| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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All-Black Curriculum
00:05:06
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| I just learned that this year, New York City Public Schools introduced a full pre-kindergarten to 12th grade all-black curriculum. | |
| When I looked through this book of detailed lesson plans, I figured it had to be only for black schools in Harlem or the South Bronx. | |
| But no, it's mandatory for all students, all one million of them, in the biggest school district in America. | |
| Black students make up only that 24% slice on the right. | |
| Hispanics are the big 41% chunk. | |
| Asians are 17% and whites are just 15%. | |
| Whites will put up with anything, of course. | |
| But Hispanics and Asians must be irritated by all this blackety-black. | |
| The very name of the curriculum is a joke. | |
| Black studies as the study of the world. | |
| What? Sorry. | |
| But if Africa disappeared from the planet, most people wouldn't notice. | |
| So I guess the school's chancellor, David Banks, who pushed this thing through, was being modest when he said, Black history is American history, period, full stop. | |
| The first lesson in pre-kindergarten is learning everyone's name. | |
| Teachers should be able to pronounce all names. | |
| Practice may be required. | |
| These days, that's true. | |
| In a pre-K lesson about the five senses, students will describe how objects connected to black studies, African and black cultures, taste and feel. | |
| Still in pre-K, lesson five is Juneteenth. | |
| Children will make Juneteenth flags and talk about the horrors of slavery. | |
| This is a lesson for four-year-olds, mind you. | |
| In kindergarten, students will be introduced to Adinkra symbols. | |
| They were used to decorate cloth and pottery. | |
| The oldest of these ancient Adinkra symbols dates all the way back to 1817, beats learning the alphabet. | |
| And, of course, every kindergartner needs to know about kinticloth. | |
| Moving right along to sixth grade, young scholars learn about King Pee, the great Nubian pharaoh who conquered and ruled Egypt. | |
| Here are his warriors, crushing all in their path. | |
| Likewise, in 6th grade, students study this article about the white teenager who slaughtered 10 blacks at the Topps supermarket in Buffalo, New York. | |
| There's a cheerful 8th grade lesson on the Tulsa race riots in which students get to watch a black-produced, black-narrated video about how awful white people are. | |
| Also in 8th grade, there's a whole class on Power to the People, the Black Panther Party's 10-point program. | |
| Among its 10 demands, Free all black prisoners, autonomy from whites, and the present value of 40 acres and two mules. | |
| First lesson in the ninth grade is warrior queens, stateswomen, and queen mothers. | |
| This is the beginning of a video that is part of a grade 9 lesson on African communications. | |
| 12 want you to know I hate you more than you hate me. | |
| They really the threat, but that's how they try and portray me. | |
| When you spit the truth, they try to view it as haste. | |
| In the eleventh grade, more than half the lessons are on reparations. | |
| A typical assignment? | |
| Lynching, white supremacy, terrorism, and black resilience. | |
| In the twelfth grade, lesson four is called Slavery and the American Economy, where you learn that slavery financed the American economy. | |
| But America is capitalist. | |
| So it has unemployment, inflation, poverty, and environmental impact, which only socialism will cure. | |
| Students will learn which companies profited from slavery and will reflect on what they think should happen to the companies or institutions that benefited from slavery. | |
| One reading is this. | |
| In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. | |
| Grade 12, Lesson 5. Black genius in the apparel industry. | |
| Major white corporations rely on black creativity to reinvent their brands. | |
| Who's a black genius designer? | |
| Kanye West, shown here, getting an honorary PhD from the Art Institute of Chicago. | |
| And on and on this curriculum goes for 518 black-as-can-be pages. | |
| How is this supposed to help students? | |
| Here are NAEP achievement scores over the years for New York City, bottom line, orange, New York State, the purple line, and the U.S., which is the dotted blue line. | |
|
Pushing Latinidad?
00:02:08
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| New York City is at the bottom. | |
| Miserable black and Hispanic scores drag down the average. | |
| Stop the video and look at their numbers, as if you really needed to. | |
| Does anyone, and I mean anyone, Really think Adinkra symbols and Juneteenth and King P.E. are going to raise those scores? | |
| I guess blacks do. | |
| Or maybe they just don't care about the white man's test scores. | |
| David Banks, who commissioned this curriculum, is authentically black. | |
| Note the African decor. | |
| His predecessor, Misha Porter, was also black. | |
| But it will be up to Melissa Aviles Ramos, who took over just last fall, to push this thing through. | |
| Why should Hispanics, who are almost half of all students, sit still for this guff? | |
| Well, it turns out they're going to get their own super-duper Hispanic curriculum. | |
| New initiative launched to develop Latin Studies curriculum for NYC public schools. | |
| Latin Studies? | |
| Latinx didn't go over, so I guess high-paid dopes are trying again with Latin. | |
| The New York City Council has made a profoundly important and historic investment in Latinidad. | |
| Yep, the city has splashed out $3 million to push Latinidad, whatever that is, and I'm sure a stiff dose of it will send Pedro's scores right through the roof. | |
| Actually, I'm delighted. | |
| Let blacks fill their heads with kinty cloth and black geniuses. | |
| Let them be as African as possible. | |
| Let them disappear into negritude. | |
| And let Hispanics disappear into Latinidad. | |
| This will drive even more whites out of the public schools. | |
| Another little step towards total disengagement. | |
| Remember the Black Panther's ten points? | |
| Number one was... | |
| Power to determine the destiny of our black community. | |