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When It Comes to Education, Do Parents Know Best?
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When It Comes to Education, Do Parents Know Best?

Aspen Ideas
Aspen Institute, 2022
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10

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  • Controversial
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

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The 2021 concern over critical race theory (CRT) wasn’t the first time Americans fought their cultural wars in the classroom, and it certainly wasn’t the first time greater conflicts concerning racism were enacted in the classroom. The CRT scare was in reaction to two upheavals: the murder of George Floyd had started another national conversation about racism, and parents were already frustrated with the school system because of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this session of the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, a panel of parents and educators discuss the most recent incarnation of culture wars in the classroom.

Summary

In the fall of 2021, critical race theory (CRT) became the newest hot topic in the US culture wars.

Google trends show that before 2020, the number of searches for “critical race theory” was negligible. The numbers show a slight rise in interest in the summer of 2020, and then an explosion in the fall of 2021, when CRT became the new hot topic of the culture wars in the United States. Eventually, searches for the term reached 14 million in April 2021. Some media outlets were putting forward an idea that some parents found concerning: CRT – which no one had heard of before, hence the Google searches – was apparently a pervasive and unrelenting component of the US public education system, and all children from age 8-18, in every school in the United States, were being indoctrinated by CRT. But what exactly was CRT? 

According to panelist and former lawyer, David French, conservative activist Chris Rufo roughly defined CRT as “basically anything you hear about race you don’t like.” Scattered reports of CRT-style teaching emerged around the country. Some reports were deeply troubling to people on...

About the Speaker

This session of the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival includes host Jane Coaston, of The Argument podcast, and panelists Renee DiResta, the technical research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory and mother of three; David French, senior editor of The Dispatch, former attorney arguing religious liberty cases in schools and father of three; and Esau McCaulley, professor of religion at Wheaton College, contributing writer for The New York Times and father of four.

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