Critical Race Theory is taught to students in the Ethnic Studies course at Fishers High School, an elective course for grades 10-12. I could criticize CRT in a number of ways, but that will not be my point here. I just want to show that the theory is indeed taught to HSE students, and that we have not been told the truth about this.
Students in this course are taught in a lecture called “Origin of Race” that white, Western European Christians invented the idea of race “about five hundred years ago” to “justify” their oppression of other racial groups.
Relatedly, they are taught in one PowerPoint slide that
race exists entirely and only because of a system of power built to create a hierarchy.
In short, students are taught that the whole idea of a white person is something that whites invented so that they could be on the top of this system of power, oppressing others.
Students are also taught that racism is utterly pervasive in American life. For example, here’s a quote from one assignment:
…we have spent five weeks facing the racial injustice in education, housing, employment, and criminal justice. We’ve delved into red-lining, segregation, gentrification, public school funding, privilege, and policing to expose a system at work that actively disadvantages some people. Together we’ve moved beyond simplistic understandings of interpersonal racism, to instead ponder the far more damaging experience of institutional racism. We know that for every Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, there are a million nameless children that dwell in a poverty the nation has turned a blind eye to. We know that this isn’t a product of failure. The system is doing what it was created to do.
In addition, the teacher of the course highly praises James Baldwin, who says the following in an interview that students are assigned to read:
When quote-unquote, “white people” talk about progress in relation to Black people, all they are saying and all they can possibly mean by the word progress is how quickly and how thoroughly I become white. I don't want to become white. I want to grow up, and so should you.
Baldwin also speaks of “taking the bribe” and of “adjusting yourself to injustice.” The teacher asks students how they may have done this.
The course also touches on themes of “intersectionality,” the idea that it is important to take stock of all the aspects of each person’s “identity,” including the various oppressed categories that any given person might fall into.
These are central, defining themes of Critical Race Theory, as identified by CRT-founder Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in their standard and widely-cited textbook on the topic.
In this sense, Critical Race Theory is being taught, not just to faculty, but also to students in HSE schools.
And we haven’t been told the truth about this.
Misinformation from HSE and the Media
Here is a very brief excerpt of HSE Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Stokes in conversation with Mayor Fadness last year:
See her full answer here. Dr. Stokes has also said this:
I am not aware of any school teaching critical race theory (CRT) or making plans to professionally develop staff to teach CRT. In fact the Indiana Department of Education does not support the teaching of CRT in our schools as it is not one of the approved standards.
In addition, HSE’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Nataki Pettigrew, recently appeared on Larry Lannan’s podcast, where she said that CRT is not taught in HSE schools. As Dr. Pettigrew put the point:
I think what happens is we hear ‘CRT’, we hear the word ‘discomfort’, and we think “well this is going on in our schools because we’re talking about race and racism” when that’s not true … this is isn’t something that you just talk about or stumble upon in a classroom. It just doesn’t happen.
Since CRT is being covered in Ethnic Studies at FHS, she was not telling the truth.
Our local media have also been spreading falsehoods about this. Consider Arika Herron and MJ Slaby at the Indianapolis Star who wrote here that
The debate around critical race theory, a concept generally used in higher education and not taught in K-12 schools, has exploded in recent months at school board meetings and state legislatures around the country.
More misinformation and gaslighting. Ms. Slaby and Ms. Herron also routinely quote district officials denying that CRT is taught in HSE schools.
This is a significant betrayal of the public trust on the part of Ms. Herron, Ms. Slaby, and The Indianapolis Star. Did they bother to investigate the Ethnic Studies courses in the districts they cover before “reporting” on this? Or do they just make things up and uncritically publish district press releases?
Local media are not alone in their incompetence. Here and here you can find mainstream national news passing along the same misinformation. The media are consistently failing us.
Five Additional Examples of Misinformation
Example #1. HSE School Board Member Michelle Fullhart:
The article she links is further misinformation in The Indianapolis Star, this time by columnist James Briggs (behind a paywall). Mr. Briggs claims that parents are “misinformed” about what CRT is, and he quotes a professor of education claiming that CRT is only taught at the college level.
This is a standard line from people who spread misinformation about CRT: they love to claim that CRT is some sort of rocket science that can only be taught in graduate school. In fact, CRT is manifestly not rocket science, and you will see that I’m right about this if you spend ten minutes with the Delgado and Stefancic book I linked above.
Example #2. Fishers City Council Member Jocelyn Vare recommending the interview with Dr. Stokes above:
“CRT fever,” she says. That’s nice. Let me clarify for Ms. Vare: parents are not subjects of a “national fever.” We’re just tired of people like you gaslighting us with misinformation about what our schools are teaching.
Example #3. Fishers Elementary School Principal Brian Behrman re-tweeting “1619 Project” creator Nikole-Hannah Jones:
Imagine holding up Ms. Hannah-Jones—perhaps the most notorious spreader of lies about American history in recent memory—as a guardian against misinformation! Impressively outrageous!
Example #4. Former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jennifer McCormick, who remarked that
We don’t teach Critical Race Theory in K-12 but the Indiana GOP wants that rhetoric to continue. It’s a made-up disruption.
Like the others, she is not telling you the truth.
Example #5. HSE librarian JoyAnn Boudreau—the woman who teamed with Dr. Pettigrew to host the “anal sex for fourth-graders” webinar last year—spreading the same misinformation:
And here:
Ms. Boudreau was apparently losing sleep over a possible CRT ban even though she says that CRT is not taught. She also seems to think that parents who are tired of being lied to about CRT and who have the audacity to raise their voices in protest—including plenty of parents who aren’t white, by the way—are unaware that there is such a thing as racism. And I guess she’s also calling us racists? How absurd.
Response from Superintendent Stokes
I reached out to Dr. Stokes about this situation, and she spoke to the teacher of the Ethnic Studies course, Matt Bockenfeld, and FHS Principal Jason Urban before responding to me. Dr. Stokes insists that CRT is not taught in HSE schools. This is nonsense: we can see with our own eyes what is taught in the Ethnic Studies course, and we can verify for ourselves that it is what the experts (Delgado and Stefancic) identify as Critical Race Theory. I’m surprised by her refusal to acknowledge reality.
In addition, Dr. Stokes and Mr. Bockenfeld stressed that the content of the Ethnic Studies course is mandated by Indiana Department of Education Standards for Ethnic Studies Courses. I don’t agree that these IDOE standards require promotion of the CRT themes that Mr. Bockenfeld has been teaching. But my point stands irrespective of what the state standards say: Mr. Bockenfeld has been teaching major themes of Critical Race Theory, so Dr. Stokes and others who have claimed CRT is not being taught in grades K-12 have not been telling parents the truth.
Incidentally, you can read more of Mr. Bockenfeld’s thoughts on what he calls “Critical Race Theory Hysteria” here.
What to do?
The issue is first and foremost a matter of transparency and honesty. We haven’t been told the truth. This undermines parental authority and betrays the public trust, making it impossible for our community to function properly.
I think that the vast majority of the public finds this sort of behavior repugnant. I recommend that we express that feeling very clearly at the ballot box in November. I recommend that we re-take the school board, and, once we have done that, we should ask the new board to review classes like Ethnic Studies that deal with controversial material. I think this can be done constructively, and without animosity, to help teachers to improve their handling of issues that have been consistently dividing the community, and to help them return their focus to academic excellence instead of political activism. And it will put the board in a position to begin telling parents the truth again.
I’d like to close by noting as I have before that I have no problem with the idea of teaching high school kids what CRT is. Why shouldn’t they know? It’s a big issue these days. Of course, to do this correctly, you have to be transparent about what you’re doing, which means that the disinformation and gaslighting needs to stop. And I think that if you’re going to tell students about CRT, you have to do it in the way that you’d teach any controversial idea: you present the idea charitably, you explain the arguments for and against it, you share the leading alternative theories, and you encourage the students to think for themselves. That’s not how activists teach it, though. They just present CRT as if it were a known fact that only a racist would question. That is not a competent way to teach controversy, and we must not stand for it. Before we can fix anything, though, we need leadership that will tell us the truth.