Educate, don’t Indoctrinate – New initiative to combat and expose Critical Race Theory indoctrination in South African schools

19 August 2021

The teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is starting to take place in South Africa’s private schools.

CRT holds that all black people are victims of a system designed to keep them oppressed and that all white people act together to maintain that system in order to protect their unearned, white privilege. Unique, individual characteristics are irrelevant to CRT.

CRT aims to ensure that racism becomes an eternal obsession, patronising black children and shaming white children.

This obsession with punishing racism disproportionately and separating children so that they ‘learn’ their place will result in alienation, not integration. 

Accordingly, the Institute of Race Relations has launched an initiative ‘Educate, don’t Indoctrinate’ in an attempt to equip parents and teachers with the tools necessary to recognise and resist the spread of the harmful ideas of CRT in schools.

The IRR is aware that a significant number of schools have incorporated elements of CRT in official school policies and are presenting this worldview to students as the only viable and moral way to conceive of social justice.

This way of thinking is divisive and celebrates the kind of race essentialism that we have fought so hard.

CRT’s origins are American with specific reference to American history and a society where blacks are a minority group. Given the fact of our dreadful history and that whites currently comprise less than 10% of the population, the consequences of this racial essentialism will be disastrous.

In addition, CRT rests on the assumption that any disparity in outcome between racial groups is the result of discrimination of one group by another, whether conscious or unconscious. As such, white children are being admonished for their complicity in white supremacy with some schools going so far as to teach white students that white supremacy is an evil they have been born with and need to continually purge themselves of.

The IRR believes that the freedom to question what we are told is a hallmark of a successful society and worth fighting for. The IRR recognises the importance of creating a socially just society. However, it strongly opposes any worldview that does not allow its assumptions to be questioned.

We have discovered that students are being told that to question the assumptions of CRT is to admit racism, and doing so invokes the risk of being vilified as racist.

Students are being told what to think instead of how to think: this is untenable as it is not the function of schools to indoctrinate pupils into one political theory while ignoring all others.

Our overarching goal is to support the education of well-adjusted young men and women of sound character and strong moral standing. We do that by helping to:

Teach parents and teachers how to spot the danger signs of CRT indoctrination in their children and their schools;

Educate parents and teachers about the damage that CRT indoctrination does to the psychological development of children;

Provide them with the resources to become informed enough to oppose CRT indoctrination effectively;

Provide them with advice and strategies for confronting school governing bodies and teachers that drive such indoctrination.

Please click on to www.edonti.org and complete a form if you wish to contact us regarding CRT at a school, and we will get back to you asap.

If you would also like to know more about CRT, go to Educate don’t indoctrinate https://edonti.org/

Issued by Sara Gon, IRR Head of Strategic Engagement, 19 August 2021