Nikole Hannah-Jones Ruins Black Kids’ Lives… Even Her Own Daughter’s
Strictly Education
The episode critiques Nikole Hannah-Jones and her role in promoting anti-racist educational reforms that the host claims have damaged public
Key takeaways
- Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project aims to reframe American history starting from 1619 rather than 1776.
- Hannah-Jones's daughter, Naya, struggled with reading proficiency due to a chaotic classroom environment.
Main topics
- The 1619 Project
- Anti-racist education reforms
Notable quotes
In fighting for every black child, did I betray my own?
Conclusion
The episode serves as a polemic against progressive educational theori
Transcript preview
Speaker 7 (0:00) The anti-racist campaign to transform schools has contributed to every single thing she has encountered in her public school journey. Hannah-Jones Speaker 6 (0:10) made those schools what they are, and then she dares to be upset because she's had a taste of what she's done to other people's children. Speaker 1 (0:26) Hello and welcome to Strictly Education with me, Catherine Birbal-Singh, Speaker 3 (0:29) Britain's strictest headmistress. Today I want to talk about how anti-racist activists ruin the lives of poor children. In somewhere like New York, Speaker 1 (0:37) we're talking about black poor children in particular. So the reason this is relevant is because of an article written by Nicole Hannah-Jones last weekend. If you don't know who she is, Nicole Hannah-Jones is the African-American New York Times journalist who created the 1619 Project. The 1619 Project was a campaign to say that the founding date of America should not be understood as 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. It should instead be 1619, the year that a slave ship first landed in Virginia. This is how it was covered at the time. Speaker 5 (1:13) In a special new issue, the New York Times Magazine is launching a series called the 1619 Project. It marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the colony of Virginia. The series examines the ways the legacy of slavery continues to shape this country. The Times says the project aims to reframe American history and place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves. Okay, Speaker 1 (1:45) so Nicole Hannah-Jones wanted to reframe American history. The 1619 Project had some pretty grand ambitions. She wanted all public schools to change, all teachers to change, all parents. What do you think they had to do? That's right. change. And everything needed to change because Nicole Hannah-Jones wanted us to listen to a collection of anti-racist authors who tell us that slavery and racism are what defines America. This project made Nicole Hannah-Jones the author. Pretty famous. There was a 1619 documentary. There was a 1619 book. She won a Pulitzer Prize. There was an entire 1619 school curriculum developed off the back of this. We had headlines like this. Speaker 6 (2:32) Your story is in the textbooks. Ours isn't. Buffalo schools adopt the 1619 project. Her own book boasts that schools in every state changed because of her. You had a lot of lesson plans based on sections from that book. Here's Speaker 1 (2:50) an example of one activity. There's a quote from Hannah Jones, which I presume the children are meant to annotate. Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false Speaker 6 (3:00) when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all. And you can see that the students have drawn a black fist next to the word fought and the word yes next to the word false and written she's smart next to Hannah Jones's name. I can't for the life of me understand how this helps educate kids, black or otherwise, but we can come back to that later. The reason that Nicole Hannah Jones is in the news is because of an article she wrote about her daughter. About 10 years ago, Hannah Jones had written about her choice of school for her daughter. Poor in a city, mostly black. And she wrote this whole article about how this was a great moral act. And in her doing this, she was helping black families everywhere. Speaker 7 (3:45) She was saying, if rich, successful people like me, her, send my children to a bad school, then click, it'll become a good school Speaker 6 (3:54) for all those other families. And now. Ten years later, she's saying Speaker 1 (4:00) that her daughter is angry at her and her daughter is angry because she feels she received a terrible education. Now, I think the story is really interesting because it reveals a bunch of ways that rich, anti-racist public voices Speaker 6 (4:12) don't understand schools or culture or frankly, anything. The irony in this whole story is that Hannah-Jones is now writing about how outraged she is at the chaos in the education system. But she hasn't realized that she's one of the Speaker 1 (4:27) people who created it. So what was wrong with her daughter's school? Well, the thing is, Hannah-Jones actually made a mini documentary all about her choice of school for her daughter 10 years ago. Here it is. Speaker 4 (4:44) My daughter doesn't know that there's a class difference between her and her classmates. She will as she gets older, I'm sure. But right now, these are just her friends. And I think that that's the most important thing that I can give her while also trying to even the playing field a bit for the kids in the school whose parents work hard every day, but they work jobs that they don't have status. They don't have access to power. They can't write a 10,000-word piece in the New York Times Magazine about their experience. But I can do that, and my presence in the school changes the status for those children too. Speaker 7 (5:15) Just Speaker 4 (5:16) so we're clear, she's Speaker 7 (5:17) saying that the school will be lifted up somehow because of her greatness and Speaker 3 (5:22) her connections. Silly me. I thought that what made a school good was excellent teaching and strong discipline, not the number of bankers the parents have in their social circles. So Speaker 6 (5:34) Hannah Jones wrote about her daughter's experiences in that school. The headline from last weekend reads, In fighting for every black child, did I betray my own? Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong Speaker 1 (5:47) choice. So Hannah Jones starts by writing, We thought by sending Naya to a mostly low-income and black school, we could help improve it for all the children there. Speaker 6 (5:57) Yes, Speaker 1 (5:58) I see. Speaker 6 (5:59) So... Let her greatness beam all over the school. Hannah-Jones assumes that because she's rich, she's better Speaker 1 (6:07) than those black families. She goes on mentioning her husband. I believe Faraji and I could bring some of that power with us. We had connections and time and status. We believe strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families to do the same. So her theory is that If rich people like her put their children into poor schools, other rich Speaker 7 (6:32) families will feel inspired, and then the great unwashed of poor children will be cleansed by the arrival of the families who, in her own words, can write checks that exceed the PTA budget. Speaker 1 (6:49) Then, to her surprise, it didn't work out that way. Towards the end of first grade, Naya started sometimes saying she didn't like her school and complaining how chaotic it was at lunch. I decided to visit during the lunch period and was shocked by what I saw. So the very same person who was Speaker 6 (7:04) confident she could reframe all American identity is shocked by our schools, she explains. Children were running wild, chasing, hitting, and pushing each other, while the teacher's aides and cafeteria workers stood by, looking bored. She goes on, Several times I had to Speaker 1 (7:22) instruct children to stop striking each other and to sit down, at one point physically pulling two boys apart. Her daughter told her, It's always like this, and that's why I don't want to go to this school. So, Speaker 6 (7:35) For those of you who have never seen a school like this, it's pretty common on both sides of the Atlantic. Here's an example. Madness. In Modesto schools, Speaker 8 (7:42) teachers say classrooms are being turned upside down with some students destroying supplies. Speaker 2 (7:48) What a mess. They say a lack of consequences is even making things worse. Just following the basic rules, they were out the Speaker 7 (7:54) window. Who would have thought it? You have a lack of consequences and no real behavior policy. Combine that with some kind of progressive curriculum inspired by the 1619 Project, maybe, and mysteriously, children don't enjoy school. Now, some of you might think that's all bloody obvious, but not Nicole Hannah-Jones. Speaker 1 (8:15) She was shocked. Funny, that. Now, like any good anti-racist progressive, Hannah-Jones concludes that the problem must be the teachers. She writes about the Speaker 6 (8:27) callous disregard of the adults. What Speaker 7 (8:30) the hell does this woman think she is? I headed straight to the principal's office. I sent a lengthy email about what I witnessed and demanded the unsafe lunchroom conditions be addressed. Well, thank goodness the Messiah has arrived at public school Speaker 6 (8:45) number 307 to save those poor black children. Hannah Jones's lengthy email should finally fix Speaker 1 (8:52) things for them. She then noticed that all the other middle-class families were pulling their children out of the school. However, she decided that they were going to, quote, stay and be a thorn in the principal's side. How charming. How helpful. How utterly obnoxious. Oddly, though, it turns out that her child, rather than lifting up all the other children, simply wasn't learning much. Naya's teachers told us that she was not performing on grade level in any of her academic subjects and that her assessment given at the Speaker 6 (9:29) start of the school year had shown she was not a proficient reader. Now, I have no Pulitzer Prize for journalism, but it would seem to me that if children are pushing and biting each other, it's possible that their children might not learn as much. It's even possible that rich kids who beam their greatness will also fall behind. Is that not obvious? Apparently not. Hannah-Jones concludes, it has to be that the teachers don't care enough. Our child was suffering, but all these children were. They were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach. Okay, Speaker 1 (10:12) so this is very interesting. Speaker 6 (10:14) Why might the teachers be struggling to teach? Hannah-Jones doesn't really have much of an answer, except that there aren't enough wealthy families or resources. That must explain everything. So Speaker 1 (10:27) after elementary school, her child then goes to middle school. Hannah-Jones explains that the school does Black History Month. Speaker 7 (10:34) Spirit Weeks! A food justice club. and that the school has liberal progressive values for its mostly black students. It doesn't set any homework and doesn't really have a system of punishments. Punishments risk alienating vulnerable