The discussion on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education reminds me of the famous old movie line in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate!” CTE is the latest controversial phrase among the education community and parents. Vocal advocates support and oppose CRT, while many schools jump on board this newest bandwagon. Will CRT reduce racism or isolate feuding races? Will the CRT ideas finally close learning gaps? Does CRT focus erode instruction and decrease learning results? Some experts attempt to answer these questions. However, no one knows fully what is included under the CRT umbrella or the potential impacts.
In my 50 years in education, I have heard this refrain before, not about race but multiple other topics. Each of these started as sound ideas to improve student learning. However, once it became a popular notion in education, everyone with their agenda jumped aboard under this common banner. Historically educators can describe the verbal wars over initiatives such as “open schools,” “new math,” or “Common Core.” Each of these initiatives has elements of good pedagogical practice. Still, once they had a label and became pervasive in schools, the good ideas became bloated, and resistors of change could find aspects to criticize and oppose the whole initiative.
As an example open schools tried to break the rigid mold of 25 students in a classroom by creating flexible school rooms which could be adapted to different student work. But, when schools were built with no walls as the popular design, teachers became frustrated with noisy classrooms. Open classrooms became an anathema. In terms of Common Core, having standards for learning is beneficial, but when the list of standards became ridiculously long and tied to recall tests, the initiative died of its own weight, and the phrase is now close to a swear word. Labels lead to misunderstanding, I remember an insightful education colleague starting, “Be innovative in schools to serve students better, but don’t give it a name.”
My advice to parents, educators, and government leaders is to abandon a broad name and be specific about the practices you advocate or criticize. There are elements in CRT that are beneficial and other extremes that are not. CRT, as a whole, should not be a battleground. The label CRT has become too difficult to define at this point. Discuss the specific knowledge we want students to acquire and the specific behaviors we want them to demonstrate. There is common ground to focus on the needs of children and let talented educators determine how to develop that knowedge and bahavior in the school..