Abstract
Equity initiatives and critical race theory (CRT) have recently emerged as an urgent agenda for K-12 schools. Jung-ah Choi argues that CRT is a useful framework but that teaching CRT principles to young children may have deleterious effects. In particular, it could undermine two bedrock notions: educational equality and meritocracy. It is not children but adults (specifically, educators) who need to focus on how racism has shaped school policies, curricula, instructional methods, and day-to-day interactions.
During a trip to Colorado, my family and I visited an underground gold mine. On the hourlong tour, we descended 1,000 feet into the earth and got a glimpse of what it is to live as a miner — hearing the sickening repetition of banging, digging, and scraping while suffocating underground with no rays of the sun reaching us. The tour guide explained the tedious and dangerous nature of the work, for which miners received little pay. After the tour, my teenage son asked who would be willing to take a mining job. I asked myself the same question during the tour: Whose life deserves such harshness? I was not able to answer.
To teach children about social inequality is a daunting task. I have devoted years to teaching critical perspectives to college students and prospective teachers. I encouraged them to interrogate the power structures that pervade schooling practices, policies, and curricula. My students read works by Paulo Freire, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and others to learn how schools serve the interests of dominant groups. Critical race theory (CRT) has shaped my mind and consciousness since the early years of my scholarly life, and today it shapes my instruction.
The 2020 death of George Floyd and the rising awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement led many in the general public to demand answers about the persistence of racial inequality, and CRT provides an apt framework. Armed with CRT, advocates for racial justice argue that racism is much deeper than the overt racial animus evident in racial slurs, microaggressions, and discrimination. Some have strongly pushed for the teaching of CRT in K-12 schools as a way of explaining the systemic and institutional racism still evident in our society and our schools (King, 2022; Vickery & Rodriguez, 2022). As valuable as CRT is as a tool for understanding, I fear that teaching CRT to young children may have deleterious effects because introducing students to the realities of social inequality too early will raise doubts in their minds about the notion of educational equality.
The challenges of introducing CRT
In the college courses where I taught about CRT, reading materials described how school norms, policy, curricula, and belief systems further marginalize already-marginalized populations. Learning about this was liberating and intellectually stimulating for many of my students; however, a majority of my students (white students) came away with distress, confusion, or even anger (Choi, 2018). To these students who believed schools are a ticket to success, the fact that school knowledge is a product of the white elite must have shaken their foundation. CRT contradicts virtually everything that my students had been taught in K-12. They were taught not to see someone’s race, but CRT taught how such color-blindness is racist. They were taught that America is a place of equal opportunity, but now they learned that it is a place of structural inequality and systemic oppression. They thought science and math were objective truths, and identifying racial bias in such curricula came as a shock.
As I now reflect on my years of teaching an incendiary topic, I realize how cognitive dissonance hampered my students’ learning and only made them defensive. It discouraged them from intellectual engagement in ideas that ran counter to their beliefs. In ruminating on my predicament, I wonder if some students were not intellectually ready to conduct such a sociological inquiry. Just as some are not capable of understanding calculus or string theory, some students may struggle in fully understanding the concept of CRT.
The limits of racial inquiry
If college students have trouble with CRT, how can we expect younger students to grapple with these concepts? If they are presented to young children too early, what will that do to their understanding of the two pillars that have buttressed schools: meritocracy and equal opportunity? What if Black children are left believing that hard work never will pay off because of structural barriers? Who would endure countless hours of academic struggle if there’s no hope of it benefiting them? A Black student who walks away from social studies class with the knowledge that our educational system favors whites could then enter a math classroom and attribute her wrong answers to “systemic bias.” Students who learn how the system is flawed may be quick to justify truancy and laziness.
We want our next generation to hold on to the hope that schools promise: that hard work will pay off. As adults, we know opportunities are not equal to all races and economic classes, but maybe children are better off believing — at least for now — that the world is fair. I want my son to make the most of this American dream, an opportunity our society offers. Even though my son has faced systemic racism at school (Choi, 2017), I worry that spending too much time focusing on how the dream doesn’t work for everyone will cause him to shut down.
I am not recommending that teachers avoid the subject of race entirely — it is an important aspect of many history and literature lessons, for example. However, on most days in most classrooms, students work on math problems, brainstorm for a science project, read novels, learn about health, memorize Spanish words, and so on in ways that aren’t explicitly connected to race. Although no subjects are race-neutral and all subjects are susceptible to racial bias, K-12 students do not generally engage with many of these subjects at a level where racial bias comes into play. When engaging kids in mathematical inquiry, there’s no need to divert their attention to the races of mathematicians or of learners. Teachers struggle daily to build rapport and trust with their students. Teaching about racial issues when it isn’t the primary topic of the lesson may only sabotage such a mission.
An adult talk
Educators, including prospective teachers, have a moral obligation to deconstruct Eurocentric curricula and the white-based norms and policies that prevail in schools. Racial issues should be central in how teachers and teacher educators think about teaching and learning. Equity initiatives are of the utmost importance for teachers of all subjects. Teachers need to learn how racism has shaped school policies, curricula, instructional methods, and day-to-day interactions. They need to be able to identify hidden bias and implement culturally relevant pedagogy. And to do so, they need to be well-versed in the education literature about critical race pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, anti-racist pedagogy, white privilege pedagogy, and/or Afro-centric curricula (Freire, 1970/2018; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 2003; Lynn & Dixson, 2013).
It is not children but adults who need to learn about CRT and apply it to their work, whether that work is in curriculum reform, instructional choice, policy reform, or school staffing. When teachers and administrators are better able to redress social and educational inequality, we take one step closer to an equitable world. The most intense discussions and debates should take place in college classrooms, school board meetings, and curriculum meetings, not in K-12 classrooms.