School Book Report
Serious question: Are all educational gurus Marxists?
Or is it just random luck that we keep finding them to guide curriculum development and teaching practice in Wakefield Public Schools?
We’ll get to the latest example in a moment, but first a quick review.
Last fall, I wrote about Jamilah Pitts, one of the “educational consultants” that your local school administration has brought in to conduct multiple “professional development” sessions in “Culturally Responsive Teaching” for Wakefield’s grade 5-12 faculty.
Pitts wrote an article in 2020 for Learning for Justice, a professional magazine aimed at teachers. In a piece entitled, Teaching as Activism, Teaching as Care, she talks about ways that teachers can incorporate current events into student reading assignments.
“Teachers can allow students to apply critical lenses, such as critical race theory and Marxist theory, to the reading of news articles to allow students to think more deeply about who is being most affected and why,” Pitts wrote.
Also last fall, I wrote about the fact that Wakefield Public Schools have been developing an “Indigenous Curriculum,” to atone for Wakefield’s past sin of having a Native American warrior image as its sports logo. Used as a guide in developing that Indigenous Curriculum was a book called “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States,” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a self-identified Marxist, who has written numerous articles for socialist publications such as The Monthly Review: an Independent Socialist Magazine.
But let’s skip ahead to the latest example of the radical texts and consultants being employed to provide training and professional development for Wakefield teachers.
As part of their ongoing training, Grade 5-12 teachers are now being required to read and discuss a book called, Cultivating Genius: an equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy, by Dr. Gholnescar “Gholdy” Muhammad.
The forward of Dr. Muhammad’s book is written by Betina L. Love, author of a 2020 article in Education Week entitled, White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy.
In her foreword to Muhammad’s book, Professor Love notes that “This book is written in the tradition of Ella Baker, Ida B. Wells, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Angela Davis and Cherrie Moraga.”
Ella Baker was a socialist. Angela Davis is a Marxist. The other women listed as inspirations for the book also espouse radical views.
A central tenet of Muhammad’s book involves “critical theory.” Encyclopedia Britannica defines critical theory as a “Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the Frankfurt School.”
In her book’s introduction, Dr. Muhammad explains how critical theory fits into her educational philosophy.
“The model and content of this book puts critical theory, sociocultural theory and cognitive theories collectively into a practical model for teaching and learning,” she writes.
In her book, Dr. Muhammad rebrands critical theory as “Criticality,” which she defines as “the capacity to read, write and think in ways of understanding power, privilege, social justice and oppression.”
In her chapter entitled, “Toward the Pursuit of Criticality,” Dr. Muhammad lets the cat out of the bag with regard to CRT in public education.
“Critical theories that are helpful to educators,” she writes, “include critical race theory, Black feminist theory and LatCrit.”
How many times have we heard school officials swear on a stack of Little Red Books that critical race theory is not being used anywhere public education, and certainly not in Wakefield. But here, in a book that Wakefield public school teachers are being forced to read for professional development, the author lays out a detailed blueprint for applying critical race theory in public education.
Dr. Muhammad knows that simply teaching students to read, write and think will not be enough to bring about the Revolution. They also need criticality “to work toward social transformation.”
One tool to jump start her dream of “social transformation” is a concept she calls “agitation literacies.” In Muhammad’s view, agitation literacies have historically bridged the gap between “criticality” and activism.
“I argue that the need to agitate is still necessary and pressing in classrooms today,” she contends.
The author also suggests a way to engage students in boring classroom subjects like math, science, social studies or writing.
“As teachers start the school year, they can ask students to collectively compose their classroom community manifesto,” she writes, in an interesting word choice.
She provides two examples of such “manifestos,” followed by her own observation.
“Notice that neither of these express the goal of passing high stakes tests or grades,” she writes. “This was never the focus.”
Nor should tests and grades be the focus when selecting texts to be used in the classroom, Muhammad insists. Rather, teachers should ask themselves these questions: “How do my selected texts agitate the oppressors of the world?” and “How does the curriculum (including texts and exercises) engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression?”
The entire book is written in this vein. The focus is always on race and the “oppression” that the author imagines everywhere.
On the whole, teachers tend to be liberal thinkers. So, what does it tell you when many local educators consider Muhammad’s ideas too radical and not relevant to the practice of teaching in Wakefield Public Schools?
These kinds of radical, Marxist-centered attempts at teacher indoctrination in the guise of professional development aren’t just happening in Wakefield. They’re happening in school systems everywhere.
That shouldn’t make you worry less. It should make you worry more.
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[This column originally appeared in the April 27, 2023 Wakefield Daily Item.]
Filed under: Columns & Essays, Feature stories, History, News, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 11 Comments
Tags: agitation literacies, Angela Davis, Betina L. Love, classroom, Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory, criticality, CRT, Cultivating Genius, culturally responsive teaching, Dr. Gholnescar Muhammad, education, Ella Baker, equity, feminism, historically responsive teaching, History, indoctrination, Jamilah Pitts, Little Red Book, manifesto, Mark Sardella, Marxism, math, Opinion, opinioncurriculum, oppression, Politics, power, privilege, professional development, racism, Roxanne Dungar-Ortiz, schools, science, Social Studies, socialism, students, teachers, teaching, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Public Schools, writing
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Mark Sardella 
Mark, they are *not* “liberals” — they are way too closed minded for that. Please call them what they are: Leftists.
Remember that a “liberal” believes in the values of the Western Christian Liberal Enlightenment, notably that we are all individuals with our own God-given rights to our Lives, our Liberty, and our Property.
And as to how best to “agitate the oppressors of the world”, how about turning out solid graduates with the basic skills that would enable them to challenge said “oppressors.”
As I once explained to a Black activist, getting young Black men arrested is neither going to help them nor anyone else. However, if you spend the time helping them write letters to the Governor, cleaning up their grammar and explaining that certain words simply can not be used in a letter to the Governor, you might actually accomplish something.
But they don’t want to have strong and articulate individuals — they want sheep that they can lead. It’s much easier to be a teacher at a school where none of your students ever question *you* — trust me — I never really learned English grammar until I had high school students challenging me on it, and had to explain why I actually was right (at least most of the time…).
Point to a specific lesson plan that actually incorporates CRT or Marxism and then we’ll have something to worry about.
The book is a guide with instructions on how to incorporate its teachings in the classroom. Are you saying that this type of “professional development” is fine as long as its precepts don’t make it into the classroom? Then what exactly is the point of this professional development?
Excellent point, John — get me copies of the lesson plans and I’d be happy to review them for you. My doctorate is in curriculum from a NCATE-accredited program so no one can say that I’m not qualified to do this, and as someone who has taught teachers how to write lesson plans, I’m kinda familiar with lesson plans…
Even better, let me sit in the back of a few classrooms and I can not only tell you what the teacher is teaching but how well it’s being taught. In an ideal world, this is how I would do an assessment of the Wakefield Public Schools.
However, without access to these primary sources, one must rely upon secondary sources, as flawed as they may be, because that is the only data which one has.
Let me give you an analogy here — the IRS would like to know how many pizza a pizza joint sells because that’s how much income the place has and hence how much they owe the IRS in taxes. It’s a cash business and it seems that not all the money always gets reported.
If one is cheating, no one is going to tell the IRS how many pizza were actually sold, and the IRS knows that.
So what the IRS does is look at the amount of flour the place has purchased and estimate the number of pizzas from that. It’s their best guess, and a reasonably accurate one.
Likewise, when one looks at what the teachers are being taught about curriculum, one can reach a fairly accurate guess of what their curriculum actually is.
I was a high school teacher for several years and had to attend professional development seminars at which this year’s educational model was rolled out (higher fins, more chrome, tighter brakes, etc.) Teachers went to these things because they had to to earn professional development credits. In my observation, teachers used the time out of the classroom to grade papers or daydream. I heard of a teacher who could sleep with his eyes open. Never mastered the skill myself.
It certainly is not a reasonable assumption that teachers implement the doctrine that they hear of in these seminars. You can’t know unless you’ve seen, and you haven’t seen, by your own admission.
Re: Are all educational gurus Marxists?
Ahhh …. YEAH!!!
A bit of background for those who haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches of the education wars — CRT stands for Critical Race Theory and it originated a little over thirty years ago at Harvard Law School in response to Federal court decisions that were striking down the hate speech codes that had been enacted in the 1980s.
There were numerous cases addressing numerous issues, including one (“Jake Baker”) that I prefer not to discuss, but the key one was Doe v. University of Michigan, 721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989) Another key one was Silva v. University of New Hampshire, 888 F. Supp. 293 (D.N.H. 1994)
CRT essentially originated with the presumption that the 14th Amendment, written over 70 years after the 1st Amendment, had repealed the 1st Amendment, much as the 21st Amendment repealed the 17th Amendment (Prohibition). No court in the country had ever ruled this way, mind you, but the Harvard Law Professors thought that it was a good idea that they should teach anyway.
(I was incidentally involved in the Silva case, and at the 1994 victory party, one of his lawyers told me that by then “folks [weren’t] even bothering to cite CRT anymore.”)
The CRT advocates wrote two books which I highly recommend reading so as to understand what CRT is. The primary one is https://www.amazon.com/Words-That-Wound-Assaultive-Perspectives/dp/0813384281 and the secondary one is https://www.amazon.com/Faces-At-Bottom-Well-Permanence/dp/0465068146
There were also some US Department of Education (ED) harassment regulations that (as best I can tell) were actually printed and then rescinded, although there are still photocopied copies of them still floating around. These officially do not exist (and is the reason why you should always check with a Government Docs Librarian whenever someone hands you a photocopied stack of Federal regs, but I digress).
And while it is correct that CRT, qua CRT, is not being taught anywhere in K-12 (that I know of), CRT has heavily influenced a lot of pedagogy, and can be found in a lot of the so-called Social Behavioral Learning (which also has at least a dozen other names).
The reason why I encourage parents to read the two books I cited above (both are paperback, they aren’t that long) is that it enables one to recognize aspects of CRT that are buried in other things.
You do not have to agree with CRT (I don’t) but you need to both know what it is and where it came from in order to recognize it.
I’ve noticed the Professional apparatchiks in town swear over and over that CRT is NOT being taught in Wakefield. And they’re telling the truth. It isn’t! That’s because CRT isn’t a subject – it’s a tactic! You don’t gaslight somebody by explaining what gaslighting is, you just DO it and hope the mark doesn’t notice they’re being gaslit. WE need to teach CRT to our children so they recognize the smell who it gets sprayed on them in the classroom.
That’s exactly right. They think that as long as they don’t have a course entitled “Critical Race Theory 101,” they can claim they’re not teaching it. But it’s embedded in everything they teach, especially all this “Social-Emotional Learning” they’re always pushing.
What is ‘’social emotional learning’’? Do you have a definition? It would help if you could give us a concrete example of a lesson plan that is actually being used in the Wakefield Public Schools. Otherwise, all you are doing is getting people more and more worked up about something that you are unwilling or unable to define.
Anthony, that is why I recommend parents read the two books I cited above. I could cite a dozen more and know that none will be read, but I think that reading these two isn’t an unreasonable expectation and while CRT is more, these two books will serve as a basic foundation in understanding it.
Not everyone in the education field is a Marxist, a few of us very much are not, and have paid a very high price for not being Marxists. There are alternative voices in the field if you look for them
But Marxists I can actually deal with — they are wrong and the bloody history of the 20th Century is evidence of just how wrong they are. What really cause the problem are the STUPID people who are in it for the paycheck. People willing to sell their souls for the paycheck.
I could have a six figure income if I were willing to do that, but I’m not. And please don’t tar all of us with the same brush…