Parents from the Tredyffrin–Easttown School District (TESD) in Chester County, Pennsylvania, have been granted public access to critical race theory (CRT) training materials through an embattled Right-to-Know request process that was resolved in court.
The training was prepared by California-based Pacific Educational Group (PEG). It aims to change the school’s culture, or “transform systemic racial equity,” which it calls “the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished capacity of all children, especially black children, to achieve at the highest levels.”
The school district’s attorney, Brian R. Elias, carefully worded his characterization of critical race theory in relation to TESD during a conversation with The Epoch Times, making a point to specify that CRT is not part of the curriculum.
“The school district does not teach CRT. It is not in this curriculum. CRT appears in third party training materials that are used as part of the school district’s equity initiative,” Elias told The Epoch Times. “I do not know that teachers are being trained with those materials. Part of the training for the equity initiative includes that term. It has nothing to do with teaching children.”
The newly accessed documents include emails and training materials that use the phrase “critical race theory” frequently. One lesson, seminar No. 2, is entitled, “Using Critical Race Theory to Transform Leadership and District.”
In teaching “what it means to be white,” the training seems to suggest white people do not face struggles.
PEG explains that white people are typically Christian, with a husband as breadwinner and a wife as homemaker who is subordinate to the husband. PEG’s training explains that whites believe children should have their own rooms and be independent. Whites use “the King’s English,” and don’t show emotion. They respect authority, must always “do something” about a situation, and define themselves by their jobs. When it comes to beauty, white women should be thin and blonde like a Barbie doll and men can look like anything, if they are rich and powerful. Whites are steak-and-potatoes, bland-is-best people.
That is from just one of the 166 pages parents are now seeing.
The training does not have a similar listing of characteristics for other races. Instead, it describes nonwhite races as downtrodden and disadvantaged by the persistence of racism and bigotry in the general culture, and it blames schools.
“Those who discriminate and those who tolerate discrimination are graduates of our schools,” part of a lesson teaches. “Public education has successfully shifted the blame for the failure of schools to meet the needs of minorities onto the shoulders of the clients they purport to serve. They have pulled off the perfect crime, where they can never be truly held accountable, since the reasons for failure in school are said to be the fault of poor homes, cultural handicaps, linguistic deficiencies, and deprived neighborhoods. The fact that schools are geared primarily to serve monolingual, white, middle class, and Anglo citizens is never questioned.”
PEG, also known as Courageous Conversations, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
By Beth Brelje
