A group of leftist school principals has entered the Critical Race Theory fray. Known as “The Good Trouble Principals,” the group of over 150 educators in Minnesota describes itself as “a loose collection of local principals” that are “united in a collective commitment to education, justice, equity and liberation for all.” If one did not know any better, one would think that such a statement came right of a Marxist handbook from the Soviet Union. Continuing in this communist vein, the group says it “constructed this site as a gathering place for Good (Trouble) Principals. It is a safe space to rest among like-minded leaders. It is a place where your convictions about educational justice in our country can be fortified and your view of education as a transformative social force can be reinforced.” It is social transformation, not teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, that teachers should focus on. Who knew? As Lenin famously quipped about using education to indoctrinate children in Marxism: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
So how will “The Good Trouble Principals” promote equity and social transformation? By removing “whiteness” completely from the education system. How will they achieve this? First and foremost by dismantling the groups that are mainly responsible for enforcing “whiteness” in our schools: PTAs and teachers’ unions. As the principals declare:
“How might we get in Good Trouble today? By:…De-centering Whiteness. Understanding that traditional organized whiteness ensures domination through forms like PTAs and Unions. We purposefully call out and lift up historically non-represented voices of color in our spaces to hold weight and power….”
Who would have thought that PTAs and unions were actually bastions of racism and repression? We just thought they were there to help our children learn. It is particularly ironic that the Good Trouble Principals call out the teachers’ unions as the unions are the champions of left-wing issues, including critical race theory. Details, details.
Second, the Good Trouble Principals hope to remove “whiteness” from our schools by dismantling the standardized testing and merit systems that do not result in equal outcomes for all identity groups. They believe that if all races, ethnicities, etc., do not achieve the same academic results, then the tests and the whole merit system must be racist. Individual competence and hard work have no roles to play in whether or not a student succeeds in school. As they declare: “[We must] dismantl[e] practices that reinforce White academic superiority like bias in testing and the labeling, tracking and clustering that reflect an Americanized version of a caste system in our schools.” The facts that standardized tests like the SAT and ACT fairly accurately predict student success at the college level, and that not all students can achieve the same academically, are irrelevant. We must scrap the tests and the whole system in the name of enforcing Marxist “equity.” And as we know from the history of Marxism, this means the lowering of standards so that everyone is “equally” miserable.
Significantly, the Good Trouble Principals believe that their leftist ideas will help white students. As they declare: “White children have been done a great disservice by sustaining white-centered schools in America all these years. And it is to their equal benefit to thrive in schools where they are not spoon-fed the poison that they are better because of their skin color….” What? Schools have been poisoning our students all these years? And we thought they were being taught English, history, science and math. Who knew?
Marxism is alive and well in Minnesota. A group of over 150 educators there known as the “Good Trouble Principals” have dedicated themselves to overthrowing “whiteness” by dismantling the “systems” of racism and oppression: PTAs, teachers’ unions, and the merit system. Concerned parents and teachers, along with individual competence and hard work, are the culprits that must be rooted out. Let’s pray that our children are never in schools run by these principals. Otherwise, we may find them one day quoting Marx and Stalin and fighting for world revolution.