If you missed me yesterday in real time, when I was interviewed on Southern California Public Radio by arts and culture reporter Chloe Veltman about the brouhaha over Victor Arnautoff‘s provocative “Life of Washington” mural at San Francisco’s George Washington High School, here’s another chance—a soundbar for the podcast, courtesy of KPCC, Los Angeles:
And in two related developments:
—An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle strongly argued for making the “bold and correct move” of “keep[ing] the murals on display as significant work and an educational tool.”
—A draft for a new California K-12 curriculum in Ethnic Studies appears to raise political correctness (as espoused by those who would destroy Arnautoff’s mural rather than understand it), to new, parody-worthy heights.
Here’s how yesterday’s NY Times report by describes the proposed Ethnic Studies standards, which may require a “woke”-ness dictionary to decipher:
They ask students to “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression.” [Is capitalism a “form of power and oppression”?] A goal, the draft states, is to “connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice.”
This sounds more like an indoctrination than an education.
One member of the committee that wrote the proposed curriculum (who was quoted by the Times) is an Ethnic Studies teacher in Mountain View, home to CultureGrandson (not yet of school age).
There’s still hope, though: “Even progressive policymakers in the state are promising significant revisions,” Goldstein reports.
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