
The “All Parents Matter” movement has reach the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District as they will consider a resolution to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in PYLUSD schools.
CRT has actually been around for close to 50 years; I like to call it “American History” we were never taught. The Tulsa riots and destruction of “Black Wall Street” in 1921, the Trail of Tears (there was a 1700s law for the Indian Scalp Act to help remove Native Americans from their lands for settlement), Japanese Internment might be taught in California but not in other parts of the country, the Chinese Exclusion Act, NINA in Boston (for No Irish Need Apply), Jim Crow are all good examples of American History often ignored or given short reference in American History classes.
The core idea of CRT is that race is a social construct. Racism is actually embedded in legal systems and policies. These patterns of discrimination still exist. People against CRT often can’t explain what it is but that it somehow leads to identity politics and divides us into categories of oppressed and oppressor. In the Virginia governor’s race, banning CRT in schools was a critical issue even thought CRT isn’t taught in Virginia Schools.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has lined CRT to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the rise of LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in government agencies and private businesses. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed. If CRT — which has a basis in actual American history –makes conservatives uncomfortable it has to go. Is Book banning and burning next?
CRT is not taught in any Orange County school. California’ schools either do or will have an ethnic studies curriculum, and perhaps the conservatives on the PYLUSD board are tying that to CRT.
The resolution is highlighted below and the hoops the language jumps through is nothing short of astonishing. One passage reads:
Whereas PYLUSD desires to uplift and unite all students by freeing them from the responsibility of historical transgressions in the past and instead will engage students of all cultures in age-appropriate critical thinking that helps students navigate the present and the future.
If you’re going to encourage critical thinking skills, why not teach the actual history of this country and how systems in place in the present have elements of that history and work towards changing the future?
Our friends in the district encourage parents to oppose the ban on CRT in PYLUSD schools; the meeting starts at 4PM Tuesday at 1301 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Placentia. Email addresses of the trustees is below:
kfreeman@pylusd.org
cbuck@pylusd.org
maanderson@pylusd.org
lblades@pylusd.org
syoungblood@pylusd.org
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-24/in-the-confounding-struggle-to-define-critical-race-theory-not-even-the-dictionary-will-suffice
Whats there to ban? It’s not even being taught, nor intended to be.