“The kids don’t even want this stuff,” says [high-school English teacher, Kali] Fontanilla, noting that the ethnic studies course replaced a much more popular health class – in the midst of a pandemic, no less. “Most of them are just like, ‘Why do we have to take this class?’”

Robby Soave on when classroom race-hustling doesn’t impress the kids. 

As the classroom in question is in Salinas, California, where the children in question are overwhelmingly Hispanic, and therefore supposedly oppressed, and supposedly hungry for “critical race theory,” you can imagine the complications. It turns out that when Hispanic children turn up to learn English as a second language, they’re not overly thrilled to find their time being spent on “institutional, internalised, ideological, and interpersonal oppression.” Or at being told that, on account of not being white, they may suffer from “intergenerational trauma.” Or spending class time on a “privilege quiz,” in which they must rank their imagined victimhood, while comparing “intersectional rainbows.”

However, the disaffection of supposed beneficiaries seems unlikely to deter adult enthusiasts.

Beginning with the class of 2030, all public high school students in California will now have enrol in the same sort of course that Fontanilla’s students already took.

Ms Fontanilla, who happens to be black, isn’t impressed either. Cultivating victimhood and racial resentment is not, she feels, an ideal use of her students’ time, or indeed her own. Believing that parents had a right to know exactly what their children are being taught, she wrote a letter of protest to the school board. It was read aloud during a meeting at which parents were present:

“I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the colour of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it,” Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.

And if the air of somewhat creepy condescension isn’t sufficiently obvious,

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, a tale about the perils of noticing things:

She describes the emails as “rather polite” and “relatively kind.” Her daughter had been a Girl Guide, and she herself had done some volunteering with the organisation. “I thought it was a really uncontroversial, uncontentious email,” she says. It expressed her view that “this person should not be in charge of young people.” (The Critic has seen the email and can confirm her description of it. It does, however, refer to Sulley as a “male”…)  

And that’s when a police officer appeared on her doorstep.

Also, open thread. 

Speaking of ladies who write for The Atlantic, here’s senior editor Honor Jones a-gush with expression in the Family section:

I loved my husband; it’s not that I didn’t. But I felt that he was standing between me and the world, between me and myself… I had caused so much upheaval, so much suffering, and for what? He asked me that, at first, again and again: For what? So I could put my face in the wind. So I could see the sun’s glare.

It’s a tale of divorce, you see, and rather sad, and just a little confusing. For instance, exactly why the divorce came about is not immediately obvious. There’s no mention of affairs, or hardship, or emotional cruelty. In fact, and despite 3,000 words, the husband is barely mentioned, except as an unwitting hindrance to some nebulous fantasy of self-exploration, or at least self-dramatization. Indeed, we’re presented with a loving husband and comfortable middle-class life, in which one chats with architects and browses the Instagram accounts of cabinet makers, while weighing the merits of soapstone kitchen counters.

Slowly, I realised, I didn’t want this life. I didn’t want to renovate. I wanted to get divorced… I started imagining other lives. Other homes.

Here, I should point out that Ms Jones also has three small children. Though their wellbeing doesn’t appear to figure too heavily, or much at all, in the extended ramble of the article. However, we do hear a lot about other, more important matters:

the crumbs got me down.

Crumbs are a recurring topic, mentioned seven times, along with a dislike of vacuuming. Truly, a life of unrelenting hell. Albeit with a cleaner to do much of the heavy lifting:

I hired a woman named Luba to clean… I loved talking with her. She was full of sensible advice, like how I should really stop washing the cleaning rags along with the children’s clothes, because the chemicals could irritate their skin.

Not the worst opinion we’ll hear today.

We’re then informed that a comfortable middle-class life, in which time can be spent choosing new kitchens and chatting with the cleaner, is actually an oppressive experience:

He’s 30, by the way. And a teacher, obviously.

When not telling the world that “professional dress codes are inherently racist, sexist, and rooted in white supremacy,” and failing to grade papers on time, a shortcoming that crops up repeatedly, Mr Segal likes to paint his nails, play dress-up in class, and talk about the state of his mental health. A topic also revisited more than once. 

Update, via the comments, where Alice asks,

Are there any actual grown-ups left in the teaching profession?

I’d imagined that one of the functions of dress codes and broader expectations of workplace professionalism is that they help to filter out the delinquent narcissists. People who just can’t get over themselves. Say, 30-year-old men who like to bemuse 12-year-olds by playing dress-up in class, announcing how “non-binary” they are, and painting their nails.

And not, in fact, to bolster some phantom “white supremacy.”

And again, as so often, the above does make one wonder about Mr Segal’s focus on the task at hand and his priorities, which seem to extend no further than himself. Or themself, I suppose. It doesn’t seem unfair to wonder if the children – the children he’s employed to educate – exist primarily as a captive and uncritical audience, there to applaud his self-preoccupation. The hashtags #tiktokteacher and #teachersoftiktok feature prominently, however, the only video I could find in which Mr Segal speaks of what the children in his care have learned in class – a topic you’d think might be mentioned occasionally – involved the children feeling obliged to regurgitate his contrived pronouns.

Readers may wish to reflect on what it must be like to be a man in his thirties whose regular purchases still include blue and green hair dye. Or a man in his thirties who regularly films himself miming to pop records and who uploads the results to TikTok in search of approval. As not-at-all-arrested educators do.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Kenin M Spivak on the urge to level down:

During the last 18 months, supercharged by events after George Floyd’s death, the radical Left has… shifted its focus to the abolition of testing and standards, the evisceration of math curricula, and indoctrination in our K-12 schools. The following is a necessarily abridged summary of recent developments…

Under pressure from progressive assertions of test bias, over the last few years, many colleges decided that SAT and ACT testing would be optional. Then, to settle a lawsuit alleging racist disparities, in May 2021, the UC system announced it is ceasing the use of ACT and SAT scores. Other colleges promptly followed the UC’s lead. Without scores, there can be no disparities.

In April 2020, citing “equity” and its goal to restructure and dismantle “systems and institutions that create the dichotomy of beneficiaries and the oppressed and marginalised,” the Oregon Department of Education eliminated grades and proficiency in reading, writing, and math as requirements for graduation…

On September 9, 2020, Education Trust-West, an “advocate for educational justice,” announced its study and toolkit for K-12 math, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In Pathway, Trust-West characterised expecting the right answer, independent practice, teaching in a linear fashion, requiring procedural fluency, and requesting that students show their work, as “white supremacy.” Instead of offering a path for minority students to learn how to do math and come to the correct answer, Pathway instead advocates that schools use numbers to motivate anti-racist discussions of social justice.

On July 14, 2021, the California Department of Education issued a Mathematics Framework based on True-West’s Pathway. Chapter 1 of Framework rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for de-emphasising calculus and eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.” Chapter 1 specifies that “equity influences all aspects of this document.” The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.

At a time when, despite increases in school funding, almost 80% of black and Hispanic eighth graders have been deemed “not proficient” in maths or reading, it’s unclear how improvements might be made while simultaneously graduating high-school pupils regardless of their performance, or even their attendance, and while shying from the existence of such terribly oppressive things as correct answers.