Re-educating teachers. Literally.
Do you believe in the American dream—the idea that in this country,hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead ontheir own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting alicense to teach in Minnesota public schools—at least if you plan toget your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Citiescampus.
In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class andGender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Developmentrecommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of“the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation forlicensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teachercandidates must embrace—and be prepared to teach our state’s kids—thetask force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist,sexist and homophobic.
The task group is part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative,a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained atthe U’s flagship campus. The initiative is premised, in part, on theconviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence”contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minoritystudents. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up withrecommendations to change this. In January, planners will review therecommendations and decide how to proceed.
The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the“overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls forevaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teachingbased on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.
The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, isfor future teachers to recognize—and confess—their own bigotry. Anyonefamiliar with the reeducation camps of China’s Cultural Revolution willrecognize the modus operandi.
The task group recommends, for example, that prospective teachers berequired to prepare an “autoethnography” report. They must describetheir own prejudices and stereotypes, question their “cultural” motivesfor wishing to become teachers, and take a “cultural intelligence”assessment designed to ferret out their latent racism, classism andother “isms.” They “earn points” for “demonstrating the ability to beself-critical.”
The task group opens its report with a model for officially approvedconfessional statements: “As an Anglo teacher, I struggle to quietvoices from my own farm family, echoing as always from some unstatedstandard… . How can we untangle our own deeply entrenched assumptions?”
The goal of these exercises, in the task group’s words, is to ensurethat “future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories andcurrent thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonicmasculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”
Future teachers must also recognize and denounce the fundamentalinjustices at the heart of American society, says the task group. Froma historical perspective, they must “understand that … many groups aretypically not included” within America’s “celebrated culturalidentity,” and that “such exclusion is frequently a result ofdissimilarities in power and influence.” In particular, aspiringteachers must be able “to explain how institutional racism works inschools.”
After indoctrination of this kind, who wouldn’t conclude that theAmerican Dream of equality for all is a cruel hoax? But just to makesure, the task force recommends requiring “our future teachers” to“articulate a sophisticated and nuanced critical analysis” of this viewof the American promise. In the process, they must incorporate the“myth of meritocracy in the United States,” the “history of demands forassimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values,[and] history of white racism, with special focus on current colorblindideology.”
What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought controland object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition offuture employment? The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels:The U, it says, must “develop clear steps and procedures for workingwith non-performing students, including a remediation plan.”
And what if students’ ideological purity is tainted once they beginto do practice teaching in the public schools? The task group framesthe danger this way: “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors arethemselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes inorder to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class,culture, and gender?”
Its answer? “Requir[e] training/workshop for all supervisors.Perhaps a training session disguised as a thank you/recognitionceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?”
When teacher training requires a “disguise,” you know something sinister is going on.