St. Charles, Missouri, a pleasant suburb about 30 miles west of St. Louis, is the latest flashpoint in the battle against woke bigotry in schools.
It’s alleged that curriculum writers at Francis Howell School District plotted with a critical race theory (CRT) advocate to keep parents in the dark about their efforts to push social justice advocacy in the classroom.
This video is a condensed version of a September 2020 webinar with members of the district’s curriculum-writing team.
Their “equity consultant,” LaGarrett King, a social studies professor from the University of Missouri, hosted it. King was introduced as a specialist in “race, critical theories and knowledge.” He’s authored pieces lauding the Marxist origins of CRT.
During the webinar, King claimed, “This is not a safe space,” but rather a “racialized space,” because “in many ways, a safe space is a space where white people tell us how not racist they are. And this is not that space.”
King added that, “the first thing we have to understand is that our social studies and our history curriculum is political and racist.”
He then asked the predominantly white attendees to question whether they are developing black history curriculums through the historical lens of the so-called oppressor.
The nation’s founding “means nothing to black people,” King believes, calling history “psychologically violent” and one-sided.
“All of our wars were about freedom, violence. But yet, when black people say, ‘Hey, we need to take over, man. We need to burn this place down, we need to do this, we need to do that.’ ‘Oh no, you should do non-violence to achieve freedom.’ It’s silly. It’s prejudice.”
During the question-and-answer portion, some teachers asked how they could reframe their classes to look at history through a more racial, social justice lens without irking their “highly conservative” community, which one teacher described as “the middle of Trump country.”
In reality, the former president won 57% of this county’s vote last fall, and the Republican congressional incumbent survived by just 3 points.
One teacher on the call said she’s been teaching about “white privilege” for a decade.
“Kids are way more open,” she said. “But then they go home and tell their parents, and then their parents get upset. I don’t advertise to my students when I’m teaching U.S. history that sometimes I would consider myself the anti-U.S. history teacher.”
School board members recently voted to approve black history and black literature courses as electives in the district that’s only 3% black.
“Students and parents requested these courses be added to the curriculum and we are proud to offer them for those who choose to expand their learning on these topics,” the district said in a statement.
While the district’s teachers have privately discussed efforts to teach students through a left-wing social justice angle, school leaders publicly deny this is transpiring.
At a recent school board meeting, Superintendent Nathan Hoven said the district has not adopted CRT into its curriculum framework.
“We are not and have no interest in advancing any political agenda,” he said.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
