
I live in a red part of a blue suburban/exurban county that routinely votes 5/8 on all school board decisions. Transgenderism, CRT, and COVID school reopening all voted across straight party lines based on geographic position in the county.
There is a CRT opposition party sponsoring candidates for school board elections, much as there was during transgenderism in 2018.
If they can win, I will believe that an anti-woke left is possible. If they fail, they I think the left is devoured by wokeism and only total annihilation can end it.
We defeated CRT education here in Southlake, TX…but it takes organization and a willingness to defeat it with money and hard work.
None of that appears to be in the asdf tool chest. You’d prefer to whine about it in here the comments vs. doing the work.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/southlake-says-no-to-woke-education-11620426330?st=boopfj5xggsvj9z&reflink=article_copyURL_share
There are hundreds of thousands of people in my school district. Do you believe the results I’ve outlined are because none of them “do the work”?
We also have organizations that are explicitly anti-CRT that fight it on multiple fronts and are trying to take over the school board. We had similar organizations that did the same thing in 2018 over transgender ideology being pushed in schools, but they failed.
I suspect every single county in the country has groups that organize and do hard work on important issues.
The question is whether they succeed. If so, why? If not, why? You live in a red area of a red state were people at nearly every level are temperamentally opposed to CRT and have been for a long time. To be blunt, that just isn’t that hard of a Win to get.
But most of the country isn’t like that. I’m asking a different question than you. I’m looking at my county and seeing a bellweather county. It used to be red but has gone blue to a mild but not insurmountable amount (5/8). It’s suburban rather than urban. It doesn’t have a lot of black people and it does have a lot of Asians (unfortunately Indian rather than East Asian, but still). It has one of the highest concentration of families in the country, so these Dem voters have kids. They voted for Biden in the primary big time. They are the sort of normal suburban family “moderate” democrats that would have to make up any “anti-woke left” movement to fight CRT. And the CRT in our county has been plagued by scandal and overreach, to the point of making national news.
If the groups in my county can flip two school board seats and pass meaningful changes to gut CRT in our county then I will believe that moderate leftists might turn on CRT and it is less of a threat to my kids education and society more broadly.
If they can’t then I will take it as evidence that there is no anti-woke left. Also, given that my county is full of the kind of UMC professionals that man all our institutions, I will expect that what I see being taught in schools will be driving nearly all the institutions public and private that I have to interact with.
And yes, I suspect that even places in Texas will end up adopting the cultural attitudes my bell weather county adopts within ten years time, so you ought to hope that people succeed up here.
Go volunteer, do the work and then report back. There is strength in numbers, but the troops actually have to show up.
No more whining.
Of course Southlake, TX is rooting for you. We want this nonsense crushed.
Bellwether, a castrated ram that knows the area a flock of sheep grazes and has been belled so that it is easy for the other sheep to follow him.
What of what I’ve written here do you think constitutes a “whine”?
I’ve made some predictions based on cited evidence, and said what indicators I’m looking at to see what way things are going. I’m directly replying to someone that said they are 90% sure of X that a good way to test that prediction is to see how struggles like mine go.
I think people should do things because they feel they need to do them. That may or may not have an impact on “society”, and that shouldn’t be the only criteria to judge potential actions. Even if the struggle against CRT is pointless, it still might be worth doing for ones soul.
Just do something already! Jeez! Get on with it…
If you spent as much time fighting against this stuff as opposed feebly justifying your positions in the comments, the world would be doubly rewarded.
You don’t have a clue what I do or don’t do on my own time.
I comment during my downtime. I just doused my head in cold water after playing in the sun and heat with my kids for a long time, and I wanted to relax for a minute and cool down before putting them to bed. I could have made this comment or I could have watched a YouTube clip or something. I probably wouldn’t have spent these few minutes solving the crisis of CRT in our society.
Apparently, your own commenting doesn’t interfere with accomplishing whatever goals you set out for yourself.
Exactly, just another whiner with no clue how to gather strength in numbers. Good luck to you! You are merely free riding off of the efforts of those in your community who are actually willing and able to do the hard work. If you lose, you will whine, but if you win then I’m sure you will claim completely undeserved credit for it and remind us endlessly here in the comments. In short, you’re basically and completely worthless for actually accomplishing anything. Think on that.
Your right Kurt. I don’t wake up every day and devote every minute of my life to political causes. I play with my kids, I go to work, I maintain my house, I care for my parents. Sometimes I even enjoy myself or rest. When I think its appropriate and in balance with everything else in my life, I devote some portion of my time, resources and energy to societal concerns.
Unlike you, I don’t overestimate how likely those efforts are to influence societal outcomes, and I don’t have my own identity particularly woven together with the winds and fortunes of political outcomes. I’ve done the work in huge portions of my life, and watched others do the work, and I think I’ve got a pretty good bead on how much an individuals efforts can accomplish.
When I devote time to causes I do so primarily because I find it necessary to my spiritual health and because I think it’s important for my kids to understand my values. If I become so zealous about it that is overrides everything else in my life and hurts the people I love then its been completely counterproductive to those goals.
I wish more people had my attitude. We wouldn’t have wokeness at all if they did. The only reason I even care is because the domain of struggle is constantly expanding and shrinking the freedom of living that us normal people are allowed.
GSD. This is how it works. All of your strawman arguments for allocating a small portion of your time to fighting this stuff is truly pathetic.
https://twitter.com/asranomani/status/1395735675291512839?s=21
I have been surprised that the default position of Jewish people hasn’t been to oppose a culture that makes one’s ethnic/racial identity the most important fact about a person. That is so obviously bad for Jewish people that I am baffled by “woke” Jews who support CRT. I thought that the US was supposed to be the promised land precisely because people would treat you as an individual, not as a Jew.
It won’t be interesting for Arnold to explore this.
*would be.
While the opposition is building and starting to win at the k-12 level, there are some recent developments in California and Washington state that raise some pretty significant concerns about objective entrance exams (e.g. the SAT). This is not the time to get complacent.
https://twitter.com/councilofpreswa/status/1394676852082417667?s=21
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-arent-actually-mad-at-the-sats
There is something wrong with that second link. It says that it goes to Freddie DeBoers’ substack, but I clicked through and read something written by Steve Sailer.