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Seazer's avatar

I've been in the room when these people talk about Critical Race Applied Principles which stems from CRT. The material is overly focused on emotional appeal rather than logical or methodological processes and analysis. The material it self seems only to be geared towards pissing people off about the injustices perpatrated on their ancestors. And there is no lack of material there.

So then, CRT in shitty schools would be the worst of both worlds. You'll have bad teachers teaching to underdeveloped children and that is a recipe for disaster. Put on top this concept that certain ethnic groups learn in different ways, i.e. POC children can't think in linear time, and its a freaking catastrophe. In fact, I think more harm can come from CRT in poor schools.

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PiK's avatar

Very good piece. It does seem true that CRT will only influence a small number of people, but the question is how big is this effect? There are many levels to this question. It seems obvious to me that CRT is enforcing a kind of social power dynamic that is meant to manipulate people regardless of whether they understand the underlying theory. People understand power even if they cannot understand theory. Whether this successfully coerces people to acquiesce to the power dynamic is not obvious, but that leads into the other side of the bell-curve.

Clearly, many of the brightest students will be able to grasp at least some amount of the underlying theory of CRT. Some may reject it, but most likely many will come to accept some of the principles in CRT; especially if exposure to other theories is limited. The net effect is a seeding of the higher learning institutions with students sympathetic to CRT.

Now, where does policy and culture flow from? The universities: especially the elite universities. In order for CRT to have an effect, it doesn't need to be understood by even the majority population of the U.S. The only people who need to understand it are the freshman class at Harvard. This alone would be reason enough for a CRT supporter to bring this pedagogy into K-12.

I hope this is helpful or interesting to anyone reading.

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