T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
I'm not quite that cynical yet. Maybe in five years.
I'm already there. It started with the "Raza Studies" program in the TUSD:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/raza-studies-defy-american-values/
https://www.edweek.org/education/controversy-over-raza-studies-in-tucson/2008/07Liam Julian at Flypaper points out that teachers who teach the courses with a Mexican-American perspective in Tucson are invited to attend a seminar in which they work with leading scholars in the areas of “Latino critical race theory, critical race theory, critical multicultural education, Chicana/o studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and critical race pedagogy.” He concludes: “It’s incredible.”
This was 2008, over a decade ago.
Raza Studies was an early Critical Pedagogy / Critical Race Theory program that radicalized the students. The teachers were Leftist radicals. Although much of the stuff that was available on the internet back then is no longer there (a big problem with our increasingly ephemeral digital world), the program held summer seminars to teach the teachers. The guest speakers were a who's who of the most radical Leftist Socialists and Communists in university education programs.
I worked with a reporter from the Arizona Republic, Doug MacEachern, on this including feeding him a detailed analysis of their bogus statistics on the program's effectiveness.
I went head-to-head with a couple of the teachers back then on the Arizona Republic's website and message boards. They were royally pissed over people not siding with them. Their argument was essentially I'm a teacher in the program so I know better than some random person what's going on with it... never offering a shred of evidence beyond that. They were defending the indefensible and they knew it.