Dear Colleagues:

The hiring of a critical race theorist to teach music is yet another offering from academics at the temple of the woke. Little good it will do students or individuals and communities interested in rejecting racial prejudice.

 

In July,  Arizona State University officials hired   a music professor to train K-12 music teachers, emphasizing that the new professor is a specialist in critical race theory. Music instruction is secondary—the university’s press release announcing the new hire stresses that the instructor wants to give future music teachers “reliable tools beyond teaching the music,” and she is committed to “progressive work” on how the issues of “race, class and culture impact educational equity in music education.”

 

Using critical race theory to teach music will not help efforts to fight racial bias, however, because so-called “antiracists’” goal is racial discrimination.

 

It was only a matter of time before ASU, the nation’s  7^th-largest university , experimented with the anti-racist crusade in music. As I wrote this week for the James G. Martin Center, music joins a long list of academic subjects, professions, government agencies, and private enterprises from which critical race theorists demand penance; otherwise participants are labeled racist. ASU had already injected the theory into its other areas of study (ASU added a   critical race theory course   back to its law school  last year ). You can read my full commentary here .

 

Elevator Pitch: If ASU wants “to be welcoming,” the university should encourage the pursuit of truth, not skew every course with a perspective based on skin color. For now, university officials have found scholars from many disciplines, including music, to lead the march back to prejudice.

 

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University of Michigan is ranked first in the wrong category. I joined our Heritage Foundation colleague Terris Todd and Jay Greene in Michigan last weekend  to discuss critical race theory’s racial discrimination. Jay presented his research on the shocking size of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) staff compared to instructional faculty among schools in the Power 5 athletic conferences. Jay reported that the University of Michigan has more DEI staff than any other school that he and co-author James Paul studied in their recent report .
 
I explained that schools around the country are teaching critical race theory, and using the words “critical race theory,” as I wrote in my Heritage Foundation Issue Brief  earlier this year. Michigan is no exception: As documented by Parents Defending Education , school districts in Michigan are distributing materials on intersectionality, along with other concepts at the center of critical race theory.

Next year’s debate topic leading up to the elections. I talked with Politico about critical race theory and why the theory’s racial prejudice has parents and some policymakers telling school officials that they want nothing of it. Politico asks if the theory will be the “new debate issue for the 2022 elections,” and so far, all signs point to “yes.” You can watch the video here.

Preschool funding in $3.5 trillion spending bill is modeled after failed head start program. Writing for the Daily Signal this week, Lindsey Burke says “those pushing for universal preschool and child care in the $3.5 trillion spending bill currently making its way through Congress have landed on the ineffective federal Head Start program as their model.” She explains that Head Start is full of “ fraud, abuse, poor outcomes, and high costs.”

 

“It’s yet one more indication that President Joe Biden’s plan doesn’t ‘Build Back Better.’ It’s building back bureaucracy,” Lindsey says. Read the column here.

 

Parents should know what their children are being taught. Congratulations to K-12 parents in Wisconsin and our friends at the Goldwater Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty: Wisconsin lawmakers just approved a proposal that requires public schools to make classroom content available to parents. As the Goldwater team explained on their blog, “Under the legislation, prospective parents will no longer have to guess and gamble about whether a nearby school is informally slipping into the classroom content such as the New York Times 1619 Project, or assigning literature like Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist…”

 

“Indeed, for the first time, parents will have the ability to identify and distinguish between schools pushing radical politics versus those affirming core academic principles before they’re forced to choose where to send their children.” Let’s hope the idea catches on.
 
The proposal also contains provisions that prohibit the teaching of racial stereotyping in schools, provisions that would be improved by mirroring language found in Heritage’s model bill rejecting racially discriminatory practices caused by school officials’ application of critical race theory. To see Heritage’s model bill, click here.

 

Coming soon: My book Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth is available for pre-order! You can place an order here.

Jonathan Butcher

Will Skillman Fellow in Education
Center for Education Policy

Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity

The Heritage Foundation