California has a lot of sunshine but not much in the way of common sense. This is especially true in the state's sprawling educational system where the California Teachers Association rules and where common sense goes to die.
I don't envy teachers today. They have so much to teach kids, they must have a devil of a time trying to fit it all into a school day. Do I teach white supremacy or ethnic studies during the first period? Where does "social justice" fit in? And shoehorning in the "new" math and the problem of "whiteness" in the sciences is really going to take some doing.
What's that, you ask? Social studies? Reading? Sorry, no time for that. We're teaching important things here and can't be bothered with stuff like that.
Stuff like phonics.
Dozens of studies since the 1950s have shown the benefits of teaching phonics as a vital aid in learning how to read, especially for the youngest students. However, when a bill came before the California legislature mandating the teaching of phonics, the teacher's union swatted it away.
In a letter to Al Muratsuchi, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, the teachers laid out their opposition to AB 2222 in typical academic gobbledygook. "The proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and cuts teachers out of the decision-making process, especially when it comes to curriculum," read the letter.
“Educators are best equipped to make school and classroom decisions to ensure student success,” the letter said. “Limiting instructional approaches undermines teachers’ professional autonomy and may impede their effectiveness in the classroom.”
In other words, the CTU opposes the "top down" approach to teaching kids phonics to augment their reading instruction.
They've got to try something different. According to the most recent testing, just 43% of California students in grades 1-3 read at grade level. It's worse for blacks and Hispanics.
“This is also a matter of civil rights,” said Kareem Weaver, an NAACP activist and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM. “Kids need access to prepared teachers, and communities like ours, I feel like we’re bearing the brunt.” The NAACP is one of the primary supporters of the phonics legislation.
What's interesting about this is that it appears phonics has been singled out for this opposition to "top-down" mandates.
The state’s top-down sex education framework clocks in at 746 pages of material, curricula, assessments, grading recommendations and instructional requirements. The state compels teachers to tell kindergartners that children in “kindergarten and even younger have identified as transgender” and that biological sex is completely divorced from “gender identity.”
In 2021 the state ignited a brawl over its mandated ethnic-studies curriculum. Its content and instructional practices have roots in 1960s activism against American hegemony; the goal is to “liberate” students from the oppressive forces of capitalism, patriarchy and settler colonialism.
The goal of education for these radical activists appears to be to keep children as dumb as possible. The new woke math stresses "cultural relevance" over actual math instruction. More than 1,000 STEM professors sent an open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, writing that “The proposed framework would, in effect, de-mathematize math,” and that “A real champion of equity and justice would want all California’s children to learn actual math—as in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus—not an endless river of new pedagogical fads that effectively distort and displace actual math.”
Indeed, phonics fell out of favor in the late 1980s because of a pseudoscientific fad known as "whole language reading." Although it was largely discredited, teachers are the most obstinate advocates for the failed process and refuse to give it up. They're now saying that phonics is "embedded" in whole language instruction, making separate phonics instruction unnecessary.
My second-grade teacher, Sister Conception, is turning over in her grave.
Taken together, the California Legislature is happy to impose top-down mandates about curricular content and instructional “practices” in other content areas as long as they align with progressive pieties. Lawmakers will mandate that teachers educate children about the latest obsessions of critical race theory or gender ideology, but letter sounds or math facts are a bridge too far.
Fundamentally, California demonstrates what happens when a radical theory of education is put in practice. There are a handful of competing philosophies of education, and the most popular in schools of education is “critical pedagogy.” Its fundamental principle maps the Marxist oppressor-oppressed dichotomy on to the student-teacher relationship, concluding from there that the imposition of any content, any behavioral norms, any expectations is inherently oppressive. The teacher’s only role is to develop a child’s “critical consciousness,” to foster discontent with the current power structure and spur students into left-wing activism.
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"With its rejection of phonics, California has fully committed itself to a rejection of a liberal arts tradition and fully embraced a radical agenda in its schools," concludes Fordham Institute's Daniel Buck in the WSJ. The rejection has nothing to do with educating children and everything to do with radical politics.
