‘We call it ‘anti-racism' so you feel bad if you disagree’: School administrator debunks myth about Critical Race Theory in K-12 classrooms
Campus Reform spoke with Tony Kinnett, an educator and co-founder of The Chalkboard Review about CRT in schools.
Kinnett said that CRT impacts pedagogy because teacher training influences educators to essentialize students' race in their curriculum.
In a video posted on Twitter, A school administrator from Indiana explained exactly how schools teach critical race theory in classrooms, even when parents are told that it is not part of the curriculum.
“I’m in dozens of classrooms a week, so I know exactly what we’re teaching our students,” said District Science Coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools Tony Kinnett. “When we tell you that schools aren’t teaching critical race theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection.”
“We don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards, per se; we do have critical race theory in how we teach,” said Kinnett, who also co-founded The Chalkboard Review.
As an admin for the largest school district in Indiana, here’s what we mean when we tell you that we aren’t “teaching” Critical Race Theory: pic.twitter.com/f6RLghcw2R
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) November 4, 2021
Kinnett then broke down how the actual classroom practices used in his district and others have their foundations in Critical Race Theory scholars such as Richard Delgado, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
“We tell our students that every problem is the result of ‘white men’ and that everything western civilization built is racist; capitalism is a tool of white supremacy. Those are straight out of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s main points, verbatim, in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement,” Kinnett explained. “This is in math, history, english, science, the arts, and it’s not slowing down.”
Kinnett argues that the denials from administrators and school boards are just a diversion tactic.
“When schools tell you that we aren’t teaching Critical Race Theory, it means one thing: go away and look into our affairs no further,” he said. “It isn’t about transparency, it isn’t about cultural relevance; it’s race essentialism painted to look like the district cares about students of color. We call it ‘anti-racism’ so you feel bad if you disagree with our segregationist pedagogy. It’s taking advantage of kids’ vulnerability and parents’ inactivity to preen over social snake-oil schemes designed to create division.
Kinnett ended his video with a stern warning.
“Parents: when we tell you Critical Race Theory isn’t taught in our schools, we’re lying. Keep looking.”
Campus Reform spoke with Kinnett following his November 4 Twitter post. Kinnett delved deeper into the nuance of how Critical Race Theory is implemented in schools.
”Basically there are two arms of schooling when it comes to education. You have a curriculum, which is the material that you teach. That’s the actual stuff that kids are taught. And then you have pedagogy, and this is how things are taught,” Kinnett said.
“Critical Race Theory in practice is a pedagogy,” Kinnett explained. “So I’m literally forcing a lens in front of my students’ faces so they see the world...in a very particular way, so that it shapes how students interact with the curriculum.”
Kinnett also said that the progressive ideology was affecting the way teachers graded students, stating that teachers have been “giving your students a grade because we’re trying to reduce the number of students failing of a certain skin color, instead of taking every student who can’t read, regardless of color, and teaching them to read.
“We’re focusing on their color,” he concluded.
This focus originates at the college level, according to Kinnett, where the new generations of teachers are trained.
“When I was at Ball State,” Kinnett recalled, “there was a young black lady who lectured me for five minutes on why I wasn’t allowed to speak to a particular subject because I was White.”
Kinnett attributed the current backlash to parents just now becoming aware of the situation because of remote learning.
[RELATED: Education prof says CRT influences K-12 teaching]
Kinnett then encouraged the reintroduction of the teaching of “beauty, the good of the common man, classical liberalism,” and a return to classical education.
But he also urged parents not to grow complacent.
“I’m worried that this will just be a sort of reactionism, you know, re-elect the school board. School boards, yeah some of the attention needs to be on school boards; mostly it’s on the administrative level,” he said.
“Principles and superintendents run the show,” Kinnett stated.” I don’t think I could tell you the Indianapolis public school board. They have very little impact on the curriculum of a school.”
