This has led to confusion, heated discourse at school board meetings, and to legislation, either proposed or passed in 35 states (as of January 20, 2022), “that would restrict teaching the academic framework that examines how policy and the law maintain systemic racism or limit how our teachers can discuss racism and sexism”

Dr. Valaida Wise makes the important distinction that as a theoretical framework, CRT helps us think about and critically analyze systems; as such, it can help teachers think about the right questions to ask regarding potential or actual inequities that may be present in our classrooms. Our concern at the classroom level, therefore, is not the theoretical work of CRT, but that we have a culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in place.

Montessori wrote in The Secret of Childhood: But still we must be humble and root out the prejudices lurking in our heart. We must not suppress those traits which can help us in our teaching. We must check those inner attitudes and characteristics of adults that can hinder our understanding of the child.

Critical Race Theory took root in the early 1970s, when “a number of lawyers, activists, and legal scholars across the country realized … that the heady advances of the civil rights era had stalled,” and in fact that more subtle forms of racism were gaining ground.

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.