The New York State Education Department’s “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework” has redefined education for the Empire State:

The responsibility of education is not only to prevent the exclusion of historically silenced, erased, and disenfranchised groups, but also to assist in the promotion and perpetuation of cultures, languages and ways of knowing that have been devalued, suppressed, and imperiled by years of educational, social, political, economic neglect and other forms of oppression.

This should not come as a surprise; the framework has many redefinitions in its glossary. “Pluralism” is about identity and culture instead of ideas. “Gender” is about a nonbinary spectrum. Teachers with an “asset-based perspective” view cultural differences as assets (all of them?). Overall, it is peppered with a relativistic view of cultural differences, if not an antagonistic view of objective standards, and defines students by their immutable characteristics.

The framework offers instructions for New York State students, teachers, school and district leaders, college faculty and administrators, and policy-makers for how to cultivate CRSE. Its vision highlights training children to understand and challenge (allegedly) “inequitable systems of access, power, and privilege.” Even in the classroom, children are to be recruited to a coalition of activists, with or without parents’ permission (more likely, without). America’s next generation of leaders should also “center various identity perspectives as assets in policies.” If identity is at the center, then character and merit are elsewhere. 

The CRSE framework is New York’s declaration of a partisan value set that will infiltrate schools. It champions students’ internalizing their identities, as though lamenting their privilege or disadvantages will contribute to their education.

Besides any political qualms we might have with the framework, what we really should want in education is the presence of teachers who change students’ lives for the better. The state assumes that plain, indiscriminate kindness and rigor are not enough for teachers to facilitate student flourishing. CRSE is wrong not only because it is ideologically driven, but because it forgets what good teachers are supposed to do.

My father is a high-school math teacher in a diverse school district. He loves all of his students. He takes the time to ask them what they believe in and how they want to live their lives. Enthusiastic for their mere presence, he refuses to give up on them. During Covid lockdowns, I remember overhearing him on Zoom: “Good morning everyone. I’m so happy that you’re here today.” It sounds saccharine, but it’s exactly what he did. And it worked. His students confided in him. At the end of the school year, the shyest ones who rarely mumbled a “hello” wrote him long letters thanking him for his kindness. One time, his entire class signed a birthday card for him. He made a positive difference in their lives.

Teaching isn’t about race. It’s about cultivating goodness in students, no matter their views. We’ve all had teachers who’ve changed us for the better. We should strive to create many more of them.