Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reports that the Republican Governor and Legislature are determined to stop teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and bias because such topics Dow discord and racism. This “cancel culture” at its worst. Every sentient adult who has studied American history knows that racism runs deep and strong in our history and present culture and the best way to eliminate it to confront it honestly.

Thompson writes:

As Education Week explained, across the nation, legislators are attempting to “make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom,” and directly or indirectly ban Critical Race Theory. Oklahoma passed HR 1775 banning mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling, while implicitly threatening lessons about racism.

Oklahoma provides just one example of the way public education and civil discussions are under assault. But it CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids”

Ijoined CBS News anchor Tanya Rivero on her program to discuss the request from Republican lawmakers to rescind any support of the 1619 Project and to talk about the proliferation of bills in state legislatures around the country that would ban teaching about structural racism. In the interview I called on educators to sign the new petition from the Zinn Education Project that calls on teachers to pledge that they will teach about the long legacy of structural racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression–regardless of the law.

It’s time to begin preparing for civil disobedience and for teachers to openly defy these neo-McCarthyist laws that would have educators lie to students about the fact that our country was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and African peoples and that structural racism and other forms of oppression persists in many ways today.

Visit the links to the Zinn Education Project below to sign the pledge! #TeachTheTruth

Onward,

–Jesse Hagopian

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Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools

he unaffected parts of the world refuse to acknowledge that racism is alive and kicking even when it stares us all in the face. The truth is, we have to eventually face and deal with this monster, even if it means tearing down fickle castles we have built in the air for centuries. Only when we accept that children of color get a lower quality of education when compared to their Caucasian counterparts and find a way to rectify this can we say we are finally working on racism. This is long overdue, of course.

Although many people are blind to it, racism is still a big issue in learning institutions. Many essay writers have penned papers and opinion pieces with examples on how this issue has been affecting – and continues to affect – children of color. There are so many racism essay topics online that show the unseen extents of this practice. Poor representation in gifted programs and significantly lower quality of education are results of those in power refusing to acknowledge racism.

When you withhold quality of education from children of color high, they will forever lag behind and eventually believe that they are indeed inferior to their Caucasian counterparts.

One of the reasons most people refuse to see racism is in the way it is packaged. It’s in disparities in the disciplinary measures taken against students of different ethnicities, less funding for some school districts, and subtle segregation. Research has shown children of color in US public schools have to do with less than their white counterparts in most parts of the country.  

What Is Racism in the Modern World?

Just like a virus, racism mutates. These days, it presents itself in subtle ways where if one is not keen, they might miss it completely. It is in people of one race avoiding contact with those of a CONTINUE READING: How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

LA teachers union slams California schools plan as 'propagating structural racism' - POLITICO

LA teachers union slams California schools plan as 'propagating structural racism'

LA teachers union slams California schools plan as 'propagating structural racism'

SACRAMENTO — California's largest local teachers union on Monday slammed the state's new school reopening plan as "a recipe for propagating structural racism" hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers unveiled their compromise proposal.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles' strong condemnation is a bad sign for Newsom and Democrats who spent months working to strike a deal on legislation they believe will spur districts to reopen. Los Angeles Unified is the second largest district in the nation with about 600,000 students — and by far the largest in the state with roughly 10 percent of California's public schoolchildren.

"We are being unfairly targeted by people who are not experiencing this disease in the same ways as students and families are in our communities. If this was a rich person's disease, we would've seen a very different response. We would not have the high rates of infections and deaths," UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said at a news conference Monday. "Now educators are asked instead to sacrifice ourselves, the safety of our students and the safety of our schools."

Most of California's schools have now been closed for a year as districts have struggled to negotiate reopening terms with the state's powerful unions. The California Teachers Association praised parts of the plan on Monday, but made clear that local unions have negotiating rights.

UTLA is one of three large city teachers unions that went on strike in 2019 over pre-pandemic working conditions, along with those in Sacramento and Oakland. Its position could sway union members elsewhere — particularly those serving CONTINUE READING: LA teachers union slams California schools plan as 'propagating structural racism'