Conservative Website Critical Of LMSD Elementary School Anti-Racism Reading Requirements
The Conservative website Washington Free Beacon criticised Lower Merion School District, in an article written by Chrissy Clark, posted on Tuesday (August 11).
Clark takes issue with two books that she says elementary school children in Lower Merion will read this year. According to Clark, LMSD fourth and fifth graders will be reading “Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness.”
And district Kindergarten kids will be reading “A Kids Book About Racism.“
Clark objects to “Not My Idea,” because as she interprets it, the book “claims that white people who relate to police officers or decline to watch the news are complicit in racism.”
Clark is also critical of “A Kid’s Book About Racism,” because as she sees it, the book “has an exhaustive list of actions it deems harmful and racist. The book claims asking questions can be racist and issues a call to action for five- to seven-year-olds to call out and identify racism.”
Clark cites Elana Yaron Fishbein, “a mother of two boys and a doctor of social work, penned a letter to the district’s superintendent, board members, and the school’s principal demanding the school remove its new ‘cultural proficiency’ curriculum.
‘The book teaches kids not only to defy parents but to hate themselves,’ Fishbein told the Washington Free Beacon. ‘To hate their parents also because they are white. By default, [the kids] are white, and they’re privileged, and they’re bad. [The school] is teaching this to little kids.’ “
Clark noted that “Amy Buckman, a district spokeswoman, defended the move. ‘The Lower Merion School District fully supports the ongoing implementation of an anti-racist curriculum in its schools and encourages the use of developmentally appropriate books that raise awareness of the very real issues of racism and privilege,’ she said.”