THIS WEEK’S INTELLIGENCE
May 2, 2021
Federal Grants to Spew Critical Race Theory Across American Education
What happened:
Critical Race Theory is the idea that skin color determines whether you are a victim or an oppressor, and that systemic racism infects every aspect of American life.
A proposed regulation from the Department of Education would hand out more money to schools willing to indoctrinate students with this ideology. The regulation proposes prioritizing educational grant requests that seek money to teach Critical Race Theory.
Grant applicants should, “Take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history.”
It encourages schools to design lessons, for example, reflecting “The New York Times’ landmark ‘1619 Project’.”
This project decided to move back the clock on when America was really founded, in order to blame contemporary American society for evils that happened before the USA even existed.
An example of the type of grant that this regulation would encourage, and replicate nationwide, was recently considered by the Idaho legislature.
The $6 million federal grant would fund an organization that promotes books to public school children such as A is for Activist (and T is for trans).
Another book called Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, teaches young children that “Whiteness is a bad deal. It always was.” But luckily, “you can be white without signing onto whiteness.”
The book explains, “In the United States of America white people have committed outrageous crimes against black people for 400 years.”
There’s that 1619 date popping up again…
What this means:
While plenty of DC, NYC, and LA area schools are happy to indoctrinate children with these divisive theories, you would think you’d be safe in more normal areas.
Yet even rural, conservative Idaho was on the verge of having these “anti-racist” grants injected into its schools.
But this week, Idaho lawmakers advanced a bill that would ban any curriculum which teaches children, “That individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same [group].”
That will effectively ban Critical Race Theory from being taught in Idaho schools.
But if you don’t live in a state like Idaho, and don’t want to spend the time and energy fighting to reject Critical Race Theory locally, you might want to take matters into your own hands.
What you can do about it:
Last summer, we published a Monthly Letter called Educational freedom: The best places for homeschooling, which you can read by clicking this link.
It covers which states and English-speaking countries offer the most homeschooling freedom.
We covered some non-English speaking countries’ homeschool freedom in this Sunday Intelligence article called France bans homeschooling to combat separatism.
And we discussed unschooling, the idea that children learn best when they’re interested in a subject, in this Sunday Intelligence piece called Parents are abandoning public schools in droves.
People often picture becoming a full time teacher if they choose to homeschool their kids— sitting them at the kitchen table, giving them instructions, and hovering over them while they complete worksheets.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. If you work from home, you could take a hands-off approach to direct your kids’ learning with a light touch, and encourage self-directed studies of what interests them most.
The current model of desk-and-teacher instruction is tailored to an industrialized world of factory workers. And we’re now solidly in the age of information.
Are you aware of how intricate the video game Minecraft can be? It’s customizable enough so kids can create almost anything if they teach themselves a bit of basic coding, chemistry or math.
For example, players can breed pandas and sheep that have different alleles, to express certain genes in the offspring. They can combine basic block elements to build anything from automatic doors with a custom doorbell chime, to working clocks and calculators.
Figuring out how to manipulate Minecraft is probably more useful in building marketable skills today than memorizing the times tables, or learning to write in cursive.
But on the opposite end of the spectrum, if your kid wants to spend their time building tree forts, taking apart engines, or riding bikes, that might not be a problem either.
In the book, Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School, Daniel Greenburg, the author and founder of the alternative school, explains his success in allowing children total freedom to choose how they spend their days. Staff is available to assist, or teach specific subjects when the kids themselves request it.
Greenburg recounts how all one kid did, all day, everyday, was fish in a little pond on campus. The boy’s father was concerned that his child would not learn the skills needed for life if all he did was fish.
But Greenburg assured the father that the child was also learning the biology of the pond, as well as teaching other children how to fish.
When the student grew up, he started a successful computer company— nothing to do with fishing, teaching, or biology.
Of course, you shouldn’t simply plop your kid in front of video games all day, or allow them to become feral.
The point is that there are many ways to approach education, and the standard model is not necessarily the best for every student. You know your children best (hopefully), so tailor their education to their needs.
You could also:
Join or start a cooperative homeschool pod
Homeschool parents trade kids a few hours each week to teach them various subjects and give them social interaction.
Hire a tutor for specific subjects
If you’re not comfortable or capable of teaching your child about a specific subject, hire a private tutor. (4 hours per week, at $50 per hour is $7,200 per school year.)
This can also work with the homeschool pod, for example, one tutor for ten neighborhood kids, six hours each week. ($300 per week, divided among ten kids, is only $30 per kid, per week.)
Turn you child into your apprentice
Apprenticeship was once the main method of educating older children and teenagers. Is your job or business something that you could make educational and interesting for your kids to participate in?
For older kids and teens, the more exposure to real world skills, the more equipped they will be to start businesses, engage in entrepreneurship, and create value at a young age.
No one has to sit a kid down at a desk to teach them how to talk or walk. They easily absorb information from their environment.
So by homeschooling, just the extra time you spend with your kids doing fun, enriching activities could do wonders for their education.
But if you send them to public schools, you’re taking a gamble on the type of people and type of lessons they will be surrounded with.
To your freedom,
The Sovereign Man Team
