Public school vendors hijacking wokeness for profit

Examining "Unlearn" posters

Unlearn image found on the WRDSB website - Unlearning For a Better World (WRDSB@Home)

By Not Woke Teacher (anonymous Canadian teacher)

As a career classroom teacher, I just don’t get what’s going on, with a lot of the workshops and classroom materials that are suddenly so available. Although there’s a shortage of up-to-date textbooks in my school, and plenty of  creaky furniture,  there is a seemingly endless supply of money for workshops by groups such as Pflag, which encourage kids to question their gender identity, as well as contracts to local bookstores like A Different Booklist, so teachers can duly stock up on Ibram X Kendi How to be a Young Anti-Racist. 

What these vendors aren’t offering are tools, which might actually help kids learn to read, write, or do math. Tellingly, those that incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) don’t seem to provide much that actually help kids feel better about life, either, since SEL doesn’t bother with tried and true methods, like cognitive behavioral or exposure therapy. 

My school purchased a “poster pack,” from Unlearn for $124.99. I’m scratching my head, because their brand of “unlearning,” is apt: there’s little learning going on.  There is, however, an off-putting sensibility on display, which teases you into thinking this collection is profound, when its aesthetic is simply  just warped. 

What do these products accomplish, to be precise? It’s more about optics, than actual content, which is glaringly absent.  These posters alert kids and administrations alike that social justice and social and emotional learning take precedence over serious subject matter. The principal that orders these materials, and the teacher that incorporates them in the classroom is, above all, virtuous. Its lack of educational content is the content. UNLEARN.

More cynically,  they are also tools of ultimate convenience, and the more you have, the less planning you have to do. Yet nobody could accuse you of taking the lazy way out, like just playing a Disney movie might.   My administration is not merely  unlikely to admonish an English  teacher for spending time away from the curriculum, to explore this series with students. Our principal would find its inclusion exemplary.

So, let’s examine some of those poster panels. Your local school may well have purchased them (or another similar package, by yet another woke vendor)  with your tax dollars, so it’s worth considering if these goods are  worthwhile investments. 

Certainly, a skilled language teacher could take the  image above, and have students explore it in writing, or make a connection with a literary character. But, this isn’t the exercise. They are expressly supposed to engage in a bit of navel-gazing, and examine  how mental illness applies to them. 

Consider how they handle this thorny issue. Nowhere, it is suggested, that the sufferer of mental illness or addiction might take personal responsibility, or have actual agency in dealing with his plight. That’s an old school approach.

What is especially unsettling is that the student is not only directed to gaze inward, but to question, or, to use their phraseology, “unlearn,” what they once thought about mental health and addictions, from “family/culture/society.”

That is a radical proposition, suggesting that there are other, and better answers, out there. Your father suggests going for a walk when you’re feeling down, or to stop “feeling sorry for yourself?” Perhaps a grandparent makes a passing reference to how much harder life was, say,  during World War II? Who wants to hear that kind of advice? UNLEARN.

Bizarrely, the poster has no actual prescription for what “unlearning”  depression, mental health, and addictions would look like.  Rather, implicit is that the goal is just to dismantle the current beliefs and systems that already exist,  then judging mere children as capable of coming up with their own strategies to overcome society’s worst ills. It’s all about tearing down, and apparently our students’ lack of actual life experience, or moral and emotional maturity are not barriers, but rather, qualifications, in and of themselves. 

The dismantling also applies to evaluation. Examine this poster:

In reality , there are no F- grades. You either fail, or you don’t, so the viewer is already presented with a false premise. The student is provided no background information about the actual assignment, or the quality of the work submitted. And that’s the point.

Unlearn what you think school should be about. Without any clues, the student is asked “what might this assignment have been?” 

Well…was it about a sonnet from Shakespeare? Conceptual art? Whether Socrates should have drunk the hemlock?

This line of questioning manipulates the young mind, so open to questioning his environment, not to mention especially the system that evaluates him, perhaps to his own detriment.. They are suddenly perversely empowered to rebel against the same school that exposed them to “unlearning.” You’re being told, by an actual authority figure, that their authority should be not merely questioned, but dismissed. UNLEARN.

It also undermines the very notion of achievement. Why even bother learning to spell, when funky spelling, presented in an alluring font, and design, just gets a F- from your uncool teacher, you know, the one who would never shares this kind of material?

In the series, there are a few images featuring people of colour. Notice how this one stands out from his white peers: 

It’s remarkable that these panels are marketed as tools for critical thinking, since the images and question bank are actually telling its viewers precisely what to think. There is a clear answer to the question, “why do some people get nervous around security guards and police,” as  you’re supposed to say, “black people,” which is precisely what you’re fed with  the image. 

The only people of colour in these panels are either getting evaluated by security measures, or more disturbingly, submerged in water, or being silenced by something or somebody white:

It is especially troubling to consider what impact these images would have on non-white students. Whereas the white people have plenty of power, agency, to both magically enter airports without security, and silence those who look differently from them, non-whites appear tragic, oppressed and possibly even suicidal. 

It’s also bizarre to recognize the last two panels are the only ones to suggest that people can have agency, provided they are white. That agency, by the way, is to ignore, and/or oppress minorities.

Of course, students are also supposed to unlearn gender, and conflate being gendered as a boy or girl upon birth, as “labeling.” It also asks kids how they feel about “gender reveal parties.” If they didn’t know about them, they do, now. And they know what to think of them. 

The Unlearn series markets itself as “provoking thought to inspire change.” Their goals are utopian, as “unlearn (sic) is an approach to life as well as an attitude of the mind. It enables a better understanding of ourselves, and each other. It improves an individuals (sic) quality of life and promotes positive human connection. The negative attitudes and beliefs are learned. To better understand ourselves, and our world, we must unlearn.”

What? Who really thinks some trippy posters could possibly accomplish all of that?  Furthermore, let’s take them at their word.  Once you’ve unlearned everything your family, friends, and other institutions have taught you, what, precisely is left? You’re thirteen years old, and no longer think that grades matter; you’ve unlearned what you think about gender, (you guessed it, there are also posters on unlearning gender)  so you’re suddenly unsure of your sex; and you see black people as perpetual victims. If you’re black, you see yourself as victimized by a thoughtless white majority.

The term “unlearn,” is left undefined, because it really just implies deconstruction. Forget what you know, or think you know, because it’s all wrong, and once you’re willing to leave those pesky conventions behind…what happens next?

Such nihilism is unlikely to produce much good. You’re removing what the child knows: family, society, and standards, and replacing it with absolutely nothing. Is that the goal? To leave kids with nothing to believe in?

At least the garbled nonsense in the New Age/Occult section of the bookstore aspired to something; if you focus hard enough, you’ll manifest some desired outcome. Or maybe there’s an explanation as to  how crystals can improve your love life.  Where’s the hope in all of this unlearning?

Unlearn is a company based in Kitchener, Ontario, and their founder shares his personal story as an immigrant from Uganda, so he has the ideal identity profile when he insists that “these designs…are tools that challenge individuals to think about their unconscious biases.” The only problem is, this measure has already been discredited. The emperor has no clothes. 

This company, however, found its niche.  Schools are anxiously trying to meet their board’s “equity goals,” and buying some products is much easier and less controversial  than ensuring that teachers are not marking their students of colour too harshly, or ensuring that black suspensions are kept down (all strategies that are pushed by Ontario schools, by the way).

While schools sometimes consult with departments over which textbooks or novel sets to order, in our building, this package was ordered without consulting a single colleague. Why bother? It’s already assumed that we’re embracing this kind of material, which is considered beyond reproach. 

The producers of this merchandise almost certainly know that vague proclamations to “unlearn,” societal norms don't inspire positive change.  Tellingly, when our posters arrived, one teacher exclaimed, “unlearn!” in the manner that young guy in those Mountain Dew commercials used to encourage his viewers to , “Do the dew!” Well, drinking sugar water won’t help you become a better athlete any more than preaching unlearning will lead to a better society. They are just empty, albeit clever marketing scams. 

We’ve moved away from teaching actual subject matter, to  sloganeering and shoving ideological catchphrases down kids’ throats. It’s only natural that vendors hijack wokeness for profit, and that schools dutifully blow their budgets on overpriced posters and workshops, which Unlearn also offers. This is not only a waste of resources, but it takes away from learning activities that truly encourage mastery of subject matter, and critical thinking.

What’s truly shocking is how far we’ve shifted from those goals. Let’s make teaching actual content, you know….math, science, language…a thing again. Let’s give up on trying to recreate our kids’ emotional landscape, which we have absolutely no right to, in the first place. 

In order for this to happen, we need a serious push back. Teachers, don’t bring this into the classroom.  Parents, ask your principals:  what are you spending your budgets on? Find out which vendors are getting their money, do your research, and speak out. Ask them why they’re buying faddish posters, when your kid’s math textbook is falling apart. This is your money, not theirs.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Educators as social justice activists

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