The eldest son of the former president is calling for the firing of “critical race theory” teachers in public schools and to use those funds to pay for armed guards. He also wants all “gender studies” teachers fired, and is calling for putting the hiring and firing of those teachers on state and local ballots.
Donald Trump, Jr., who, it appears, has no teaching degree, training in early childhood education (ECE), early child development, or any other education training, has a B.S. in economics.
Trump appeared to be specifically referring to elementary schools, after last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed, and another 17 were wounded.
Most elementary schools, and in fact most public schools at the elementary, middle school, or high school level, do not have teachers dedicated to teaching gender studies classes, although some teachers may touch on the subject in conjunction with their regular classes.
A search by NCRM could find no critical race theory classes at the elementary, middle, and high school level public schools. Like many Americans, Trump Jr. appears to be misunderstanding what critical race theory (CRT) is.
Critical Race Theory, according to the law professor who coined the term, “is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor at the U.C.L.A. School of Law and Columbia Law School told The New York Times last year, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”
“It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” she said, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”
As many know, it is a college-level method of investigating, not an elementary school class.
Donald Trump, Jr. appeared to disagree, and was widely mocked Sunday night: