More CRT

 I wanted to follow up from my post regarding CRT and it's use in schools. Lots in the media right now about it, but this update comes by way of my friend from facebook and my son. 

The facebook friend is a teacher and most of her posts and comments to me in person have been around the lines that it's vital that we teach this to children if only for the chance to reveal to them and to admit to ourselves that racism was not only horrible for the US but is still ongoing. 

Now, I have no problem with the teaching aspect, I'm all for exposing kids to all the perspectives, but I also believe that it needs to be done at the appropriate time. High school? Maybe. College? Sure. Masters and PhD level classes? You betcha. Middle schools? Probably not. Lower schools? Heck no. 

I love the fact that children are the most color blind of society. I'm firmly of the belief that racism is a learned trait. When our first son started school his best friends were every different shade and he saw no issue. He continues in this vein even now. Why teach kiddos who are naturally colorblind to these things to throw on shades and perspectives? Isn't color-blindness what we want to achieve?

There's the rub. 

Many of the proponents of CRT believe we need to make up for past sins by being racist. Brookfield deliberately says this in his book. Henry Rogers (aka Ibrahim X Kendi) says the same thing. Which I think is atrocious and capricious. Who decides when it's enough? Who decides when and how to apply it? 

My son said something interesting the other day, and it made me proud of him. I'm a huge proponent of putting yourself in the other's shoes. Would we want teachers to push a Christian centered view on classrooms because in the past Christians were transgressed against? Or what about Jewish kiddos? Should they get an arbitrary leg up from teachers because of the holocaust? 

Regardless, in my view it should all be personal and not broadcast arbitrarily. If a kiddo comes to me as a teacher and asks for help in a class, I should help them and make allowances regardless of color. I shouldn't help them just because they happen to be one color or another. This is my problem with Brookfields statements. He bases his help and his classes on race alone. 

The CRT claim about classrooms these days seems to me to be more about soft social engineering which I think is wrong no matter the case. Besides are all of the kiddos in US schools doing so well that we can afford to spend a lot of time naval gazing about this? Maybe focus on the fundamentals and get those down so well we become the best in the world before we head off on these social engineering tangents.