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When my family and I were planning our move to New York City, we had a list of criteria that was important to us in choosing a home. The list included things like commute time, nearby amenities, and neighborhood feel, but the quality of the neighborhood school for our son topped the list. We did Google searches, read reviews, and asked friends and associates for suggestions. We finally settled on the school he now attends. In the fall of 2020, my son started kindergarten.
But he had only been in school a few weeks when I noticed something odd in the lesson plan. They announced that, for the first time, they would be teaching STEM in kindergarten, and the first lesson was, "Women in STEM," by which they meant, women and minorities had been marginalized in STEM. This was apparently very important. My son was four.
I requested a meeting with the teacher and questioned the appropriateness of the lesson. But the teacher and principal couldn't see my point, because women have been marginalized in STEM, as they took turns patiently explaining to me. It's real, was the point they made over and over.
"So is murder and rape but you wouldn't teach that to kindergarteners!" I shot back, to little effect.
But while the lesson wasn't age-appropriate, this wasn't even my biggest concern. Lessons like these are part of the DEI program—the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda that's been infecting institutions across the U.S. of late. This agenda is designed to eliminate racism (though racism is viewed as "structural" and thus, paradoxically, incurable), and in the school setting, it's ostensibly designed to close achievement gaps. But more often than not, these efforts don't involve raising up those impacted by real racism and real academic gaps between the wealthy and everyone else; they instead drag everyone else down, canceling achievement benchmarks or eliminating standards altogether.
Many of the concerns about DEI challenge its morality, claiming it is racist against whites or trying to force equity of outcomes, and they aren't wrong. But again, that's not the real danger. The greater risk is that this approach can be harmful to the very students it is designed to help.
And my son, the only black kid in his class, is one of them.
Teaching him STEM at an early age would of course have my blessing. It might indeed help close the race gap in these coveted positions. But instead of teaching him STEM, the school decided to teach him to see himself and the girls in his class as marginalized. How does that help him? Creating engagement and making the subject fun is far more effective than telling children that people who looked like them were excluded in the past.
And this was far from the only time I experienced the unintended consequences of DEI. After a lesson on Martin Luther King Jr., my son came home and told me he could be a slave. While in first grade, he told me that all the women and girls in Saudi Arabia get shot by the police. On a Zoom call discussing plans to roll out even more DEI initiatives, the principal told me that blacks—today, not in the past—are oppressed and are "genetically different from whites."
You can imagine what impact this can have on my son's education, being the only black student in his class, with leadership like this.
Things did improve. My son's principal retired, and the new principal had a much different approach. When the DEI agenda rears its ugly head these days, it's because it's being pushed by the Department of Education, not the teachers, and my complaints are at least heard out. I've had several meetings with the principal and teachers, and they have been positive, engaging, and effective.
But what about the rest of the district and the city at-large?
There is nothing wrong with trying to ensure that every student gets a quality education; indeed, this is an admirable goal. There is nothing wrong with focusing on students who need additional help. But it's wrong to assume all students have the same needs based on their race or gender. And it's harmful to be so focused on effecting change that you don't measure the results.
Good intentions mean nothing if the results are bad.
But though things are slightly better at my son's school these days and I have to worry less about him being taught to see himself as a disempowered victim, I worry deeply about the rest of New York City's public school kids, especially given what I see in the curriculum.
So I've decided to run for a seat on our local Community Education Council, the education policy advisory body responsible for reviewing and evaluating the district's educational programs, approving zoning lines, and holding public hearings.
I want to bring nuance to these difficult conversations. I don't want to ban anything—books, CRT, DEI, or anything else—but I also don't want any parent's concerns to be ignored. Everyone should have a voice, and things aren't as black or white as they seem.
Last week, a woman stopped me in front of my son's school. She wanted to know if I liked the school. She was considering pulling her son out of his current school because she didn't like the administration's approach to race.
I told her if that is why she's doing it, there's no use, because every school has the same directive, but if she addressed her concerns with the school and they did not listen, that was a reason to consider leaving.
She said she had and was ignored.
I want to be a voice for parents like her, who feel the school, or the DOE, isn't listening to their concerns.
In case you're wondering, like me, the mother was black.
Charles Love is the executive director of Seeking Educational Excellence, co-host of The Cut the Bull Podcast, and the author of "Race Crazy: BLM, 1619, and the Progressive Racism Movement." The 2023 CCEC Elections are open through May 9, 2023. You must be a parent with a child in a NYC public school. Vote here.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
