{"id":5163,"date":"2023-08-24T19:23:25","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T19:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5163"},"modified":"2023-08-24T20:18:29","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T20:18:29","slug":"state-school-bureaucracy-brings-in-high-profile-leftists-to-teach-wisconsin-teachers-about-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5163","title":{"rendered":"State school bureaucracy brings in high-profile leftists to teach Wisconsin teachers about \u2018equity\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/dpi-brings-in-leftists-to-teach-wisconsin-teachers-about-equity\/<\/a><\/p>\n

DPI series has history of speakers peddling \u2018critical\u2019 view of race in America<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

As part of a training program, an initiative of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is bringing in high-profile left-wing speakers, including Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, to speak to potentially thousands of Wisconsin teachers about \u201ceducational equity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Wisconsin<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Earlier training sessions in the series, meanwhile, have featured authors such as one who called school reform an example of \u201cwhite rage\u201d that requires $2 trillion in reparations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The series of online talks, run by the DPI under its \u201cEducational Equity Leadership Series\u201d this week announced that Kendi, known for advocating racial discrimination as a form of reparation, will be among the speakers in the upcoming school year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The talks carry weight because they are a program of the DPI. That agency not only holds regulatory sway over Wisconsin\u2019s schools, public and private, it controls professional licensing for teachers and school administrators.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

While teachers are not required to attend, the training sessions did have broad reach: According to<\/a> the Educational Equity Network, as the DPI brands the initiative, the sessions drew 2,580 individual participants in the 2022-23 school year, up 61% from the previous run, with employees from 204 Wisconsin school districts represented.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The concept of \u201cequity,\u201d a central element of \u201cdiversity, equity and inclusion\u201d initiatives in school districts across the state, is an important factor in educators\u2019 licenses, as well. It\u2019s high on the DPI\u2019s list of attributes<\/a> required of school administrators, for example \u2014 a standard mentioned even before the oversight of curriculum and teaching. It\u2019s the first quality mentioned in the department\u2019s mission statement<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendi, who is scheduled<\/a> for the all-day online series of talks<\/a> next May, is perhaps the highest profile speaker yet in the series. His 2019 best-seller \u201cHow to Be an Anti-Racist\u201d turned him into a sought-after speaker<\/a> and a commentator published in prestige mainstream outlets, and it led to a franchise of related books, with versions for teens and parents, and a picture-book version for children.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendi, whose upcoming appearance is billed as a \u201cgenerative conversation,\u201d makes the central argument<\/a> that people cannot simply avoid racism, writing that they support racism unless they support some reparational forms of racial discrimination: \u201cIf discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist,\u201d he wrote in his book. He went on to write, \u201cThe only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another high-profile speaker on the schedule<\/a>, for next January, is DiAngelo, who became famous for a 2018 bestseller contending that individuals\u2019 reactions to being unfairly accused of racism were examples of \u201cwhite fragility.\u201d She\u2019ll discuss her 2021 book, \u201cNice Racism,\u201d which contends that \u201ccarefulness\u201d and feeling unfairly accused of racism is, in fact, racist. The book includes a chapter about \u201cWhy It\u2019s OK to Generalize About White People.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reform branded as \u2018white rage\u2019\u00a0<\/h4>\n

But while the two differ from past speakers in the series in being well-known outside the field of education research, their ideas aren\u2019t out of line with previous speakers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most recent day of talks, in May, included Bettina L. Love, a Georgia education professor whose work on race and teaching have been so controversial that the Biden administration disavowed it<\/a> after it came to light that the Education Department recommended it in post-pandemic school reopening instructions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In her May talk, Love described school reform efforts since the 1980s as a backlash to school integration: \u201cWhat they have done over the last 40 years is educational white rage,\u201d she told Wisconsin teachers. \u201cThey have legislated their rage in education because our grandparents and our parents had the audacity to integrate these schools, and here we are in educational white rage.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On slides describing the reforms she attributes to \u201cwhite rage,\u201d Love included school choice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

She outlined her argument that not only must school choice and other education reform efforts be ended but that the nation owes \u201ceducational reparations\u201d as a result.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have calculated with some amazing researchers and policy folks what is owed to black people for the last 40 years of educational white rage,\u201d she told Wisconsin teachers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea appears to be the subject of her book due to be published<\/a> in September, in which she sets the figure at about $2 trillion<\/a>. Her promotional website for the book includes a video depicting education reform as military planes dropping bombs on a black child, as an army tank labeled \u201cwhite rage,\u201d and as a white hoodlum throwing a hand grenade.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The May session wasn\u2019t Love\u2019s first time instructing Wisconsin teachers on equity: She was a speaker in June 2021, when she discussed her \u201cHip Hop Civics Ed,\u201d an idea from her 2019 book, \u201cWe Want to Do More than Survive.\u201d That book included her argument against education reform. In it, she refers to elite college grads volunteering with Teach for America as \u201cthese educational parasites\u201d and declares that \u201ccolor-blindness is racist.\u201d She calls not only for an end to school reform \u2014 and perhaps even to school desegregation, which she brands as \u201ccolonization\u201d \u2014 she argues instead that \u201cteachers must embrace theories such as critical race theory, settler colonialism, Black feminism, dis\/ability [sic], critical race studies, and other critical theories.\u201d<\/p>\n

She complains that schools are not teaching children \u201cacts of civil disobedience\u201d and other means of resistance. \u201cInstead, our students are now taught with the world crumbling around them to pay their taxes, vote, volunteer, and have good character, which is code for comply, comply, comply.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Color-blind racism\u2019<\/h4>\n

Other speakers instructing Wisconsin teachers about equity at the May session also promoted the view related to critical race theory that racism arises not from discriminatory beliefs and acts of individuals but from the underlying characteristics of American society.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I mean, who still believes they\u2019re color-blind?\u201d asked diversity consultant Eddie Moore Jr<\/a>., who declared, \u201cIt\u2019s amazing that in 2023 people are still holding on to that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva<\/a> told the audience that the social unacceptability of racial slurs is a sign of a \u201cnew racism,\u201d a \u201csubtle, covert and sometimes even unconscious\u201d bigotry perpetuated by white people guilty of \u201ccolor-blind racism.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus should be regular white folks,\u201d he said, which he illustrated with a stock photo of a laughing blond-haired family of four, \u201cand the problem, which I think is the central problem of racism today, which is white normativity.\u201d White people, he said, \u201chave to be understood, following the idea of Karl Marx regarding a capitalist, as the unconscious personification of the order of things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He illustrated the idea with a cartoon of what he described as a typical white woman \u2014\u201cI name her Margaret BeWhite,\u201d he said \u2014 and he narrated the fictional woman\u2019s thoughts: \u201cI am a very nice liberal person (for Christ\u2019s sakes, I was born and raised in Madison!), but I must confess I have some issues with, with Blac\u2014, Ne\u2014, African Americans. They think we owe them something.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

He later went on to cite as problematic \u201chistorically white colleges and universities,\u201d singling out University of Wisconsin campuses in Madison, Eau Claire and Oshkosh, and saying \u201cThe entire life of the college is centered around whiteness without telling you. Even the food served at events is sort of white-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n

DPI takes a side<\/h4>\n

The speakers\u2019 repeated theme that racism is not a series of discriminatory acts and beliefs by individuals who can overcome them with education and effort but, rather, an outgrowth of many Americans\u2019 \u201cwhiteness\u201d that can be overcome only with a revolutionary restructuring of a \u201csystemically racist\u201d society is not one broadly embraced<\/a> by Americans, though agreement on the idea differs by partisanship and race<\/a>. The subject of whether such ideas associated with critical race theory<\/a> remains a politically contentious<\/a> issue in Wisconsin<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DPI spends public resources to propagate this controversial definition of \u201cequity\u201d to teachers. The initiative, which also goes by the name of the Disproportionality Technical Assistance Network<\/a>, \u201cacknowledges the support of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in the development of this material and for the continued support of this federally-funded project,\u201d according to the department. The initiative is funded using federal grant money under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is unclear how much the department spends on the series; emails asking for such information to a series of department officials had not been responded to by deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency has in the past, however, distanced itself generally from the viewpoints it offered. After Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) questioned<\/a> state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly in 2022 about the selection of speakers, Underly replied<\/a> that the DPI \u201cdoes not purport to hold every viewpoint that each of its funded speakers holds,\u201d though she defended the series by saying \u201cDPI maintains a strong commitment to the principles of educational equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four sessions are planned<\/a> for the upcoming school year, the first in October. Advance registration<\/a> is required to access the online platform, but it is open not only to educators but to parents and other members of the public.<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The post State school bureaucracy brings in high-profile leftists to teach Wisconsin teachers about \u2018equity\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/dpi-brings-in-leftists-to-teach-wisconsin-teachers-about-equity\/ DPI series has history of speakers peddling \u2018critical\u2019 view…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5163"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5166,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163\/revisions\/5166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}