Anastasia Higginbotham, a white Brooklynite children’s book author, knows what New York City kids need to learn. Not math or English or science. Nope: They need lessons on racism. And queerness. And liberation.
All are themes in her “What You Don’t Know” — a book that has garnered the city Department of Education’s stamp of approval and is now on a 5th-grade reading list.
If you don’t think reading about queerness and liberation is appropriate for 10-year-olds, then you (in the author’s opinion) “cling to the oppressive, dying institutions of patriarchy and white supremacy.”
Look: New York is failing its students educationally. Half of students statewide fell below benchmarks in reading, and 40% below math benchmarks, as of this winter per a massive dataset analyzed by Renaissance Learning. The state Board of Regents just canceled its US history exam while pushing down standards for other tests it oversees. Public-school enrollment in the city is in freefall.
And these trends most hurt black and Hispanic students, the very groups on whose behalf Higginbotham and her collaborators profess to be offended and concerned.
Giving kids a book or two on racism or gender in the mix of assignments is appropriate, but many children feel they’re being force-fed a monotonous diet of ultra-woke claptrap.
Our kids need instruction, not indoctrination (the book literally glorifies AOC and other Squad members). Especially now, as the city struggles to overcome a learning deficit caused by the disastrous COVID policies inflicted by the same coalition that foists propagandistic nonsense like this on our kids.
If Anastasia Higginbotham actually cared about helping black and brown people, she’d be in the front lines demanding better, more rigorous schools in New York, free from political interference.
That she isn’t tells you everything you need to know.
