During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd for this week’s edition of “Meet the Press Reports,” Loudoun County, VA School Board Chair Brenda Sheridan claimed there “is no rational debate” on teaching race in schools in the county.
Sheridan said, [relevant remarks begin around 22:30] “I’ll echo that we are not teaching Critical Race Theory. It’s not in our curriculum. Because it would be inappropriate. It is a graduate-level theory and it would be inappropriate if a 5th grader was doing that and learning that in school. And it’s been manipulated — Critical Race Theory has been manipulated to replace what is really equity initiatives and teaching students about their biases and our teachers about their biases and that’s what leads to discipline disproportionality and students being treated differently just based on their skin color, or perhaps poverty, their socioeconomics and those types of things. What we’re really teaching students is compassion and empathy for the other students’ experiences. It can’t be objective. Because we’re experiencing it. It’s subjective.”
Todd then asked, “Are you having a rational debate in Loudoun, or has this gotten out of hand?”
Sheridan answered, “There is no rational debate. It’s beyond that.”
She added, “I have to go back to the pandemic. Because it stirred from parents who were very legitimately concerned about schools being closed, and then — so, you had angry parents who I can absolutely empathize with and we wanted to help and we took their kids out of school because we had to. And then — so, you had a group of angry parents and then someone lit the fire with Critical Race Theory, and I truly believe it is to impact elections. We have a governor’s election that is critical across the country in Virginia this year. It’s a close race at this point, and it shouldn’t be. And it is because many of these things have been brought up. There is a fire lit every week in Loudoun County on a new topic just to keep the anger flowing.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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