{"id":5467,"date":"2023-09-07T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5467"},"modified":"2023-09-07T20:15:45","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:15:45","slug":"equity-speakers-talk-of-revolution-wisconsin-parents-just-want-their-kids-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5467","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Equity\u2019 speakers talk of revolution; Wisconsin parents just want their kids to read"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/equity-speakers-talk-of-revolution-wisconsin-parents-just-want-their-kids-to-read\/<\/a><\/p>\n

If the system\u2019s so rotten, why shouldn\u2019t kids escape?<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

It\u2019s plain that many of the prominent radicals in an ongoing Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction speaker series<\/a> about racial \u201cequity\u201d have a problem less with individuals than with the whole system.<\/p>\n

Makes you wonder why they so oppose children escaping that system.<\/p>\n

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

The series of day-long webinars<\/a>, four per school year, is an initiative of the DPI, the regulator of every Wisconsin school. The agency says<\/a> it doesn\u2019t necessarily endorse everything said by every one of the academics it invites, but since racial equity is the first quality it mentions in its mission statement<\/a>, one can see why 2,500 people signed up last school year to hear what was said under the sponsorship of the agency that controls Wisconsin teachers\u2019 licenses.<\/p>\n

One clear theme is the installing of a new definition of racism, one most Americans do not agree with<\/a>, one that says racism isn\u2019t an injustice committed by an individual who treats some people worse on account of their skin but, rather, the inescapable structure of American society.<\/p>\n

This \u201cstructural racism\u201d idea \u2014 \u201cRacism Without Racists,\u201d to quote the title of a book<\/a> by one of the series\u2019 regular speakers \u2014 leads to some remarkable conclusions.<\/p>\n

It means, said the book\u2019s author, Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, that when white people don\u2019t<\/em> racially discriminate, it\u2019s \u201ccolor-blind racism,\u201d a \u201ccovert, subtle or even unconscious\u201d evil.<\/p>\n

Next spring, the series will feature Ibram X. Kendi, the best-selling author who preaches that society must go out of its way to treat some people worse than others<\/a> on account of their race, to make things even. In January, it features Robin DiAngelo, famous for accusing any objectors to such a new order of being afflicted with \u201cwhite fragility<\/a>.\u201d She\u2019ll discuss her latest book, which says white Americans who try hard to treat minorities fairly are really \u201cnice racists<\/a>\u201d who, if they avoid giving offense, are guilty of racist \u201ccarefulness<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling for a reboot<\/strong><\/h4>\n

On it goes, webinar after webinar, telling Wisconsin educators that society and its schools are systemically rotten, filled with people afflicted from birth with a toxic \u201cwhiteness.\u201d The obvious conclusion is that such a system must go, root and branch, and speakers say as much.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a revolutionary situation,\u201d said frequent star speaker Bettina L. Love to Wisconsin educators last spring, quoting James Baldwin before opining that \u201cracism and capitalism go hand in hand,\u201d saying, \u201cOh, power must be reallocated,\u201d and calling for a \u201creconstruction of a whole society.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019ll start, however, with schools. In May, Love previewed her upcoming book<\/a>, and she\u2019ll be back in October to explain more of why she thinks all education reform since 1980 has been a wicked scam, a \u201cwhite rage\u201d backlash that must be undone with $2 trillion in reparations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She distills a regular theme of speakers in the DPI\u2019s series: that all the accountability, character education, phonics, back-to-basics, and especially options for families such as charter schools and school choice, are malicious distractions meant to keep schools from serving as seedbeds of social revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s rotten\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Love correctly indicts the public school system for doing a poor job of educating black children \u2014 the majority-black Milwaukee Public Schools have left more than half<\/a> their 8th<\/sup>-graders illiterate, for instance. Some sort of change is needed.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s puzzling is why Love and so many other speakers in the series show such antipathy for the mechanism that reallocates power from this miserable system toward parents and educators who want better. Wisconsin\u2019s independent choice schools and its public charter schools have drawn about 70,000 children, two-thirds of them non-white, and the programs are old enough to have piled up an undeniable record of better outcomes. Why do so many speakers in the DPI\u2019s equity series oppose this?<\/p>\n

Put it another way: If you really believe that American society is a structurally oppressive system, and that the government-run schools at the center of that society are so infested with systemic racism that they\u2019re \u201cspirit-murdering<\/a>\u201d minority children, why would you oppose parents taking their children out of such horror? Why would you compel all parents to entrust their kids to such a system?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d expect any answer to be couched in academic jargon: Love is a professor<\/a> at Columbia University\u2019s elite Teachers College, DiAngelo teaches<\/a> at a big education school, and so do many<\/a> other<\/a> speakers<\/a>. The series, it bears repeating, is put on by the agency that regulates teacher preparation in Wisconsin. Under the jargon is a simple reality:\u00a0In public education, these people are<\/em> the system.<\/p>\n

So you can see how, after their long march to institutional control of K-12 education, that these progressives wouldn\u2019t want kids getting away without being recruited into the revolution.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t see why parents shouldn\u2019t be able to opt for a school that instead will teach their kids to read.<\/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

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The post \u2018Equity\u2019 speakers talk of revolution; Wisconsin parents just want their kids to read<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/equity-speakers-talk-of-revolution-wisconsin-parents-just-want-their-kids-to-read\/ If the system\u2019s so rotten, why shouldn\u2019t kids escape?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5467","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\/5467","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=5467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5470,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5467\/revisions\/5470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}