The bans on teaching CRT and other ‘divisive concepts’ in America’s public schools

ABSTRACT

The Arizona state legislature has aimed to pass a series of bills banning those in schools from teaching topics associated with inclusion, social justice, and equity. Since 2020, the legislature has targeted teaching ‘critical race theory’ (CRT), often (mis)using the term to refer to any ideas related to systemic discrimination and racial inequality. The debates on the need to educate children about race and racism are ongoing, and school leaders in Arizona have been cast into the debate on the CRT bans. In this study, I put actor–network theory (ANT) to work to explore how school leaders navigate the uncertainties, contradictions, and controversies of the debate and potential bans. I demonstrate the ways in which ANT is particularly useful in exploring controversies in education leadership and policy that bring to the fore the uncertainties of who is acting, when, with what and whom – for what purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Actor–network theory (ANT)
• critical race theory (CRT)
• school principals
• policy

Acknowledgements

I thank the principal participants highlighted in this piece and the other school leaders who are participating in the larger ethnography from which this paper emerged. Theirs is a difficult and important job, even in less politically volatile times, and I appreciate their courage to share their experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jill Koyama

Jill Koyama, a cultural anthropologist, serves as vice dean and professor of the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation in Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Her research is situated across several integrated strands of inquiry: the productive social assemblage of policy; the controversies of globalizing educational policy; the politics of immigrant and refugee education; and community organizing and activism.