By Albemarle Man for the Occidental Observer
Parents have recently discovered that the education establishment—the odious class of persons consisting of professional school administrators, teachers certified by our social-justice-warrior education schools, and, often, disconnected boards of education “representing” gigantic swaths of voters, often representing districts the size of a small State—have inserted a program of so-called “critical race theory” into the K-12 curriculum.
The program typically has content similar to the mandatory diversity sessions at major corporations, in which Whites trudge into a large conference room and hear why they are all racist.
Parents are rightly outraged that their children are being subjected to anti-White propaganda instead of an actual education. However, parents are making a big mistake. They are reacting as if this is something new, as if only a few years ago all was well with modern public education.
Not so. Critical Race Theory, or “CRT”, is simply the latest propaganda program snaking its way through the school system. In fact, it seems reasonable to say that elites have been progressively attempting to use the public school system for more than 100 years as a method to anaesthetize successive generations, to acclimate them to automatic obedience to authority, and to reduce over time the actual educational content in the schools themselves. Then, with the Federal Aid to Education Act of 1965, came an acceleration: the centralized push of anti-White, pro-pre-marital sex, pro-globo-homo programs, one by one, through the system. At first the propaganda was “justified” as a way to force southern Whites to “buy into” racial integration. A form of revived reconstruction for the much-loathed Southern States. Very quickly, however, the true intentions of the masters and commanders in Washington and compliant state capitals became evident: a full scale “reconstruction” a la 1871 being forced on the entire country. No one, it seemed, was sufficiently pro-Negro, pro-gay, pro-abortion, or pro-condoms and pro-pre-marital sex. And the schools had damn well better take care of that.
We start from the beginning.
As John Taylor Gatto, a New York City school teacher for 30 years, set forth in his multiplicity of books on this topic (see, e.g. John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, 2008) in the mid-nineteenth century the purpose of “public education” turned from the traditional colonial idea of producing an independent-thinking citizenry capable of participating in and supporting a free democratic republic into a system whose ultimate purpose was to regiment the vast majority of the population into a Prussian sense of passivity. This program accelerated when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the foundations founded by large manufacturers and mineral extractors like Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil realized that the old-style education would produce people unwilling to work long hours at boring jobs for a single employer, such as the factories run by the giant capitalists of the day. In fact the old-style school system would undoubtedly produce nothing more than a bunch of hell-raising troublemakers (think “give me Liberty or give me death”) that would continually disrupt production lines.
The program developed by the foundations picked up a number of wack-job pseudo intellectuals to put an acceptable cover on their intentions, the most well-known of whom was the infamous John Dewey. Dewey’s basic premise, set out in his 1897 book, My Pedagogic Creed (available on Archive.org), effectively was that schools should stop teaching anything—i.e., facts, history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, Latin; rather, schools would teach children to cooperate with each other and, most importantly, with the teacher. The intent clearly was to produce generations of students so ignorant of their own history and unable to function independently that they would generally be amenable to the absorption of any propaganda pushed their way by government or private industry so that they could become mere cogs in someone’s big wheel.
The big blocks to the implementation of such a program were that virtually every school was controlled by a separate school board, and public schools were financed by local taxes, not by the state or federal governments. In 1880, for example, the U.S., with a population of approximately 50 million, had 140,000 school boards. Thus, local parents and taxpayers—essentially the same thing in that era of big families (often farm families)—hired and fired the principals and the teachers, approved the textbooks, and controlled the curriculum. The likelihood that they would knowingly subvert their children’s education at the behest of the Rockefellers was slim indeed. This posed a big problem.
How was one to force a centralized program through such a fractured system? The methods were many, and, over time, stunningly effective.
- First, school district “consolidation” always sold on the basis of “efficiency” and expanded opportunity. Hence the mega high schools of today and the mega school districts. Today, the number of school districts has been reduced to 14,000, many comprising such mega districts as Loudon County (60,000 in 1960, now 400,000); or New York City (8 million). The larger a district becomes, the less accountable to local parents and taxpayers. Effectively, many school districts have become what in the U.K. are called “quangos”—self-perpetuating entities like the FDA or the SEC virtually unaccountable to elected authority.
- Second, a nationwide system of “teacher certification” that would require—or at least strongly encourage—public schools to hire only teachers that had been certified as professional teachers, mainly through attendance at soon-to-be formed teachers colleges.
- Third, the funding of a whole series of teachers colleges, each of which would, over time, push the desired centralized dogma onto the teachers. Some turned out to be worse than others, but, they gradually became what could be called propaganda centers, with less and less educational content and more whipped cream stirred up by centralized bureaucrats.
- Fourth, the flip-side of steps two and three—the consequent elimination of normal college graduates from the certified teacher rolls. Out goes the Yale history or mathematics graduate, in comes the SJW educated in very little from a mediocre teacher’s college. The low IQ, uneducated mass of teachers was picture perfect for a system intentionally designed to eliminate educational content and maximize the teaching of docility and, later, outright propaganda. Attempts to change certification to provide that all college graduates should be automatically certified have been fought tooth and nail. Befuddled conservatives can’t figure out why, since the proposal is so logical, but of course this could not be done! Doing so would undermine the whole program!
Things were moving along, but then the whole program got a jet-fueled boost by the Federal Education Act of 1965.
Contrary to what one might think, the Federal Aid to Education Act of 1965 did not provide ONE DOLLAR to schools or classrooms. The sole permissible use of the money was to fund and keep in place vast state-level education bureaucracies. Such centralized bureaucracies, whose employees would undoubtedly be staffed by “professional” school administrators educated at the crappy teacher’s colleges, were custom-designed to assist the federal government in substantially centralizing state education through the imposition of detailed state-wide rules on curricula and hiring, as well as to assist in pushing through the system the propaganda favored by the elites in Washington D.C.
From 1965 on, the entire educational bureaucracy has been grindingly waging a war against Whites, and a war in favor of “sex education”—read, the promotion of pre-marital sex, homosexuality, and now transgenderism. Old books in school libraries not furthering the narrative were quietly stripped out of school libraries and curricula, propagandistic “new” books pushing a pro-Negro, pro-homosexual, and pro-free sex program were inserted into school libraries and curricula.
Only in the latest twist has CRT been introduced. However, CRT is no more than a modest extension of the anti-White, anti-family curricula that has been pushed through the system since 1965—another indication that the countercultural revolution of the 1960s has been a watershed even in American history. In that sense, “educators” who state that “CRT is nothing new” have a valid point. But the real issue is: will parents unite to strip away the whole disastrous system and its already-imbedded programs to start anew?
Here are some modest suggestions that might be implementable:
- Subdivide school districts so that each school has its own school board (may require state legislation). If it cannot be done officially, do it unofficially.
- Along with (i), over time, work to reduce substantially the size of any one school. The mega-school of three to four thousand children needs to be replaced gradually with much smaller schools.
- If permitted under state law, NEVER hire another “certified” teacher; if state law does not permit this, work to change state law.
- Never hire a “certified” “professional” school administrator. They hate you, your race, and your family. Instead, hire administrators—principals and district superintendents only from the local community, and make sure they are people who can be trusted. Again, if state law does not permit this, work to change state law.
- Demand that a detailed syllabus and reading list for every course be posted on a school’s website. Have a parent’s committee—assisted by independent scholars selected solely by the parents—select the books and design the midterm and final exams and make the teachers teach to your test, not someone else’s. In that way, teachers—even if “credentialed” social justice warriors—will be forced to teach your curriculum, not someone else’s.
- Work to change law to end statewide mandates such as (a) mandatory bus transport, (b) mandatory nurses and psychiatrists on staff, and (c) mandatory school lunch. These programs can almost double the cost of local education and provide no educational benefit.
- Avoid where possible the use of textbooks, particularly in history or English courses. The textbook industry is as corrupt and woke as the federal Department of Education. Use original works wherever possible. If not possible, except perhaps with math textbooks, use only textbooks 50 years old or more. Using old textbooks, especially those out of copyright, can substantially reduce the cost of books at a local school.
Depending on the state, not all, but much of this can be done by a local school board. If these steps are taken, a lot of the John Dewey/1965 Act system will literally be swept away at the local level.
If, instead, school boards restrict themselves to rules prohibiting CRT, the result will be failure. The already corrupted system will just fall back on the pre-CRT anti White curricula—not to mention the globo-homo-trans curricula—it was already promulgating.
The real question, thus, is not the students but the parents. Have they been so anesthetized by THEIR public education that they cannot act?
If so, perhaps CRT—and what will inevitably follow—is a well-deserved punishment.
As the Peruvian author Nicholas Gomez Davilla noted in his Schola to an Implicit Text: “the modern age will not be punished; it is the punishment.”