Assemblyman Colin Schmitt recently announced that he will be introducing a bill that bans “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) in NYS schools.
Now then is the perfect opportunity for the M-WSD taxpayer to become familiar with CRT, its origins, its discrepancies with historical accuracy, and its potential long-term influence on our American way of life.
If you not already aware, CRT has become a particularly volatile issue across the nation, where parents, from different racial backgrounds as well as varying political affiliations, have been challenging their local school boards to safeguard academic integrity.
They reasonably fear that it is being supplanted by a political agenda rooted in radical thought, where academic integrity is being thrown to the curb.
CRT is not a theory in the true academic sense, but an ideological indoctrination method, initially presented with ideas, such as “equity,” “economic justice,” “environmental justice,” and, of course, “social justice.”
And yes, by themselves these terms appear harmless, in fact they almost sound kind and compassionate and no one would be immediately concerned when first introduced to them. But after extensive scrutiny you will soon realize that they are Marxist in nature, veiled in agreeable terms, which are in fact inconsistent with American principles, where “equality of opportunity” would soon be replaced with “equity of outcome.”
Now history is quite clear, the only situation where this type of “equity” has been realized, if it ever truly has been, has been through government coercion, where the majority has always been subjected to the oppressive tyranny of an “elite” minority. Proponents of CRT will unwaveringly claim that CRT has not and will not be introduced in our schools, but the NYS education law gives wide latitude to a Board of Education’s curriculum.
So, it behooves each of us to ask the appropriate questions, not only to our children’s teachers, school administrators and the M-WSD school board, but also to our state and federal representatives as well.
Because if we choose to ignore this subtle form of indoctrination at the local level, and CRT continues unchecked at the national level, then it will be us in our old age asking, in regret, “What happened to our once great nation?” but more importantly, “What happened to our children?”
Tom Lapolla
Monroe