the country's largest teachers union
says
it supports teaching critical race
theory in public schools
even though concerned parents across the
country are continuing to push back the
national education association
approving a resolution that claims it is
reasonable
and appropriate to include crt in
curriculum
and pledged to create a team of staffers
to help teachers fight back against
anti-crt rhetoric wall street journal
editorial page assistant editor and fox
news contributor
james freeman joins us now james thank
you so much for being here
um you you do know that those who are in
support of crt
say to deny it in schools is in effect
whitewashing history what's your
response
no it's not that at all what this is is
essentially an
anti-educational attempt to uh to erase
history
to uh to ignore the facts and create a
narrative that serves this
radical organization uh part of this
push is to get the
so-called 1619 project created by the
new york times into schools
we've seen liberal academics at blue
chip institutions former pulitzer
prize-winning historians saying
this tract has the facts wrong
both about the american founding there
was the initial claim that
that the american revolution happened in
order to preserve
slavery completely wrong they had to
amend that and say well
some of the colonists uh created america
for that reason there's
little if any evidence for that either
either it gets a lot of facts wrong
about the civil war
it basically slams lincoln by
attributing racist comments to him that
were made by the opponents that he was
fighting so
it's it's really an attempt to erase
history and replace it with ideology
do some of this though belong in the
classroom if there are those if there
are parents or families out there who
believe that
our our history lessons in school don't
go far enough
well i think that part of the deception
behind this
movement critical race theory is to say
well this is really about
uh teaching our history reckoning with
our history recognizing the faults
it is not about that absolutely that
should be part of history
uh the flaws the the the way those
ideals that we
celebrate from 1776 were not realized
for many people for so long
absolutely that should all be part of
history
but what uh what this effort is is
to essentially create a new narrative
uh to say that that america at its core
is about
racism and always has been and that's
why it was created and that
to this day is what uh drives our
society it's a falsehood
uh you can talk about all the errors
that they've made in the history
and and many historians have but you
take it to the present day
this idea of systemic racism which is
uh never precisely defined and that's
because you can't really explain if
if you want to say everything is about
race and and white supremacy
you know how is it that uh that uh asian
americans have had such
economic success in this country how is
it that uh we've had uh
african americans in such leadership
roles uh two-term president current vice
president uh
attorney general mayors uh police chiefs
running this system that we're told is
is fundamentally racist
and this is something that definitely
has as a parent at odds with each other
we have
parents who are upset with teachers
teachers who are upset with the union it
kind of goes all the way around and one
of the big questions the wall street
journal
brings up is like the long-term effects
what does this mean i want to put up
a headline here from an editorial in the
wall street journal school
choice marches ahead and the point of
this editorial
was that there are so many there are so
many
states out there now that are reforming
um systems in the schools and the
funding in the way it's going because a
lot of it is now going to more school
choice
you're seeing more for charter schools
more options for parents
because and this came out of the
pandemic because there were so many
people who were frustrated that the
teachers wouldn't come back
so is could crt in effect continue to
push this to other states
i think it is a dangerous time for the
teachers union
pushing this right after they spent a
year
doing everything they could to keep
classrooms closed and we've seen what a
disaster that has been for america's
children both in terms of lost education
and the future lost income that comes
from a lack of education
and the mental health lots of disturbing
data on
on adolescent harm self harm
in medical claims data this is this has
really been
terrible for children and it was driven
by
the teachers union the any teachers
unions nea foremost among them
to now come back and uh embrace this
radical uh set of beliefs uh that is
that is really at war with the
historical record i think we'll
have a lot of parents wondering and also
you mentioned teachers you know i think
there was some whispering over the last
year well i don't really
i'd like to be back in the classroom but
the union doesn't want it this might be
another case where this is yeah
absolutely absolutely
continue to follow especially as the
school year begins pretty soon
thank you so much appreciate