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VIDEO: New “Racial Literacy Curriculum” for High School Pushes Social Justice in Every Subject, Including Math

VIDEO: New “Racial Literacy Curriculum” for High School Pushes Social Justice in Every Subject, Including Math

A new curriculum released by Pollyanna, Inc., diversity consultant to over 60 high-priced elite K-12 schools, preaches that “all texts grapple with race, either explicitly or implicitly,” that “health can be experienced at every size,” and tasks students with planning protests in math class.

Pollyanna Inc.’s new “Racial Literacy Curriculum” for high school students injects a Critical Race Theory lens and radical far-left politics into several major subjects of study, including English, Math, History, Biology, and Art.

At a leaked “implementation seminar” held on May 5, project manager Julia Kingsdale led prospective teachers and administrators through each of the 65 lessons of the curriculum, many of which not only rely on activist scholarship, but involve assignments directing students to becoming activists themselves.

Whether it concerns immigration, climate change, prison reform, income inequality, the curriculum is a cornucopia of political litmus tests, where every subject is exploited as a vector to promote policies popular with the AOC wing of the Democratic Party.

Every lesson is grounded in the tenets of Critical Race Theory—that systemic racism undergirds every aspect of society, and accounts for all disparities between racialized groups.  The curriculum is designed to be used whole or in part, but if fully implemented throughout a given school, a student could find themselves spending a full calendar year working through the material.

Art as a Tool for Activism

It’s bad enough to teach propaganda, but teaching students to be propagandists is even worse. For example, in an Art lesson about “culture jamming” students learn how graffiti artists “broadcast subversive messages about race and social justice,” before themselves being tasked to produce their own art “challenging their viewers to think about an aspect of race or social justice from a new perspective.” In a subsequent lesson, students learn how to make their own prints as a tool for activism.

All “Texts” Grapple With Identity and Race

The English curriculum promotes the concept of “intersectionality,” which in the context of storytelling focuses on the membership of authors, characters, and readers in multiply marginalized groups.  The course also reflects a postmodernist theoretical framework—”texts” are understood to be much broader than mere literature, and can include movies, graphic novels, even a culture itself, all of which are to be looked at through a racial lens. As the facilitator makes clear, “All texts grapple with race, either implicitly, or explicitly.”

Planning a Protest in Math Class

Even math class is exploited as a chance to turn students into social justice activists. In one assignment, students are tasked with planning a protest in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The final lesson of the mathematics curriculum explains the disproportionate killings of minorities by police as due to systemic racism. Relying on data from the activist group “Center for Policing Equity,” the curriculum author disingenuously conflates use of force disparities with disparities in the use of lethal force, ignoring a notable study by Roland Fryer suggesting that although applications of force are more frequent by police upon minority suspects, no disparities exist in the application of lethal force once accounting for controls such as the race of the officer, and whether or not the suspect drew a weapon. Curriculum that strawmans and “debunks” in such an intellectually irresponsible way is indoctrination, not education.

Health at Any Size

Under the biology-denying rubric that health is “socially constructed,” the “Health and Wellness” unit amplifies the canard that individuals can be “healthy at any size.” When mortality rates during a pandemic are tied to co-morbidities like obesity, teachers need to be clear that excessive weight gain is dangerous.

A Choice between “enlightenment” and “staying in the darkness”

At one point in the session, a teacher in attendance asked Kingsdale how best to respond to student pushback. Her answer was to present students with a choice between “sitting in guilt” and “evolving their understanding.” However, at no point are the purported truths pushed in this curriculum ever in doubt. Students “receive this information” and, once they are explained to them, they should “rather go through the difficult but enlightening process” of acceptance and learning than stay in the darkness of thinking “there’s no such thing as racism.”

To educators like Kingsdale, disbelief or questioning the existence or scope of “systemic” racism is tantamount to disbelief in racism itself, and can be dismissed out of hand as “staying in darkness.” Such is the logic of cults.

“Objectives” and “Key Understandings”

Critical Social Justice ideology is cemented in the “Objectives” and “Key Understandings” sections of the teachers’ guide, and students steered away from “possible misunderstandings”.

The full “Racial Literacy Curriculum” is available for free on Pollyanna’s website. I urge all parents who anticipate this material arriving in their child’s school to download it to review for themselves.

The K-8 curriculum is available here. The new curriculum for grades 9-12 is available upon registration here.

What is Pollyanna, Inc.?

Pollyanna, Inc., is a high-priced diversity consultant to the nation’s most elite and influential K-12 institutions. An archive of their most recent client list (which they pulled off their site after an exposé by Manhanttan Institute’s City Journal in 2021), boasts over 60 top National Association of Independent Schools schools, including Horace Mann, Riverdale, and Spence School in New York City, and Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles. Casper Caldarola, the founder of Pollyanna, was a former member of the Dalton board of trustees. Her background is in marketing and communications.

One of Pollyanna’s newest offerings is the four part workshop, “MaPaGa + Me: The ABCs of Race-Conscious Parenting, which where parents and guardians learn how to talk about race with their children who are four years old or younger.

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Paul Rossi is a high school mathematics teacher, tutor, and writer. In April 2021, he went public about the impact of Critical Race Theory and pedagogy on his students at Grace Church School, where he had taught since 2012. He is currently an advisor to the Educational Liberty Alliance and a co-founder of The Chalkboard Heresy Show, which platforming dissidents in education. Please send tips and stories to [email protected] or DM him on Twitter at @pauldrossi.

 

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Comments

Mr. Rossi,
Thank you for exposing this tendentious twaddle!

nordic_prince | May 23, 2022 at 7:26 pm

Reminds me of when I used to teach math at the community college – every year we had to complete these BS self-evals. They were bad enough, but in the last few years I was there they started including stuff like how would I incorporate diversity, culture, etc in my teaching. In response I put down “N/A since I teach math, not social studies” or something along those lines.

I can’t imagine what it’s like now. That kind of stuff was one of the things that drove me away from teaching.

    Jack Klompus in reply to nordic_prince. | May 24, 2022 at 9:01 am

    I tutored a college student in a remedial math class who couldn’t describe the characteristics of a rectangle. I tutored a second semester senior economics major who didn’t know what a demand curve was and didnt know how to graph a simple linear equation. Too many teachers aren’t doing their jobs, and if they’re teaching the material then they’re not holding bad students accountable but just passing them along.

      Dathurtz in reply to Jack Klompus. | May 24, 2022 at 2:23 pm

      A lot of teachers, to their shame, artificially pass students that have “oppressed” status. Right now I have 6 failing grades out of all my classes. I will receive zero questions over five of those. One of those students is going to take no fewer than 20 hours of my time in order to justify the failing grade. It is a huge pain to fail certain people.

Well, I did see a video of a panel discussing how to decolonize science. Apparently, I am supposed to explore topics like how a shaman can call down lightning bolts. Seriously.

I have to admit I am not prepared for that task.

Juris Doctor | May 23, 2022 at 7:37 pm

Julia Kingsdale (She/Her)

Anti-bias trainer and social justice educator
Masters Degree in Crical Race Theory from University of Utah

https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-kingsdale-316214206/

Another guilt-ridden Lily trying to atone for her whiteness.
Too bad Samantha Josephson can’t comment.

JackinSilverSpring | May 23, 2022 at 8:19 pm

Any reaction from the parents?

Most blacks will never get algebra, geometry, trig, or heavens forbid, calculus. So have your fun dumbing them down even more. “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” and study the hard stuff and because of those two things we’ll succeed.

    This is a soft bigotry of low expectations problem. All children can succeed with rigorous metrics for competence in place.

      Dathurtz in reply to Paul Rossi. | May 24, 2022 at 11:25 am

      It is simply false to say that all children can succeed unless we set a very low standard for success. Maybe if they had had a different past, or had more support at home, or more competent teachers in the past, or any of a number of factors being different. By the time a student gets to algebra, geometry, trig, or calc. it is pretty predictable who will succeed and who will not. The two major predictors of this are 1) Parent Income and 2) race. In no way to I think that race is determinative for an individual to succeed, but you’ve got a long row to hoe if you want to overcome how those two factors influence student performance over a large sample.

    Jack Klompus in reply to pfg. | May 24, 2022 at 8:59 am

    That’s nonsense and racist. I’ve taught students of every background, race, and income level who’ve succeeded in math at the highest level.

    WasTaiwanese=NowFullAmerican in reply to pfg. | May 24, 2022 at 10:29 am

    It’s not that black kids can’t do it, it’s that they won’t do it. And that attitude comes from black culture. That self-defeating culture has been around for years and shows no sign of ebbing away. In fact it seems to be intensifying.

A fine example of the grievance grifter industry.

Still & again: Any time ‘justice’ is modified by an adjective, it always means ‘Hate whitey and get revenge.’ Always.

    Milhouse in reply to LB1901. | May 23, 2022 at 10:37 pm

    No, sometimes it’s hate someone else. It may not even necessarily involve hate. But the one thing that adjective justice never involves is justice.

      healthguyfsu in reply to Milhouse. | May 23, 2022 at 11:53 pm

      Criminal justice?

      pst314 in reply to Milhouse. | May 24, 2022 at 7:00 am

      Yes: Often it’s “hate whitey”, but it also is “hate Jews” and “hate Asians” and in the end “hate anyone who is successful”. And not just successful in financial and professional terms, also successful in cultural terms: People who live their lives without committing crimes and going to prison (or getting shot by police or victims), people who have stable marriages with healthy successful kids, people who are respected in their communities, and so on.

      I see what you’re attempting to say, but I must disagree. Iffen you nuance away the obvious war against white people, at every level, and every turn, you’re not paying attention.

      We are at war. Prepare accordingly.

    scooterjay in reply to LB1901. | May 24, 2022 at 2:15 am

    I’ve been aware of that since childhood. Equality?
    Hell no, revenge!
    Step up, hoss.

      n.n in reply to scooterjay. | May 24, 2022 at 7:08 am

      Retributive change. It’s a shame that conservatives stood against slavery and diversity [dogma] on principle, since conception, long before the birth of our nation.

    n.n in reply to LB1901. | May 24, 2022 at 7:14 am

    Hate whitey and retribution, yes; but, generally, hate “act whitey” (e.g. moral rather than ethical, principles rather than Choice, individual rather than blocs) and retribution, excluding anointed whiteys who spread social contagion on principle in the pursuit of capital, control, and narcissistic indulgence in the olde modern model.

CRT is a hate crime.

    n.n in reply to geronl. | May 24, 2022 at 7:05 am

    Critical Racists’ Theory is constructed from Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE) under the Pro-Choice religion adopted by Progressive Churches, Corporation, Clinics, etc. DIE is a dogmatic policy that denies individual dignity, agency, and conscience, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. “people of color (POC)”), color quotas (e.g. Jew privilege), and affirmative discrimination (e.g. too many people of yellow (POY), and, of course, the wicked solution to relieve “burdens” h/t Obama, which is traditionally a negotiable but progressive (i.e. monotonic) commodity over time and place

In Gym Justice, students will participate in competitive flagellation spectaculars to repent of their unlovable skin.

Their ‘folks,’ proudly beaming in the bleachers, try not to itch the rashes from their mandated designer hair shirts.

    n.n in reply to jolanthe. | May 24, 2022 at 7:00 am

    Ah, the ascetic religion. Purity through abortion… flagellation by Choice. Take a knee, beg, good girl.

E Howard Hunt | May 24, 2022 at 8:21 am

1 fat, ugly chick plus 1 fat, ugly chick = 6 slim beauties x(-1)

Jack Klompus | May 24, 2022 at 8:33 am

Pollyana is one of the biggest loads of shit in education. Look at the background of the people peddling this nonsense. NONE of them have any experience in urban education and most of them are connected to the Dalton School, one of the priciest, most elite private schools in the world. If you read the biographies of these people they are all products of the most expensive universities in the country (Stanford, Columbia, NYU, Harvard) and they tout the bona fides with the most laughable, cliche, trendy terms knowing that “diversity” is a profitable buzzterm. From the looks of the leadership they look like a bunch of white, upper class, New Yorkers who have probably never spent one hour in a school in a working class neighborhood, on a Native American reservation, or in a poor rural community. That these brahmins think they have ANY insight into “racial literacy” is an absolute joke. They wouldn’t know the first thing about what it takes to bring quality education to underserved communities but they know how to monetize their white savior complexes. I would challenge this Calderola woman to go teach for one semester in a tough public school in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or in a rural Appalachian community in West Virginia. I’d be willing to bet she wouldn’t last a day.

    Dathurtz in reply to Jack Klompus. | May 24, 2022 at 11:29 am

    Hell, let them come teach in my rural (mostly) white school. We don’t even have the “danger” problems some schools have. It is easy to teach self-motivated (or parent-motivated) students and get great scores and look awesome. The number one predictor of getting a good rating as a teacher is the median income of your district. I would absolutely love to see the people that get to make the real decisions come work in either a public rural school or a public city school as a teacher.

The Livewire | May 24, 2022 at 2:27 pm

Annnddddd….

New York took the videos down.

The Left is using all these things as weapons against us and our country as part of a Cloward-Piven Strategy move to bring the country down.

thalesofmiletus | May 24, 2022 at 8:18 pm

“Unpossible! CRT is only taught in law schools, NEVER in public schools!”