These NOTE5 are random thoughts & bookmarks, roughly organized by topic, that I use for reference and conversation starters. I publish them for easy sharing, with hope there’s some hidden value for a wider audience. The format is more newsfeed than article.
From a leadership (business, community, family) perspective it’s important to understand that at least 2 generations of the current workforce are products of a Western education apparatus where activism and indoctrination go unchecked. While university-level was known, K-12 is further along that many thought.
Equally important is awareness of the bigger picture: Critical Race Theory is a one-trick pony. Corporate “diversity, equity & inclusion” is the same game as “anti-racist curriculums” in education. “Health equity,” “climate equity,” “social justice,” and “stakeholder capitalism” are all slogans for the same exact game. The top-level slogan is “The Great Reset.”
I’m sharing the more egregious examples of activism in education here because, like any cultural shift (e.g. fashion, food), trends begin in the coastal cities and work their way across the country. Whether you lead a company, community or family, awareness of why our kids & young adults are the way they are is critical.
For all the downsides of COVID-19 and school closures, it served to lift the veil on activist “education” and helped expose variants of Critical Theory (race, queer, trans) to an unknowing public, me included.
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” — Bertrand Russell
UK Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch: “Capital B-L-M is Political”
BLM Infecting K-12 in New York City
This very specific language “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family” was included in the now-deleted BLM What We Believe page. Seems an odd, if not pernicious, idea to push in K-12 schools, no?
Transgender **Preschool** Children
The level of danger to kids from people who think this way is indefinable. This garbage, undetected by thinking people (because it’s unimaginable to mentally-stable humans) oozes its way into teacher education curriculums and then into classrooms with toddlers. W. T. F.
Chicago, Of Course
Here’s an example of a state education board planning to make CRT a licensing requirement for teachers as part of a “statewide vision.” Also notable is the acronym game: Critical Race Theory (CRT) becomes “Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning (CRTL) to remain familiar but sidestep legal challenges.
Belvedere Elementary, Falls Church, VA
Imagine putting up a slide, in an elementary school setting, that reduced black culture 15 characteristics?
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, Fairfax, VA
I wasn’t familiar with TJHS until the story of its dismantling went public. A group of parents is actively fighting the school board and local government to prevent admission standards from being dropped in order to appease woke activists and increase admission rates among kids who are not equipped to thrive in a rigorous academic setting. That’s called setting kids up for failure.
Woke Teacher Fears Exposure
Below is someone who identifies as a teacher. Matters little if the context is education or corporate learning. If the material can’t withstand examination, it’s not an “honest conversation.”
Matthew Kay, “Teacher”: Philadelphia Science Leadership Academy
More Slogans: “Culturally Sustaining-Responsive Education”
Parents See Behind The Curtain and They Are Not Happy
The Gathering Parent Horror at Public School (Newsweek)
Here’s the thing. Whether it’s private sector workplace, public sector, or K-12 education, you can’t unhitch these wagons. Education is actually a great place to look for a progress report (hint: California AB 329).
All the good intentions in the world cannot stop private sector workplace #diversityequityandinclusion from opening the door to *anything.*
Whatever name we choose to give it, it’s all or nothing and anything goes. The more research I do the more I find no bottom.
Mainstream awareness offers some sign of hope that an actual awakening is brewing.
Yellow Privilege
Sometimes it’s just one more step wake us up. “Yellow Privilege” stems from a 2016 paper and the full flyer was distributed at The University of British Columbia by an activist RA.
Language Games
These fine folks want you to pay them to teach your kids. They also get state & federal money: source: https://lnkd.in/dT38e_r
Companies Are Dropping University Degrees as a Requirement of Employment
What if the trend away from 4-year degrees (big tech & others) is just acknowledgement that our university systems are churning out kids whose greatest skill is hunting ism & phobia where none exist?
The battleground today, broadly, is language and math. The tactic is to cancel the meaning of language and delegitimize math, then make up new sh!+ without standards.
Tech, business, supply chains, the corner market or global markets all fall down without agreed standards of meaning, weight & measures. There’s no iPhone, electricity, latte, or Nikes.
How does business deal with an indoctrination effort that destroys the talent pool? Delegitimize it by teaching the skills themselves.
Parents, Unhinged
Anti-racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart: What a viral story reveals about contemporary leftist discourse (The Atlantic)
“It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap and they don’t know the context! That is harmful! That makes people cry.”
Social Climbing the Woke Ladder
This is a fascinating take on the young Asian population shifting values in order to improve their status, even while the Asian group is specifically targeted for their breakaway success in America.
Wisconsin Students Vote Abraham Lincoln Racist
Just when you think… Not Pro-Black: Wisconsin Students Unanimously Vote to Remove Lincoln Statue as Racist (Jonathan Turley)
The Teacher’s Union: National Education Association 2020 Playbook
This is a long, dry read to anyone not directly involved in education. All I really need to see is that the teacher’s union is afraid of any competition to their power. Follow the money remains good advice. Our children are secondary.
The National Education Association (NEA) calls on national leaders to:
- Oppose all charter school expansion that undermines traditional public schools.
- Bar federal funding to charter schools, charter school authorizers, and charter school management companies not authorized or operated by local school districts.
- Require charter schools, charter school authorizers, and charter school management companies to abide by the same laws and regulations applicable to traditional public schools.
Conclusion
This stuff is being uncovered faster than I can keep up and this is just a tiny sampling. It’s much more advanced than anyone suspected in K-12 and there are generations of kids who have long-term exposure that gets cemented in universities. It explains a lot of what we’re seeing in workplace and social settings.
Awareness is path to better questions and understanding for leaders.
Thomas Irre is the founder of HK5, LLC, Practical Business Technology and Mental Self-Defense for leaders & teams.