Banning critical race theory in classrooms isn’t enough to stop the Marxist indoctrination in schools, according to one teacher. The problem goes deeper—all the way to the universities that are preparing the next generation of educators.
Tony Kinnett, a teacher, said in remarks to the Washington Free Beacon that master’s programs in the United States, which many teachers are going through, are increasingly taking on a revisionist view of American history that inclines educators toward a social-justice philosophy that they then pass on to their students.
At Harvard, for example, would-be teachers take courses such as Critical Race Theory in Education. Graduate students at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania are similarly required to take diversity, equity, and inclusion courses. Additionally, Penn offers diversity and inclusion as a focus for graduate students.
Although Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a hot political issue over the last year, Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, explained that the Marxist ideology has been taught in American graduate programs since the 1990s.
“There’s no K-12 educator who consciously and personally comes to the decision that they need culturally relevant pedagogy,” Kinnett said. “Realistically, it’s just coming straight from the universities.”
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Kinnett detailed experiences he had while working toward his master’s degree at Ball State University. Once, a fellow graduate told him during class that he should feel guilty for being white.
On another occasion, he received pushback for not bowing to the “white privilege” narrative.
Once, in a course on education policy and pedagogy, Kinnett argued that teachers shouldn’t be afraid to fail students who don’t perform to standard. A peer chimed in and said Kinnett was “blinded” by his white privilege, as white teachers can’t understand obstacles that minority students must overcome to succeed in school. The lambasting went on for about five minutes.
“I was confused,” said Kinnett, who is part Cherokee. “She went off on why white educators needed to second-guess themselves in everything they’re doing.”
Over half of public-school teachers in the United States have an advanced degree in education. Over the last seven years, master’s programs in education have produced nearly 150,000 teachers annually.
Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, which according to U.S. News and World Report is the top program in the country for aspiring teachers, offers such courses as “Emancipatory Inquiry,” “Power and Pedagogy: Self, Society, and Transformation,” and “Race, Education, and the Roots of Inequality in the United States.”
At the University of Pennsylvania, future educators get their dose of CRT from courses such as “Access and Choice” and “Democratizing Higher Education Participation.” UCLA, meanwhile, offers graduate students “Race and Education,” which takes participants on an “exploration of broad interpretation of how schools contribute to racial stratification and inequality.”
Kinnett, who is the founder of an online education commentary site called the Chalkboard Review, maintained that most of the educators who push “race-based content” in Indianapolis Public Schools got master’s or doctorate degrees in education.
Burke argued that while master’s degree requirements create entry barriers for aspiring teachers, they do not necessarily lead to better student performance.
“If you look at the outcomes of students whose teachers have a master’s degree, there are data that show credentialed teachers and non-credentialed or alternatively certified teachers have no difference in student outcomes,” she said.
Kinnett concluded by saying that ultimately, Marxist indoctrination must be eliminated in the universities or it will continue to trickle down to K-12 classrooms even with state-level bans in place.
“There can be no policy made from the top down regarding K-12 education that can solve critical race theory,” he said. “In order to change education, and remove the poison of critical race theory, you have to start at the source, which is these teacher education programs.”
Critical Race Theory has even crept its way into the U.S. military. Last Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the inclusion of CRT coursework at West Point during a congressional hearing, leading to a tense exchange with Florida Republicans Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz.
“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white,” Milley said in defense of a “white rage” seminar. “What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What is wrong with having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend?”
