AU dean promotes 'culturally responsive teaching,' its connection to CRT
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy recently advocated for culturally responsive teaching as 'the other CRT' that can help underachieving students.
Holcomb-McCoy is dean of American University's School of Education.
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, dean of the School of Education at American University, recently argued that “cultural responsive teaching” is the “other CRT” that can help students.
Holcomb-McCoy argued in The Hill that culturally responsive teaching is the pedagogical framework for teachers to emphasize a student’s cultural background in order to instruct them in the most effective manner.
Critical Race Theory and culturally responsive teaching, according to the dean, are “connected because if we had a better understanding about our lived experiences and racial and ethnic backgrounds, maybe more people would understand the value of teaching by affirming students’ backgrounds.”
[RELATED: Ivy league professors criticize CRT, idea of ‘systemic racism’]
Holcomb-McCoy relayed a personal example of a young student that was overlooked in the school system, in her opinion, because he was Black and the teacher who did not recognize the student’s potential was White.
“The truth is, as an educator of color, I shouldn’t have had to deal with that situation,” she wrote.
She also characterized the teaching of Critical Race Theory as the teaching of “our nation’s complete history.”
Campus Reform’s Angela Morabito reports on the theoretical framework and puts forth a different interpretation.
”Critical Race Theory does not mean reading authors with whom one disagrees,” Morabito wrote on June 25. “Critical Race Theory is a doctrine that holds that all American legal institutions are racist and that every interaction in the present day must be viewed through the lens of race, particularly as it relates to historical oppression.”
Last week, Columbia Professor John McWhorter and Brown University Professor Glenn Loury conducted a video-based discussion during which they criticized Critical Race Theory, particularly the concept of structural racism.
During the conversation, Loury said, “systemic racism becomes a kind of rhetorical weapon to try to get the moral high ground in a debate about racial disparity.”
Neither Holcomb-McCoy nor American University responded to a request for comment.
