San Diego teachers white privilege training will now make them less racist? San Diego Unified School District is requiring educators attend classes to focus on institutional bias- but will it make for a better education and better students?
Who would have thought? A report has told of teachers in San Diego now being required to attend a ‘white privilege’ training in which they are asked to commit to becoming ‘anti racist’ along with acknowledging that they meet on stolen land taken from Indigenous peoples.
According to documents shared by journalist Christopher F. Rufo, the training is mandatory for all teachers within the San Diego Unified School District.
As part of the training, the teachers are told to discuss how they would feel if they were told: ‘You are racist.’
Teachers were also asked to discuss how they’d feel if they were told: ‘You are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.’
The documents, which were leaked by Rufo, show the outline of the discussion and the talking points, including how teachers must become ‘anti racist’ activists’.
Are you ready to confront your own institutional culpability?
According to the dailymail, teachers are mandated to ‘confront and examine [their] white privilege,’ acknowledge ‘white fragility’ and ‘teach others to see their privilege’.
But there’s more.
During the session, instructors inform teachers that they will experience ‘guilt, anger, apathy [and] closed-mindedness’ due to their ‘white fragility’.
Raise your hands if you’re guilty?
And there’s more.
The seminar also includes a section on ‘land acknowledgement’.
‘We acknowledge that we meet on stolen land, taken from Indigenous peoples. I am speaking to you from Kumeyaay land. We must acknowledge the hidden history of violence against Indigenous peoples in an effort to move towards justice,’ one slide reads.
Indoctrination vs education
Which raises the loaded question – will ‘white fragility’ pointers help make teachers more able to help students improve their academic abilities? Allow for a more harmonious teaching setting? Enabling a race or a collective to forever believe their inability to excel or persevere is the by product of them being perennial victims?
Or will such ‘re-education’ serve to inform marginalized students that only after careful re-programming educators may finally impart a balanced education? Or ought one fret if teachers impart their own racist bias towards pupils – which is to suggest grading and failing on race is a real concern. But is it?
Or will it as Rufo alludes simply make educators more woke, politically correct (yet again…) and allow educators to shift their own personal failings to ‘systemic racism’?
As one social commentator reflected, ‘educate not indoctrinate!’
