Randi Weingarten, the gaffe-prone president of the American Federation of Teachers has outdone herself, and that isn’t easy. In a series of seven open letters over the years, I have playfully chided the union boss about her trove of inane and bizarre musings. But now she has jumped the proverbial shark.
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Speakers at Towson University’s virtual “Antiracist Pedagogy Symposium” criticized university writing curriculum and programs for being racist and perpetuating Whiteness.
The event occurred on June 17.
April Baker-Bell (pictured above), associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education at Michigan State University, argued that idea of Standard English among teachers is used to maintain racist assumptions about “Black language.”
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Albion College recently announced its selection for the 2021 Common Reading Experience: “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi. The Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience is a mandatory program for all first-year students.
According to the school’s website, “all of Albion’s first-year students read a shared text that serves both to connect students to one another and to help them make the important shift from high school to college.”
In an email addressed to the Albion Community on Wednesday, June 2, 2021, the Common Reading Experience (CRE) Taskforce revealed that it had chosen the book for the first-year mandatory curriculum.
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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) released a new admissions plan for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology largely based on lottery rather than academic merit. The new plan proposed by FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand omits the current standardized testing requirements.
FCPS says it will admit 100 students based on high evaluations. The high school would select the remaining 400 at random through something they call a “merit lottery.”
Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) paid critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 to give an hour-long virtual presentation. Kendi is the bestselling author of “How to Be Antiracist,” a book of circular definitions used to explain critical race theory.
The average teaching assistant earns $23,000 a year; the staff spent nearly that much for a 45-minute lecture and 15-minute Q&A.
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