Most voters think educators should prioritize traditional Western values even as teachers’ unions and activists push for Critical Race Theory (CRT) to be taught in schools.
According to a Rasmussen report released on Thursday, 78 percent of voters think it is at least somewhat important for schools to teach the traditional values of Western civilization. Fifty-two percent believe it is very important. Only 14 percent of voters do not think teaching traditional Western values is important, as four percent say it is not at all important.
A majority of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters all believe teaching Western values is somewhat important, although Republicans (66 percent) are more likely than Democrats (42 percent) or unaffiliated voters (47 percent) to say it is very important.
Only 29 percent think most public schools do a good job teaching students about traditional Western values “at a time when many schools are embroiled in controversy over the teaching of Critical Race Theory,” according to the poll.
CRT is a Marxist ideology that “holds that the United States is racist by design, because its Constitution and all of its other institutions emerged in a context where slavery was legal,” Breitbart News reported.
Despite strong public support for traditional Western values, the nation’s largest teachers’ union recently vowed to promote the theory in schools.
The National Education Association (NEA) said:
The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.
School board recalls have nearly doubled this year as parents fight to keep the ideology out of schools.
Support for CRT is largely driven by Democrats but is not supported by a majority of all voters, including independents, according to a report from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
All voters (63 percent) and independents (65 percent) disagree that “white Americans are inherently racist whether they know it or not because they benefit from the American culture of systematic racism and white privilege,” according to the report. However, 55 percent of strong Democrats agree.
When survey respondents were further asked if they think “the United States was founded on the practice of slavery and white supremacy which continues to this day,” 67 percent of strong Democrats agreed. Sixty-eight percent of all voters and 76 percent of independents disagreed.
The survey of 1,000 U.S. voters was conducted on July 6, 2021, by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points and has a 95 percent level of confidence.