“What is culturally relevant teaching?” That is the question I set out to answer four years ago.
Back in 2020, my wife and I were preparing to be parents and I had started researching the state of our educational system. I quickly realized that I knew essentially nothing about what was happening in our schools, despite attending them for the first twenty-two years of my life.
The buzzwords were everywhere – “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),” “social-and-emotional learning (SEL),” “restorative justice (RJ),” and “culturally relevant teaching,” to name a few. I was completely lost, but I knew that some people on the TV were telling me that DEI, for example, meant teaching kids to respect others and treat people equally. Others were telling me that DEI was “brainwashing.” Clearly DEI was a point of contention, which confused me. How could anyone have a problem with diversity? How could anyone have a problem with equality? How could… wait. Does “equity” mean “equality”? What the hell is equity? I was curious.
After some quick google searches, I learned that “equity” meant “giving all kids an equal shot at the same outcome.” “Well,” I thought, “that’s insane!” I had recently read some Thomas Sowell, and he completely dismantled the “disparities equal discrimination” spell that I had fallen victim to in my early 20s. I knew that all children were different and, for various reasons, should be expected to reach different educational outcomes. The only way to produce equal outcomes between children is to artificially create unequal inputs between children. If you want all kids to cross the finish line at the same time, you must create a custom track for each child. Fast kids get weighted vests and obstacles. Slower kids get rollerblades and a slope.
How did schools get the idea that equality of outcomes was at all possible, let alone desirable? I was curious, so I started researching the “equity” pages of various school websites in my area. It was there that I kept running into “culturally relevant teaching” as an “equitable” practice for schools. Apparently “culturally relevant teaching” was a way to help schools produce equal outcomes between students.
“Ok,” I thought. “Let’s figure out what culturally relevant teaching is.” I was curious. I wanted to know what it was and how it was tied to “equity.” I wanted to know how I had never encountered the term in my early schooling, yet it was now ubiquitous on every district page I looked at. “It had to have come from somewhere,” I thought. Who created it?
I moseyed on over to Google Scholar for the first time in over a decade. I searched for “culturally relevant teaching,” and hit “enter.” I received over three million results in a tenth of a second. Whoa! The results overwhelmed me, so I set my eyes on the two most cited – Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy (over 12 thousand citations); and But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy (over 6 thousand citations).
Both articles were authored by Gloria-Ladson Billings in the mid-1990s. I started with Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, the most cited result. It was there that I first encountered the term “critical consciousness,” which Billings identifies as the central learning objective culturally relevant teaching. “Culturally relevant teaching must,” she wrote, “[lead to the] development of a sociopolitical or critical consciousness.” I now know that critical consciousness is the cult belief that everything in society is designed to oppress you, and the only way to come to know “the truth” of the world is to become a Marxist committed to the “prophetic vision of social justice,” to quote Henry Giroux (writing about Paulo Freire’s critical theory of education.) But, at the time, all I knew was that I needed to know more. “Wait… what? The central goal of education is the development of a *political* consciousness,” I thought. “What the hell is going on here?” I was curious.
In But that’s just good teaching, I encountered Paulo Freire’s name for the first time. I learned that culturally relevant teaching is an “approach similar to that advocated by noted critical pedagogue Paulo Freire.” I also learned that “critical consciousness” was something Ladson-Billings wasn’t mincing words about. “Students,” she said, echoing her statement in Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, “must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order.”
“Excuse me?!” Culturally relevant teaching was all the rage in every school district I investigated. I now recognized Gloria’s name all over the source documents I found. Why on earth are all of the schools invested in a program that teaches kids to “challenge the status quo of the current social order?” Who is Paulo Freire? What are “inequities,” and why must students learn to “critique the cultural norms, values, mores, and institutions that produce and maintain” them? How did all of this become “good teaching”?
I tell you this story for a purpose, though. A purpose that starts with a question.
I have a nagging question, one that I haven’t been able to shake since the very early days of my research: what happened to curiosity?
I didn’t fall into the rabbit hole that is “woke.” I was dragged into it by my curiosity. I had no choice in the matter. What am I looking at? Where did this come from? Who decided this should be in schools, and what is the objective? These are the questions that broke the cult’s spell over me.
Ten years ago, I was fully immersed in the Woke “cult milieu.” I didn’t ask any questions, I just assumed that I was a “good person” on the “right side of history” because I supported anything and everything that sounded virtuous. It never occurred to me that the language I was using may hide contrived terms and radical agendas; never occurred to me that education today could be extremely different than the education I received 20 years ago; never occurred to me that there may be reasons why six-out-of-ten children in Wisconsin aren’t proficient in reading or math.
According to Robert J. Lifton, an American psychiatrist who has spent decades studying cult psychology, “the most basic feature of the thought reform environment…is the control of human communication.” Cults do everything they can to control what their disciples can see, read, think, hear, say, and write. One of their primary tools cults deploy for killing a bubbling curiosity that may lead someone to stray from cult doctrine is the “thought terminating cliché.”
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.”
“But that’s just good teaching!” is a thought-terminating cliché that no longer works on me. It did prior to 2020, but after reading Gloria Ladson-Billings’ work, I now know that, for her, “good teaching” means practicing critical theories of race, sex, gender, and culture on children. That is to say, I now know the “good teaching” children receive in schools is actually systematized brainwashing.
If we’re going to break the spell the Woke cult has caste over our entire educational infrastructure in the United States, we’re going to need curiosity to make a massive comeback. People need to start asking basic questions – the “who, what, when, where, and why” – and follow their curiosity down the rabbit hole.
As I write this, our elite universities are in open revolt. The question of the day is, “How did U.S. universities become so antisemitic?”
Aren’t you curious?
Sources:
- Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
- Ladson‐Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into practice, 34(3), 159-165.
- Lifton, R. J. (1989). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism: A study of “brainwashing” in China. University of North Carolina Press.
19 comments
You should really offer a script of your podcast, to reach wider audience and get better results. Reading, not listening is the most effective way of learning for many people. You should also be ware that among your audience are non-native English speakers who find it difficult to follow your speech. You may very well make a charge for scripts.
Quote “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.” – Unquote.
For me – regardless of less effect statements in the article – is a paragraph that means more that 100 long monologues i’ve here. What i do not understand is how ( or why ) within the process of anti woke Lindsay et al effectively subscribe to the use of the totalitarian canon by ‘saying it’ constantly.
For example it concedes once you let them own such terms as critical consciousness given that only critical consciousness is the way out. James is using critical consciousness claiming not to using the hack via metacognition that the totalitarians do. But he might as well be, since JL is very like a agent provocateur who is actually hammering the nail into the coffin in confirmation that these terms are totalitarian ones only.
What do JL et al want? To lead us all so that these harmless terms are revised to something new by the proletariat, thus very effectually delivery exclusive rights to the cabalists ?
I do not mean to say don’t use the terms in the course of. Its just that the way its being done is more like a psy-op dispossessing academic types of the these terms. Maybe JL is just out of his depth and trusts a well funder by cabalists undercover social engineering lab too much ( New Athiem ) Because he constantly publishers matter thats tempered in a way thats offering a monopoly on terms.
You are unaware or aware of this James ?
Quote “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed.” Unquote
This is since at variable rates from very poor to ‘ok’, most people have weak metacognitive skills – i’e the ability to combine life memory experience to the matters of the present – you used the term ‘thought terminating cliche’ effecting revising the matters & technically helping the cabalists own the Truth Era terms.
Self interest Lancing ? – You are looking forward to a trade in post truth language ?
dude your comment is so schizophrenic I don’t even know what you’re saying. rewrite in better English.
Yeah…wtf is going on there?
Ivevre/reread a few times now, but coherence is just not there
Quote Yeah…wtf is going on there?
Ivevre/reread a few times now, but coherence is just not there ” Unquote
lol New Discourses really should think about a stand up version.
Wtf that was going on there was always going to attract what it attracted & was always going to illustrate why some will be sure decoherence is coherence. Its almost like little new atheists are under mind control by big new atheism HQ. So little think they have coherence from HQ. Except ‘HQ are themselves controlled by big cabalism big funding.
Mate its not difficult to understand how ‘certainty’ wasn’t ‘certainty’ in the first place = uncertainty & decoherence. ‘HQ’ is not seeking Truth its only in it for the money just as always and is getting it by flogging POST TRUTH.
Then your type come along ‘looking for coherence’ i.e a denial of those FACTS!!! Rich hard porkins and his followers have just the best seeking truth BS in the universe theres no doubt about that – New Atheist still is the number one old bollocks factory.
haha
Quote – ” dude your comment is so schizophrenic I don’t even know what you’re saying. rewrite in better English. ” – Unquote
Lol i see. I certainly hit a nerve that resorts to cheap swipe of handbag there.
You speak in an entire article as if to be taking an ironic search for ways to instil lost curiosity without a hypothesis concerning how those conditions might have become as such. NO you have not set that out in the article, that material is just an outline about the conditions in the world // a mish mash of general remarks that exist in parlance. In its place you make the empty assertion that theres a ‘thought terminating cliche’ without ( it would seem ) noticing that such a statement implies a pandemic of such cliche able to disable human faculties. Thats fine – it is reasonable. Both assertions have validity in their own manners of speaking if theres going to be a real piece of scientific work. However in an empty hypothesis ( such it is ) the pairing constitute zero logic being entirely metaphysical when it comes to the reaction your call a kind of realisation / wake up moment / change of cognitive lifestyle due to your advice ?. in their present state your coupling of curiosity / the termination of it – is just bits n pieces of predicate logic artefact. Thus you have a pair of random potentials that ad up to nonsense so far, but could mean something someday IF an axiom – on is going to appear & yet you expect reaction already ??? That virtually informs the struggling non woke theres a thought based cliche curse in the air & that their curiosity has that to overcome even before they know how to get curious about it in pre & post truth terms = Metaphysics.
That a death of curiosity / its terminating social engineering might have happened this is not in dispute. Its just that other than by barking @ the moon you give no valid insight into how it might have done. Hence in order to say curiosity is dead & a memetic sociological disease is responsible without reason, its not different enough to the way Maoists demoralise the people to be valid. Not quite in a way where may as well place your vital possessions in a knotted rag on the end of a stick & go off in search of the the great oligarchy in the sky. But its clear that totalitarianism design comes with algorithms that recycle the sloppy & empty to mean what they want it to mean quite automatically making good use of what YOU are saying right away. If you insist that the mortgage is paid by empty hypothesis their knowhow will just absorb your words into the totalised system.
The trouble with people like you is that bread on the table & the needs of humankind are a great gulf apart. And they become entirely unrelated if you just won’t apply some actual challenging logic into such statements. Your kind of output is more of a cartoon or soap opera competing for the attention of weak minds.. The curious mind is your enemy since you are an entertainer that thinks hes fighting the system. Nobody fights systems with such empty wishy washy hypothesis. That just attracts dim followers on the basis they cannot understand more as they are the mainstream. You know a twisted masterpiece in someones own mind is relevant or you’d not have said :,
”dude your comment is so schizophrenic I don’t even know what you’re saying. ”
let alone your making such fear filled schizotypal diagnosis.
My advice to you is to overcome that fear // have a look on the other side of it. Every academic human has some type of threshold in self delusion telling them they’ve grasped the worlds problems. To still be doping it off the back of nil hypothesis positioning strongly suggests that a post truth canvas from which to complain about the same post truth. How can one expect to mean something when bleating at a logicless system by ones own logicless approach ? In order to say or do something under these circumstances they’ll have to be a process of the previous ‘Truth Era’ in your approach.
I know i know, Fact finding process is slow, and the shallow follower ( 98% ) are bored immediately = you are confronting totalitarianism using its own habits. Well its your choice. In fact cheer up as it proves being a self confessed idiot pays
It is good that alternative news channels ( like ND and yours ? ) concerning encroaching totalitarianism exist. Just news & those ‘ways to beat it’ never come. Its a terrible accident to in accordance to cabalist style post truth when nothing matters & such emptiness IS the solution without realising. Like a arch marxist from HQ ( which new atheists are anyway ) – you even conclude victory over the publics ability to naturally select a downgrade to their own curiosity by capitulating to a cliche on the back of nothing Incredible. How do you know its not just your hubris telling you that when in reality ‘X’ ( not curious ) meets Y ( your thesis isn’t there ).? Frankly its hard to tell if you are just idiots or are cleverly enmeshed in cabalist behaviour.
My best guess is that you should start from the beginning all over again this time disbelieving yourself. If however you simply haven’t believed yourself in the first place = always knowing it was only entertainment then ( logically ) nothing changes.
And why should it ”Mathematician” ?
Great!
This man is now about to learn about “postcolonial theory” when he looks into universities sympathy for anti-Jewish, pro-Palestinian protests.
In Wisconsin, 6 out of 10 students are not proficient in reading and math?! What the heck, Wisconsin used to be thought of as an academic leader. And our elections were thought to be beyond reproach. Maybe these changes can be attributed to our reputation of “midwest nice”. I remember when WPR became “unlistenable” since it only represented half the public, if that. I knew it was happening and still think I lack the ability to do anything about it.
Holy cow, a written article! I stopped coming here because of the dismaying trend of audio/video becoming the dominant format for conveying information on the internet. I get why you do it, money, and can respect that, but it’s just too slow, inefficient, and difficult to cite and reference.
Hopefully you’ll be sprinkling a few more written articles among the audio/video content.
Addendum: I foolishly didn’t look at the byline and assumed it a piece from James. I thought it didn’t quite add up! Regardless, a good article, and another good resource at your website.
gmmay: You make a very good point. I think that written articles are much better, and I don’t understand this almost complete switch to audio/video. The non-verbal inputs that come from a video may be emotionally compelling to many people, but that should be reserved to political propaganda, not for conveying a content that can pass academic standards. Videos also promote a more passive attitude on part of the viewer. The reader of a written text can freely regulate the speed of reading, instantly and easily go back to previous sentences if he/she feels to have misunderstood something etc. Going back to a specific point in a video is much more difficult and annoying, and the images could actually distract from the content of the message. Both forms of communication have their place but I hope that New Discourses will publish more written texts.
I also dislike audio/video formats and seek only written texts, but all of James Lindsay’s audio/videos on ND are also posted on his youtube channel which includes written transcripts of all the audios so the text can easily be cited or copied for reference.
Good explanation of “critical consciousness” but Lancing misses the boat at the end. The question is “How did the US establishment become so dedicated to Zionist ethnic cleansing, even genocide, in Israel, and why are they labeling anti-Zionism as antisemitic”? Here’s where curiosity will take you right into the heart of the “deep state”.
I think Oprah Winfrey facilitated a lot of the capture by spell casting and promotion of particular literature by her media entertainment power and reach. Remember, all teachers are also victims of the cult too.
What is do perplexing is the entire establishment of business, mainstream media, politics and pop culture is on board with this. A generation educated prior to this will recognize the foul play and have an different mindset and immunity from this propaganda. But children who are captured early on may not.
And is this Ladson Billings really a plant that is promoting a dictator in the wings???
commenter wrote: “the entire establishment of business, mainstream media, politics and pop culture is on board with this”
Yes. And for a very specific reason: Power. Daniel Greenfield explains:
“Socialism is not an ideology of street-level social reformers, but of aspiring gods who look down and imagine moving people around like so many toys until everything fits perfectly. Wealth now buys you the privilege of looking down and toying with the less well off in the name of social justice. It doesn’t take much to toy with the really poor, but the genius of leftist politics is that the wildly rich can use it to grind down poorer rivals and aspiring members of the middle class.
Leftist politics are one part perpetual outrage, two parts magical thinking and four parts pagan godhood. Radicals are not made out of the molten metal of oppression but poured out of the golden crucible of prosperity. It isn’t the mobs rising up from the streets, but descending down from pricey prep schools to study gender theory in between shopping trips to hip boutiques and protests.
The mediocre elites of Mt. Olympus have their McMansion versailles not despite their socialism, but because of it. Stockbrokers call for the redistribution of wealth, doctors demand that medicine be socialized, and celebrities champion the rise of the working man. Up in the sky, idealism seems more real than common sense and reality is for the lesser folks below.”
Excellent comment. ““Socialism is not an ideology of street-level social reformers, but of aspiring gods who look down and imagine moving people around like so many toys until everything fits perfectly. Wealth now buys you the privilege of looking down and toying with the less well off in the name of social justice. It doesn’t take much to toy with the really poor, but the genius of leftist politics is that the wildly rich can use it to grind down poorer rivals and aspiring members of the middle class.”
Grinding down the poor and aspiring middle class is exactly the point I made on the many reports about our state’s progressive supermajority overriding any veto efforts in order to ram their oppressive increase in regulations and taxes. They are no longer doing the slow boil but have turned their communism up on high and thumb their noses at the pleas of the people. One quote from their ranks: “We are doing things to save the world, not to help the poor.”
America seems ripe for their picking.
The woke cult will destroy the purpose of education from K-12 and beyond if it is not challenged at all levels