The right-leaning National Association of Scholars (NAS) isn’t just critical of the wisdom of the proposed rule, which would prioritize federal funding for history and civics programs that “incorporate culturally and linguistically responsive learning environments.”

It’s calling on state attorneys general to go to court to block the Department of Education proposal, which is accepting public comments through May 19.

The proposal favorably mentions Boston University professor Ibram Kendi, the foremost popularizer of “anti-racism,” and the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which is also a school curriculum offered through the Pulitzer Center.

NAS policy director Teresa Manning, a former law professor who unsuccessfully sued her university for viewpoint discrimination, predicted that AGs from West Virginia, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Texas would get involved.

These six Republicans fired a shot across the bow of the Biden administration in its first week, triggered by the president’s unprecedented flood of executive orders. They promised to challenge unconstitutional laws, overbroad agency actions and violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen “is looking closely at how the Biden administration’s proposed rule could create a race-based ‘hostile environment’ in Montana schools in violation of state and federal law,” a spokesperson told Just the News.

He is “concerned about its basis in Critical Race Theory — a racist ideology that directly contradicts the founding principles of our nation,” the statement continued. “Montana will not stand for anti-American indoctrination that turns our schools into training grounds for fringe political activism and violence.”

A spokesperson for Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said their office was “evaluating the proposed priorities and their implications” but hadn’t committed to intervening.

A statement from Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office said she is “a leader in pushing back against the Biden Administration’s federal overreach and will continue to monitor unconstitutional actions made by the Administration.” Other AGs didn’t respond to queries.

Even though the “proposed priorities” just set conditions for a grant program, “states cannot afford to simply ignore” the creation of a de facto “industry standard” for civics and history education, Manning told Just the News.

“On the contrary, they need to treat this cancer before it metastasizes!” she wrote in an email. Her group launched a Civics Alliance last month with civil rights veteran Bob Woodson, Brown University economist Glenn Loury and others.

Other critics are calling on state legislatures to push back. Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote model legislation backed by NAS that would ban what he calls “action civics” and CRT training for K-12 teachers.

It is “urgently necessary” for states to approve bans in K-12 curricula as well, he wrote in National Review. Otherwise “it will be almost impossible to resist the carrots and sticks soon to be deployed” by the administration.

Like Race to the Top, ‘few red-state politicians will have the guts’ to reject federal money

The federal proposal justifies the new funding priority based on the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a “disproportionate impact on communities of color,” as well as “the ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism.”

The teaching and learning of history should include “the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society,” as reflected in the 1619 Project and Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

It’s good that schools nationwide are “working to incorporate anti-racist practices into teaching and learning,” such as those advocated by Kendi. The proposal quotes his claim that “racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.”

Applicants for grant money must show how their projects consider “systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history” and incorporate “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives.” Conspicuously, political diversity is left out.

Education Week said the grant program was given only $5.3 million this fiscal year. But Kurtz argued in National Review that the proposed priorities would influence the bipartisan Civics Secures Democracy Act, introduced last month, which would authorize $1 billion over six years for civics education grants.

He compared it to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, which incentivized “nearly every state” to adopt “abysmal” Common Core standards. “Few red-state politicians will have the guts to stand up” to the media for rejecting federal money for civics and history.

Manning’s analysis for NAS said the priorities “would cement radically racist instruction into the nation’s schools” that is likely to create a “hostile environment” by race under Title VI. “NAS plans to encourage state attorneys general and other high-level legal officials to challenge” the grants for promoting “state sponsored discrimination.”

The six AGs who signed the Jan. 27 warning letter to President Biden are “especially vigilant” about his actions of “questionable legality,” she told Just the News. The proposed priorities also “may encroach on standards set by the states,” providing more opportunities for legal challenges.

Not applying for the grants is not enough, Manning argued, because states that opt out will be hemmed in by a “brick wall” of new education standards.

“No one in an industry can simply ignore something that might become the industry standard because everyone is expected, eventually, to meet the industry standard” — in this case, heavily influenced by federal money, she said.

Voters don’t want progressive activism in the classroom

Multiple critics compared the proposed priorities to a new Illinois rule that mandates “culturally responsive teaching and leading standards for all Illinois educators,” an early draft of which required teachers to promote “progressive viewpoints and perspectives.”

The right-leaning American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) commissioned a survey that found Illinoisans reject “progressive political activism” in the classroom by more than two to one, including nearly 50% of self-identified Democrats.

The federal proposal is marked by a “deafening silence about such matters as the Founding documents, the Emancipation Proclamation, the World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement,” ACTA President Michael Poliakoff wrote in an email.

“Instead, we get a homage” to Kendi and the 1619 Project, “whose tendentious rewriting of American history drew the scathing critique of a broadly nonpartisan group of the nation’s leading historians,” he wrote. Poliakoff criticized the branding of the proposal as “culturally responsive teaching standards,” when it would actually teach students to “view everything through the lens of racial oppression” and worsen societal divisions.

“ACTA is unsure of the legal basis to challenge this rule,” he answered when asked about NAS’s theories. “But we are certain it is an unseemly intrusion of a particular ideology into public education.”

A spokesperson for Woodson, the civil rights veteran and 1776 Unites founder, simply told Just the News that he “opposes government funding for CRT in schools.”

Murray Bessette, vice president of education for the Common Sense Society, called the proposed priorities “a kind of antiwisdom” that will accomplish the inverse of their intentions.

“We need to teach American history in all its complexity as a precondition of learning from the mistakes of the past and of doing better,” said Bessette, until recently the head of academic programs for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. America is the “successful overcoming” of past injustices by heroes from Abraham Lincoln to John Lewis, “who built the most successful multiethnic country in the history of the world.”

The original source can be found here»

Source: https://www.goacta.org/news-item/biden-administration-presses-ahead-with-critical-race-theory-that-some-see-as-racist/

The post Biden administration presses ahead with critical race theory that some see as ‘racist’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Once upon a time there was a hunger and thirst to know every detail and to understand every nuance on numerous fronts.  Not anymore.  Now it’s a matter of protecting one’s emotions and sensibilities from the mindlessness that’s consuming everything.

It’s not enough that America is being destroyed on the southern border.  Mind you, Canadians are not welcome across our border.  COVID, you know.  Besides, they’re civilized, cleanly people.  This is clearly no place for people of that caliber.  They can’t even come across the border to shop!  The COVID danger is just too high for such risks.  But the uneducated?  Get them in here by the uncountable thousands, probably hundreds of thousands or millions before it’s over, if it’s ever over.  If you don’t think it’s the best idea, you’re a white supremacist whether you’re white or not.

States have nothing to say about anything, particularly Texas.  You’ve undoubtedly heard about the thousands of “unaccompanied minors” that are being bussed to the Kay Baily Hutchinson convention center in Dallas for “decompression.”  The State of Texas has nothing to say about it, nor does the city of Dallas.  No, this arrangement was made between the Federal government and the convention center, which will be handsomely rewarded.

But could we just talk to some of these immigrants and get some information about the cartels and human trafficking?  The answer to that would be a resounding NO!  It’s none of Texas’ business.  The _____ administration (it has five letters either way) has resolved that no one can see what transpires inside the facility or talk to its decompressing residents, fresh from the mud streets and decomposing unburied.

Do you think the COVID panic is legitimate?   Not when it comes to those who rushed the border.   For the most part, they’re not even subjected to the indignity of testing.  When they are, it’s found that some 20% are infected (if you believe the test results).  American citizens, racists deserving of punishment, can’t go anywhere (or Canadians, Australians, Brits…) without proving they’re healthy, and of course wearing masks regardless.  On the other hand, compassion demands that every border facility be overrun with these “unaccompanied minors” who will soon be joined by their extended families.  That’s how compassion works, in case you didn’t know.  It’s the American dream of the left.  A permanent underclass to be coddled by the politicians who despise patriotic citizens and make them pay for the destruction of their own way of life.  If you want America to survive, you must be a hater.  That’s what the news is telling us all day every day.

The pope finally peeved a substantial support group.  It seems that he’s against the “church” blessing same-sex marriages.  What an outrage to the gayest of prime time blocks on cable TV!  They just couldn’t let that stand, so the homosexual anchor appeared on a national morning show to tell us that, “God is not about hindering people,” and God is “not about judgment.”  What?!?  You’ve got this smarmy know-it-all fruitcake telling us what God thinks?  He obviously never subjected himself to any of God’s Word.  If he did, he’d know he’s already in a heap of trouble, never mind being ignorant to a mind-boggling degree.

He’s one of the mantra of voices in media insisting that America’s greatest threat comes from its own citizens who are racist by nature.  The public school unions have determined that little children must be taught “critical race theory,” and their parents have nothing to say about it.  Never mind “common core,” they’ve blown by that.  It’s not enough that children are being taken from their parents over mask refusal, they’ll be brainwashed into believing that their parents and society as a whole is built on a foundation of racism, and nobody better get in the way of their juggernaut, or else.

Teachers unions have declared war on parents opposed to critical race theory brainwashing of their children.  Seems like we were warned some years ago that America would have to change its traditions, change its HISTORY as part of the transitions.  Bet you haven’t forgotten.

It’s all over the news we no longer watch.  In Virginia a “hit list” is being kept of parents who say they don’t want their kids taught this stuff.  Why?  They’ll find out soon enough.  According to the reports, parents’ information is being turned over to cyber-criminals for identity theft and whatever other thievery inflicted on unsuspecting people who’ve given personal information to questionable outfits.  In Virginia, it’s not safe to give your information to the schools!

The international enemies of everything America stands for are emboldened once again.  Kim Jong-un’s sister has issued a warning, and Iran thinks it’s calling all the shots.  If not for Israel and its Prime Minister, they might be right.  Apparently it is the fervent goal of the “current administration” to make sure that neither America nor the Western world at large survives total transformation.  May God intervene, despite the fact that sin has seemingly overtaken every public institution.  What are the chances?

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 19 March 2021 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.