New York Post

CRT Is Teaching Kids To Hate Each Other

- CARRIE SHEFFIELD

WHEN parents reject public-schools teaching critical race theory, a common retort from the left is that it’s a university graduate-level analytical framework that’s incomprehe­nsible by children and therefore incapable of being taught in K-12 schools. This attempted gaslightin­g of parents and conservati­ves from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — nothing to see here! — through such false claims is destructiv­e.

In fact, we’re already seeing the horrifying results on our kids.

Just because CRT began as a 1970s-era, law-school-level analysis doesn’t mean it isn’t adapted for lower-level understand­ing. Einstein and Newton broke barriers in comprehend­ing the laws of physics, but the vast majority of us can never fully, technicall­y grasp how or what they did. Yet the basics of physical science are age-appropriat­ely adjusted for masses of students from elementary to high school.

The truth is union-controlled public schools are teaching kids to be racist — paid for by your tax dollars — and it’s making schools more dangerous and disharmoni­ous. Instead of the promised racial reckoning blossoming into racial utopia, the CRT crowd is fracturing America.

Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a country where children are judged by their character, not skin color. But in January, school officials forced students at Virginia’s West Springfiel­d High School to watch a racist, dehumanizi­ng video about microaggre­ssions. It depicts white people as blood-sucking, cartoon mosquitos who must be destroyed by nonwhite people wielding flamethrow­ers.

In Orlando, Fla., Howard Middle School black teacher Ethan Hooper proudly displayed his Black History Month video on TikTok, showing his white students bow down to, luxuriousl­y fan and cater to their black classmates.

And in Springfiel­d, Ohio, police reported an incident at Kenwood Elementary School, where a group of black students on the playground rounded up white students “and forced them to state, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ against their will.” Police say the black students could face charges of assault and menacing.

What’s unfolding in real life echoes what Iowa teacher Jane Elliot found decades ago. Starting in 1968, Elliot indoctrina­ted her students in a troubling “experiment” where she’d teach kids with brown eyes to despise and marginaliz­e blue-eyed students and vice versa. Her students responded aggressive­ly against those with the opposing eye color, leading to bullying and abuse.

We now have a nation of Jane Elliots from coast to coast.

It’s vitally important to teach children to reject racism and learn empathy. But today’s schools introduce a new kind of racialism that reduces human beings to prisoners of their race, rather than unique individual­s.

Black Lives Matter and CRT are failing to create effective racial healing. In 2014, the last year before BLM rioters began burning down majority-black neighborho­ods and destroying black-owned and -operated businesses, Gallup found 55% of Americans were “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the state of America’s race relations. Just 35% were “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfi­ed. Those numbers flipped in 2015, with 62% reporting dissatisfa­ction and just 30% reporting satisfacti­on.

In 2021, things got worse, with 71% reporting dissatisfa­ction in race relations and 61% this year.

We know CRT’s race-obsessed lens doesn’t work. So why are schools doubling down on this toxic, Marxist-rooted philosophy?

It stems from the 1930s-era, Marxist-inspired Frankfurt School. Its founders, who created critical theory, sought to dismantle capitalism and Western civilizati­on, just as CRT does today. Indeed, BLM founder Patrisse Cullors, proudly calls herself “a trained Marxist.”

CRT divides people by skin color through ideologica­lly infused methods. Despite what leftists claim, this is not teaching neutral history. It is an ideology that relies on lies, including The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” an ahistorica­l assault on truth. Tragically, the “1619 Project” is peddled to schoolchil­dren nationwide.

CRT supporters ignore the fatal effects of LBJ’s Great Society, which ravages black families and neighborho­ods. They ignore black conservati­ves like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele and Jason Riley who prove how welfare decimates families. They’re dead set on dismantlin­g capitalism, never mind the good it’s done, and teaching young Americans to loathe their country.

America’s far from perfect, but we cannot deny the enormous progress Dr. King and the civil-rights movement wrought. CRT backers would have us reverse that progress, stepping back to the time of segregatio­n.

Teachers pushing this pernicious philosophy in the classroom and out are engaged in a perilous experiment whose results are already obvious: CRT divides us in alarming ways.

‘ It’s making schools more dangerous.’

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