Evidently the Governor doesn’t think the fine arts and career and technical education are part of the radical leftist scheme to turn kinds in critical-race-theorizing civic activists. Bob Mercer reports the Department of Education will proceed with its planned public hearings on the revised K-12 curriculum standards for those two areas this school year, starting with the already-once-delayed October 25 hearing here in Aberdeen.
But we’re probably just one absurdist National Review write-up away from Kristi’s crashing that party, too. Just look at all the “leftist” language oozing from the career and technical education standards in the Human Services Cluster:
- CRM 1.2 and IHS 2.2: “Examine current social issues…”—Yikes! Critical race theory is a current social issue; that standard opens the door wide for an investigation of how institutional racism may affect consumer services.
- CRM 2.1: “Summarize consumer rights and responsibilities”—”Consumer rights” are the starting point of regulating businesses, and regulating businesses is part of the leftist plot to socialize all enterprises and redistribute wealth.
- CRM 3.2: “Investigate consumer trends for sensitivity to cultural, socio-economic, religious, generational, disability, and gender issues.”—”Sensitivity” is a leftist snowflake word, and the last thing we want is courses discussing race and sex and other consumer trends that could encourage students to take positions against the purveyors of discrimination!
- IHS 3.1: “Summarize ethical, legal, safety, and diversity issues in Human Services.”—Diversity?! (the word “diverse” also sneaks into LC 1.3, LC 2.1–2.3, and NS 2.1.
- NW 1.2: “Analyze the effects of psychological, cultural, economic and social influences on food choices and other nutrition practices.”—Critical race theory has significant implications on our study of what we eat and why we eat it. We can’t have that.
Then look at the Bolshevism leftists are cultivating in the CTE Agriculture, Foods, and Natural Resources Cluster:
- ITA 3.1: “Classify different types of natural resources to enable protection, conservation, enhancement, and management in a particular geographical region.”—Enabling protection and conservation of natural resources is hippie tree-hugging writ large.
- ITA 3.2: “Explore South Dakota fish and wildlife species and investigate their ecological needs.”—Come on, critters have one need: they need to feed us people! Suggesting animals have any other needs is PETA code for animal rights. (And ecology is hippie code for Gaia worship!)
- FAM 7.5, AgS 9.5, AST 7.5, AdS 8.5, ADAn 9.5, CA 7.5, HORT 8.5…: “Research and analyze how public policy, laws, and advocacy impact agricultural systems and agricultural literacy.” And off we go discussing systemic racism in the USDA and banking.
- ANR 6.2: “Compare the various production methods of alternative energy resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, and their relations to economic, environmental, and social sustainability.”—An honest and true conservative can’t even read that standard, let alone sit through a class teaching to it, without breaking out in hives.
That’s just two of the six clusters within CTE, and we’re already hip-deep in hippie-talk. And we’re not even to the deepest, darkest, densest den of hippie iniquity, the fine arts, whose final anchor standard demands that students “Relate artistic ideas and work with societal, historical, cultural, and personal context to deepen understanding.” To fulfill that leftist call (because leftists are always looking at things in their fullest context), the theater arts call on impressionable sixth graders to “examine contemporary social, cultural, or global [!!] issues” and direct the top high schoolers to “explore how personal beliefs and biases can affect the interpretation of a dramatic/theatrical work” and “create an original work that provides new perspective on cultural, global [again!!], and/or historic belief systems.” Those darn theater people would literally put critical race theory in the spotlight, urging students to write and perform original plays that expose bias and oppressive beliefs.
Jeepers, Kristi, all the social studies standards do is mention Indians more often than the DOE can stand.
Those darn leftists running South Dakota education have tricked Kristi and the conservative watchdogs again! Knowing the Noem Administration and her fellow warped 1776 pledgers are fixated on civics education, Paul Harens‘s theater friends must have told Harens to pencil “Oceti Sakowin” into the social studies standards a few extra times to distract the Governor while they turned the fine arts and CTE standards into Greta and Ibram Go to the Food Co-op!
Kristi Noem must fix this fiasco! If she wants to retain any 2024 primary cred whatsoever as an honest and true defender of our whites rights, she must immediately suspend the Marxification of the fine arts and CTE standards, just as she has suspended the review of those leftist social studies standards.
Not to mention that everybody KNOWS what kind of people participate in the “arts”…
A trip to a good dinner theatre is always welcome. grudznick abides.
Top drawer piece, Cory.
Dumbed down SD kids won’t be attractive to out of state colleges and employers.
That’s your Governor’s way of addressing the brain drain.
Hey, I got my Fine Arts education in South Dakota.
The Arts are essential in our education system. Whether you are talented or not, visual arts, music, drama and speech, dance and the poetry of the written word contribute to our becoming human.The arts are expressions of our human spirit.
Now this is excellent journalism! I do have a couple of questions. 1. How closely to the standards are the textbooks used in the schools? 2. How carefully do the teachers follow the standards? (I suspect that answer to these two questions is “somewhat.” I participated in a national study of teaching reading in the first grade and the one clear finding was that who teaches the class is far more important than the standards or the textbooks.)
I would agree, Bill. My recollection of first grade reading was the teacher primarily. Dick and Jane. See Spot run. That teacher could have taught me Chinese and I’d have gotten it. The TEACHER is the most important; she/he and the pupil. But here in SD, Republicans think patriotism, greatness and ego are most important.
I looked through the standards and didn’t find any “leftism.” What I saw was “ed jargon,” which shouldn’t be too surprising. All fields have their quirky ways of expressing concepts that have some utility in their fields. Sometimes you need to follow the education journals or books to figure out where it is coming from. It’s not just education. All fields have their jargon. The biggest users of jargon are politicians. They use all sorts of words to say very little, or to label when the label isn’t anywhere near appropriate. For example, politicians and various others on the right, uses the term “radical leftists.” What does that mean? Well, it has nothing to do with a political ideology. It has to do with labeling anyone from real “radical leftists” to moderate conservatives so you can either discount their ideas or try to make others discount their ideas.
Maybe we’re not giving Mrs. Noem enough credit for doing what she said she’d do. The brain drain is intensifying while Republicans are flocking to South Dakota which is exactly what she wants. Student enrollment in South Dakota’s colleges is plummeting so fewer young people are being subjected to progressive ideals. Under single party rule South Dakota has been a net inbound Whitopia for at least four years running and Noem is adding fuel to the burning crosses.
To little surprise the assisted living, funeral home and florist industries do very well and now that brown workers can take the driver’s license exam in Spanish white people can spend more time snorting and shooting meth.
Now, most of these obese Republican slackers are preparing to flee the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of consecutive eight-month winters and strings of below-zero days.