Suppose you wanted to draft the most comprehensive K-12 school policy you could for mandatory thought, speech and conduct that complies with Critical Race Theory or wokism, as it’s more often called. You probably couldn’t top the Chicago Public School district’s pending Culturally Responsive Education and Diversity Policy.
CPS is going for broke and exposing, once again, the huge lies by the Illinois State Board of Education when it claimed that its new statewide teaching standards aren’t about political indoctrination, classroom curriculum or teacher evaluation. It’s expressly about all of that and much more, especially as CPS sees things.
Skim through it yourself. It’s 15 pages of material like this:
- “The incorporation of culturally responsive education must be centralized in all current curriculum, programs, systems and services.”
- “If discrimination including microagressions are perceived, then all CPS stakeholders must report to OSP/EOCO.”
- “Any CPS stakeholder can report or discuss with OSP/EOCO based on the perception of any form of discrimination. All stakeholders are protected from any form of retaliation.”
- Discrimination includes “Indifference and detouring – neutrality when microaggressions, bias, and racism occur or diminishing anti-racist and anti-bias work.”
- “Liberation occurs when each of us are free from all forms of oppression at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional level whereby forms of inequity are uprooted and the redesigned future state meets the unique needs and aspirations of all with an emphasis on greatest needs groups by people, place and period.”
- “Actions to interrupt and transform individual, interpersonal and institutional racism are the responsibilities of every employee, vendor, volunteer, Local School Council (LSC) member, resident and student.”
- “At CPS, our commitment to culturally responsive education requires all professional learning, instructional and operational policies and practices, curriculum and assessment reflects a cultural responsiveness stance through and through.”
- “All CPS stakeholders must commit to anti-racism and anti-bias approaches in all of our work and relationships.” And “At Chicago Public Schools, it is the responsibility of each and every staff member to live out the competencies of cultural responsiveness, anti-racism and anti-bias, and diversity named within this policy.”
- “Required competencies” include things like: “Build students’ knowledge and mental powers by recognizing and cultivating their brilliance (Muhammad, 2020)” and “engaging in critical self-reflection to assess how educators’ thoughts, biases and perceptions affect their educational practice.”
To summarize, centralized authoritarianism takes away any teacher discretion; it uses Marxist rhetoric; it mandates how everybody associated must think, talk and act; and it contains obligations to be an informant, common in all tyrannical movements.
Just for starters, somebody in CPS needs to bring a forced speech lawsuit under the First Amendment.
-Mark Glennon
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
The future of Illinois might be a populace of dumbed down individuals living on public assistance and voting lockstep with the Illinois Democrats that will trade the State’s electoral votes for the party that promises the most public welfare. The dumbed down population will also be utilized by the Democrat trial lawyers that rely on uneducated easily influenced individuals to make up jury pools as they do their best to sue American companies out of existence. This is not so far fetched because all one needs to do is see what happened in Madison and St Claire counties over the… Read more »
My experience is that, at any given time, the legislative in-basket is filled to overflowing with special interest bills from both left- and right-leaning legislators. I do not suppose that legislators have minds of their own to concoct this crap, but they often accommodate contributors and special interest groups by agreeing to sponsor nonsense legislation. I recall an interval in Michigan where there was a shift in power from Dems to Republicans and that coincided with election of a Republican governor. At that time, a s**t-load of gun bills and pseudo-patriotic pledge-of-allegiance and flag-burning legislation got the liberal press inflamed.… Read more »
Fast forward 10 years.
No employer will want to hire any of these ‘box of rocks.’
IL solution will be to drive the employers out.
Looney
“If discrimination including microagressions are perceived, then all CPS stakeholders must report to OSP/EOCO.”
Have they not read the instagrams/facebook/twitters of their BIPOC students? It’s the worst racist, homophobic/anti-trans stuff available anywhere these days. But for the quality of the English, it’s like going back to 1950’s Mississippi or something. Totally un-PC.
these progressives don’t think things through
How do you possibly infuse this garbage into a Calculus class is my question?
Goebbels would be proud.