The Patriot Post® · Woke Administrators Seeking Woke Teachers

When I was a college student seeking a degree in Elementary Education, one of the required reading materials was a book called White Teacher. In it, the author, who was a kindergarten teacher, talks about her experience teaching children of color as a white teacher and how it changed her perception on race in the classroom.

We live in a pluralistic society — i.e., many cultures under the umbrella of the American identity. It is important to help children understand cultural differences and embrace those differences. This is a far cry from the evil that is now the gold standard in social education.

An article by Education Week reporter Madeline Will reveals how leftist school administrators are discriminating against some teaching applicants because they hold different moral and political views when it comes to race. These school administrator activists are looking only for new teacher hires who are willing to parrot the Critical Race Theory (CRT) bilge and thoroughly damage the children in their care.

When interviewing for jobs, teachers may be asked pointed questions about what they have done to be an “anti-racist” or how they can solve racial disparities in the classroom. The Education Week article illustrates some of the questions such as: “Can you teach these students, even if they don’t look like you, [even if] you’re not familiar with their culture? How are you going to teach them as if they were your child, your cousin, your brother, your sister?” These questions are insulting. They imply that the interviewee can’t teach because of their racial difference. The ability to teach has nothing to do with race. You’re either a good teacher or you’re not.

The craziness continues. According to Ms. Will, “Districts are trying to diversify their teaching force to better match their students.” So not only are they discriminating based on political viewpoints, they’re also discriminating based on race. But that’s not all. Some administrators have hired a company called Nimble that uses Artificial Intelligence software to further weed out the deplorables. It is used by a whopping 500 school districts for this purpose.

The Federalist’s Jane Robbins had some choice words for the school administrators who are shaping their school culture around this ideological echo chamber. She asks, “How is it appropriate for a public institution, funded by taxpayers who hold a wide range of political opinions, to institutionalize one set of those opinions?”

The beauty of teaching about different cultures is that it allows space for each child to tell his or her story and experience other stories. It is meant to broaden kids’ understanding of each other and create unity. When they are limited to the boxes in which CRT puts them, assigning labels like “privilege” or “victim” (implying goodness and badness) diminishes these children.

In a way, it preconceives an ending to their stories based on the CRT worldview. For example: You’re a white Christian male? You are scum of the earth who oppresses every one else who’s not a white Christian male. You’re a black atheist female? You are a victim of the privileged white Christian male and he owes you reconciliation.

Does this sound like unity? Does it leave any room for the girl to feel like she succeeded on her own terms or the boy to ever find redemption? No. CRT is a cult of equity-obsessed racists whose goal is to break our institutions. And if that means destroying your child, so be it. From Ms. Robbins again: “Note the racism inherent in anti-racism. ‘Anti-racists’ assume that black and brown children are ‘less than’ white or Asian kids — they can’t excel in academics, they can’t follow basic rules of personal conduct.” They are told the lie that they can’t succeed, so they may as well knock the children who are excelling down to their level in the name of fairness and equity. It is the bigotry of low expectations. It is not loving for a teacher to do this to impressionable children.

Teaching children to hate each other because of their race is inherently evil. It is a step backwards in the progress our country has made.

So what’s the solution? Is there a civil case for discrimination based on race and political views that these teachers could pursue? Maybe. But these teachers most likely don’t have the money to fight it out through the courts. It is going to be up to the parents.

You have options. À la Virginia, you can go to school board meetings and Parent-Teacher Association meetings to make your views known. You can vote for principled school board members who hold principals accountable for their hiring practices and fire leftist administrators for discrimination. You can put politicians in office who will help engender school choice. You can also homeschool your child — or, if you have the means, personally hire teachers who aren’t bowing to the woke mob.

If you want what’s best for our children, it’s going to be up to you.