Critical Race Theory REQUIRED for Private School Accreditation? - Jill Simonian Reacts

We're live. All right. We're live on Facebook and YouTube, right? Yes. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Hi everybody. Amala, are you awake? I am awake. Very awake. Always. Hi everybody, Jill Simonian here from PragerU Kids doing our weekly what's it called takeover here in the Wamala studio because we like to touch base for about 10-15 minutes with all of you parents who might be watching. Parents, grandparents, educators who well educators who might not be working in schools right now or homeschool educators. We like to say hello. We like to give a little reminder and boost that our PragerU Kids. Amala's waving at me. Oh, she's waving. Oh, no, you're not waving. Okay. They're technical things happening here. We like to give a little boost to our PragerU Kids content that we have on our website for kindergarten through 12th graders. Free for all of you, all of us parents, any grandparents or educators that are watching who want to give our children unbiased, innocent, honest content that teaches American values and history without the politicized slant that we're seeing unfortunately in many of our public and private schools. What we like to do all the time, become a member also of PrEP. We always got to say that. We're doing a membership drive. Become a member of PrEP. PragerU.com slash kids. Join us and and get in on the private discussion group where we discuss a lot of the things that we discuss here and provide solutions to each other in our own corners of the country for our schools. But the article that we're gonna share today answers a question that I as a parent have really struggled trying to understand, especially this last year. We know that our public education system, for the most part, with the exception of a few educators that really are not happy about what's been going on in the school system, we know that our public education system is broken with our children. We know that they're pushing woke narratives. We know that they're trying to force these leftist ideologies onto our kids and I can understand as a parent, okay, these are the reasons why it's happening in our public schools, but for the life of me, I've been struggling how and why is this happening in private schools and currently, I am NOT a private school parent, but from the outside, I happen to think, hey, if you're paying the bucks for a private education, parents, you hold the cards. You hold the authority. To me, if you have a private education, if you're giving your kids a private of education, you have more authority on what they learn because you are providing the school with the means it needs to exist. But Alma has got an article here that we all found and this explains why private schools have gone woke. I just want you to tell us what the article is and show us a quick little scroll because I want everyone to be able to read this and I think we are gonna leave the link, but we're gonna talk about it. Sure. So here's the article. It's out of Washington Free Beacon and it talks about why private schools have gone woke. Now, the main argument that they place here is that private schools go through a process of accreditation and they have to go through certain institutes. The specific one here mentioned in the article is the National Association of Independent Schools. So, most parents who are sending their kids to private schools want to go to one that is accredited. Now, in order to get accredited, you have to go through this National Association of Independent Schools and they are the ones pushing CRT. So, CRT is your ticket to being an accredited school. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's the scary part because what happens is any most, well, I will say any parent who's sending their kid to a private school, you are putting your child in an atmosphere where you have a perception that they are on track to be successful, to get into very prestigious and elite colleges and you are quote-unquote setting them up for life, for a lifetime of success through the schools that they, that your child will have access to. And what happens is, I speak personally here, many parents that have their children in private schools that I know personally try to speak up and say, you know what, this diversity, equity, and inclusion program that you're trying to push right now doesn't really sit well with us. We have questions and then the administrators push back, essentially calling them racist and uninformed and, and, and, you know, stuck in the, stuck in a antiquated mindset, but the parents do not pursue it further to try and rectify what's going on in the schools because oftentimes there is an agreement that the parents must sign to keep their kids in that school, a contract of sorts that really, that really limits them on, on, on how much they're able to push back, how much they're able to expose what's happening in their schools. It's like a, I, I, I want to say like almost kind of like a non-disclosure, like, like you're going to sign this contract, your child's going to be in this school, you're going to sign this contract. We do not want you airing all the dirty laundry or else your child could be kicked out of this school. And parents are so desperate many times to set their kids up for success that they say, okay, I'm not going to jeopardize that. I don't want to jeopardize my kid's future into getting into colleges. And we're all being held hostage. I mean literally being held hostage. So the article, take a look at this article. It does a great examination of what is going on and it explains things a thousand percent more effectively than I can ever begin to explain here. But, but, but it does, I do want to say that one thing it brings up is that trustees of many of these private schools can't, are instructed to keep all board deliberations confidential, meaning hidden from the parents, okay? And there really is no transparency for what many parents can, can, um, can discover what's going on in their kid's school. And it's really unfortunate because parents who speak out against things that might be happening risk violating the terms of their enrollment contract and then what happens their child is left without a school. Um, some of these practices that happen at private schools. Amala, did you know, oh my gosh, I marked it here and I want to find it. I want to find what happened in January at the Dalton school. Are you familiar with the Dalton school? I am not. Okay, so the Dalton school is a very prestigious school in New York City and many of our people, uh, watching this are probably already heard of it. In January, a group of Dalton parents decried the school's obsessive focus on race and identity because the school was doing racist cop reenactments in science, allegedly, and they were de-centering whiteness in art class. Now, these are the type of things that are happening at private schools. Um, and if we have, and they're, and they're beholden to this, as you said, National Association of Independent Schools, which is this overseeing entity that accredits all private schools and they, these, these private schools have access to the marketing materials. They have access to the support, they have access to, uh, various, you know, various, um, um, resources that they can use to boost their own private school. They depend on this National, National Association of Independent Schools and they don't want to jeopardize that because then what happens, they're non-accredited, they don't attract parents, the kids aren't enrolled, and the whole thing crumbles. Um, are there any comments, are there any private school parents watching that can weigh in on this or add wisdom? Um, I see a few different comments here. Bruce says this should never be allowed to happen or be enforced in schools public or private. Um, Troy says most students, I think he's saying most private school students are not accepted, um, who don't get indoctrinated with this stuff. It's CRTism is a must to recover from our past with some sort of responsibility. So is this, I guess he's saying, uh, he's CRT is necessary for us to confront our past. Maybe we should confront the pro-CRT people right now. So the pro-critical race theory people, we've talked about this last week. It's not that we don't want people and children to learn about the faults of America's past. That's often misinterpreted when all, you know, when a lot of people hear us say don't teach critical race theory in schools. But the problem, and we did talk about this last week, I think, the problem is when you completely abandon the most important parts of history when it's concerning the the establishment of our country and what brings us together as a nation when you completely abandon that and replace it with all of the bad and all of the marginalized, all of the marginalized items in our history. And if you start doing that when kids are in kindergarten, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, how are kids supposed to form any sort of appreciation or sense of unity with each other if you are teaching them to recognize a peer by the color of their skin first? Right, right. And never forget that CRT is a means to convince kids of color and white kids in school that kids of color are still oppressed in this nation and that our institutions are upholding white supremacy and upholding racism which is absolutely not true. So imagine being a child learning about the transgressions of America, which nobody is saying you shouldn't, you absolutely should, but not coupling that with the actual greatness of American society. So now as a young child, as a young black child, you are convinced that not only does America have a history of transgressions, but those transgressions are still taking place today. You are still being held back by the slavery of 1860 and by the Jim Crow era, which is not the case. And you know what's really sad? Personally speaking, my kids have friends of all different ethnicities, all different races, you know, it's like we have a diverse atmosphere, especially here in Los Angeles. And about a year ago, I started noticing that my youngest daughter would start saying things like, oh, my friend, so and so, she has dark skin. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, what, what do, why, why are you saying that? What difference does that make? And she goes, oh, I'm just, I'm, you know, describing her and this and that. I go, okay, that's fine, but why should a child be recognizing people with skin color as one of the primary means of identification? And then, you know, she started saying, talking about things that she was learning about how, how, how black people were marginalized and everything. I go, yes, honey, that's true. That's true. That's not like that anymore. And then she goes, yeah, I think, I think my friend was sort of feeling bad that she had black skin. And right there, I lost it. I said, you know, and I set her straight. I said, that is absolutely not true. But it was something that was being discussed in the class. And these were small children and it's heartbreaking because when you start classifying kids, people, according to skin color, a child who is of that skin color, I imagine, I don't know, they start seeing themselves as, oh, wait a minute, I am different, which goes against everything that we stand for and believe in, in America. Right. Children make simple associations. If you're going to teach a young child that because you're black, you will be held back and because this other peer is white, they're going to succeed. What, what makes you think that they won't internalize that? Absolutely they would. And not only are they going to harbor resentment for their own skin color, but they're going to harbor resentment for people who don't have their skin color. CRT is racism. Plain and simple. Period. Yes. Yeah. Anyhow. All right. So that's the article. We want you to guys take a look. If you've got kids in private schools, always feel free to reach out to us, weigh in, leave us your comments or experiences. If you, you know, join PragerU Kids Prep Membership, we share a lot of stories about how to combat this in school. We've got about almost 15, that we've got about a little over, well, over 15,000. I think it's nearing 20,000 members now of PrEP. And we have a discussion forum that is robust and constantly solving problems. One of the PragerU Kids shows, speaking of victims and oppressors, here's the, here's a segue. One of the, one of the PragerU Kids shows that just launched this last week, excuse me, a new episode, not a show, but like a new episode that launched this week is our Craftery Series. And it is a, oh, there she's got it pulled up. She's got it pulled up. What part do you have there? I've got the finished product. Oh, the finished product. Okay. Show the little product. And then I'm going to explain to you what our Craftery Series is. Sure. Two hours and then done. Get your shirt on, go find a police officer or firefighter and thank them for their service, for keeping us safe. Their jobs are not easy and we are so grateful for all of them. Make them proud and wear your shirt. Okay. We hope you had a good time. If you've got ideas or questions for our next Craftery, send them our way. Too much of that lady. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. So that was the finished product. I got to tell you, there was a lot of spray can shaking and like a whole art project that went along with it. If you've got kids that are of the smaller set, kindergarten, second, third, fourth grades, we've got a Craftery Series, part craft, part history, that does a project with the kids and teaches them about different holidays, traditions, values in America. This one, obviously, as you can see, is for our first responders, police officers, firefighters. We make a whole shirt. There was a catastrophe with spray paint. The episode is actually like pretty funny if you look in the middle of it because the whole thing almost didn't work, but I'll let you watch the episode and see how it turns out. But the foundation for these kids' videos, particularly of Craftery, and you can share this with your family, is to get kids appreciating what their schools are trying to get them to devalue. As we mentioned, at this Dalton school, they were allegedly doing, you know, race-based, racist cop reenactments in science. And the foundation for our communities is crumbling mainly because a lot of our schools are trying to dismantle any sort of community semblance and affection that we might have for our first responders, policemen, firefighters. We need to teach our kids to appreciate them. We need to combat the messages that many of our kids are getting in schools, and we need to combat them and show them programming and share with them why we should be valuing police officers, firefighters, why we should be valuing different entities in our community and in America that really keep us together and keep us safe and work towards a more perfect union together. So these Craftery episodes, check them out. This one's for first responders. Make your own t-shirt. And it's not necessarily about the craft, but it's more about the lesson. The craft was just like a sneaky way to get kids to watch it, right? So any questions or comments, leave them in the comments. We hope you join us at Prager U Kids and become a member of PrEP. Any last thoughts, Amala? That's it. Fight against CRT and be present in your kids' schools. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. You guys have a great week. See you next time. Bye.