Some schools, though, are already promoting sexual or gender issues—issues that are controversial based on parental and religious beliefs. Likewise, many race-oriented issues are especially controversial. Those influenced by Critical Race Theory focus heavily on Black and White populations even though the United States may be the most racially diverse of all nations.

Around the country, parents are vocally challenging curricula related to race issues in the K-12 schools of their children and on their school boards. Not a few of these curricula contain elements taken from Critical Race Theory, which separates at least two races into two categories: “oppressed” and “oppressors.”

My local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ran an op-ed article, “Why St. Louis-area classrooms need more open discussions about race.” The authors are two St. Louis-based women: Sienna Ruiz, a research coordinator at the Washington University School of Medicine, and Akilah Collins-Anderson, working on her doctoral degree in public health sciences at Washington University. The article ended with this sentence: “Schools should provide critical thinking tools about race because it shapes everyone’s lives, whether parents accept it or not”—an exceptionally bold statement. The obvious question it raises is, “Are the ‘critical thinking tools’ that parents must accept unbiased and fair?”

First, it needs to be firmly stated that the public schools’ main purpose is to teach basic subjects as thoroughly as possible to prepare students for their futures. Traditionally, this has meant giving them the knowledge and skills to serve them well for either a vocation or higher education’s demands as well as to enhance citizenship.

This type of education takes time and demands sufficient priority. Students should graduate with basic English and math skills, and knowledge of science and both national and world histories. No one should need remedial reading classes in college if K-12 schools accomplish their purpose. Adding issue-centered courses should not diminish time spent on core subjects.

Some schools, though, are already promoting sexual or gender issues—issues that are controversial based on parental and religious beliefs. Likewise, many race-oriented issues are especially controversial. Those influenced by Critical Race Theory focus heavily on Black and White populations even though the United States may be the most racially diverse of all nations.

This exaggerated focus dismisses the fact that students are multi-racial, not simply Black or White. It’s like forcing one to watch black and white movies when technicolor is not only available, but it also represents the most enjoyable of movies. It’s passé and terribly narrow-minded to remain stuck on one binary issue of race when we are so beyond that issue. It’s unfair to students who are Asian, Hispanic, African, Middle Eastern, or Native American—and all the many subsets of those broad classifications.

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