- [David] At Gilbert Stuart Middle School in the west end of Providence, Principal Nikole Onye has her hands full.

- Do you have the application?

- No.

- Go in the guidance office and get it now, fast.

- [David] 92% of her students are economically disadvantaged.

- Yeah.

Can you complete as much as you can tomorrow?

- [David] 96% are minorities.

- I'm proud of you.

- [David] Gilbert Stuart has long been one of the lowest performing schools in the state.

Dr. Onye is trying to change that.

(hands clapping) - Love you.

This is a one-star school, and our goal is to make this a two or three-star school in the next couple of years.

And to do that, we have to stay super focused.

- It's an uphill battle.

- So this is really important.

- [David] The building itself, crumbling after decades of neglect.

The students say when it rains, that hole in the ceiling of the auditorium drips water.

- Does conflict have to become violence?

- [David] On the day we recently visited, a group of student leaders in that auditorium were taking part in a training session, the topic, nonviolent conflict resolution, based on the works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - Two different people wanted two different things, but they still worked together to get what they both wanted.

- Let's shake it up for that.

- [David] This program is one of several ways.

Gilbert Stuart's trying to re-engage students by inviting them into a deeper conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

- It helps to solve conflict, 'cause when you go out in the real world, you're going to see different people, and to tell kids that, "Hey, it's okay that you see different people.

That's okay that you don't get along with them right away."

- [David] Dr. Onye is diversifying the faculty.

She's added 20 new teachers of color.

The school also offers social justice classes in every grade.

- We started off as an eighth grade class, but now we have one at every grade level.

It's a place where kids can talk about what's going on in the community and what they would do differently.

You know, we wanna hear from them.

What do they think the solutions are?

A lot of the things that adults talk about, if you listen to the kids, a lot of times they have some of the greatest solutions to things that adults are fighting over.

- I think that our schools are going really far off course.

- [David] Rhode Island Representative Patricia Morgan takes a very different view.

- And at this time we will hear House Bill 7539 by Representative Morgan.

Representative Morgan, welcome.

- [David] Morgan has introduced a series of bills at the Rhode Island State House, designed to steer Rhode Island public schools away from what she sees as an obsessive focus on race and racism.

- No child should be accused of being inherently racist, or sexist, or oppressed, or oppressive because of their race, because of their skin color.

We've forgotten what the purpose of education is.

And to me, that's preparing children for successful adult lives - In a diverse society.

- Absolutely.

- A multicultural society.

- But the building blocks are the same, right?

Reading, writing, comprehension, knowledge base.

- [David] Morgan says since state standards changed in 2019, schools across the state are adopting misguided curricula.

- What they've developed is one that is racially and sexually biased.

And by that I mean all of the old textbooks, they're gone.

And instead, what has come into classrooms is activist literature.

It's not literature that gives children the full spectrum of what American society is.

It is centered on Black and Hispanic culture or experience.

So that's what makes it activist.

- [David] She insists these new curricula, among other things, shame white kids and patronize minority kids by focusing too much on the history of racism in America.

- I'm a Black child.

I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror, and say, "Oh, I'm Black."

I can never get ahead because I'm a victim.

It's the skin color, no matter how hard I work.

If I look at you and I say, "You're an oppressor," is that fair?

- No, absolutely not.

- Who are you oppressing?

Who are you oppressing?

Tell me.

And is a little 9-year-old a victim, just by his very presence?

They're to be judged and respected as individuals, not members of an identity group.

- [David] Morgan, a Republican, has plenty of firepower in her corner.

- If you object in any way to the current obsession with race, the one subject no normal person really wants to obsess over, then you yourself are obsessed with race, and you must be stopped because you're dangerous.

(Tucker cackling) That's what they're saying.

- [David] Conservatives, including cable news personality Tucker Carlson, have been sounding alarm bells ahead of the midterms.

- Why?

- Well, it contradicts everything that Martin Luther King fought for.

It's hatred, Marxist ideology, and it places the child in a loophole of oppression, making them feel as a victim, I can't stand for that.

- [David] Denouncing so-called critical race theory, what they consider to be woke ideology invading schools.

- What does critical race theory mean?

What is it?

- Senator, my understanding is that critical race theory is, it is an academic theory that is about the ways in which race interacts with various institutions.

- I get death threats over it.

Yes.

- [David] Jennifer Bergevine teaches at Barrington High School.

- I did 9th and 11th, and the 11th grade course is Advanced Placement Language and Composition.

- How does race factor into your teaching curriculum?

- Well, heavily in language and composition.

It's a rhetoric study, so everything we read is nonfiction.

We stick with what's happening in the world.

The whole curriculum is designed around four social justice topics, and one is race.

- It's a very different population of kids than at Gilbert Stuart Middle, and that's not just because they're older, in high school.

But Barrington is not the most diverse community in the world.

- Not exactly what we're known for.

- Is critical race theory a factor in what you teach?

- It's not necessarily, I wouldn't say it's a factor.

I think there's critical.

- Is it an approach that you use?

- I didn't know what critical race theory was until people started talking about it being bad.

And then I realized that, I guess I kind of teach critical race theory, I just, but it's really more about multiple perspectives.

So when we get into the race unit, we start by what are our own personal experiences with race, as individual.

The students talk about it, they do some reflection.

We watch Ted Talks.

- [David] Ted Talks like this one.

- I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature.

I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.

- And I give them sets of texts that they pick from.

They could choose to read "A Hope in the Unseen," which is about a young man growing up in D.C. who's a young man of color in a really rough school and he wants to go to Brown University, and it's his story.

And the kids love it because he gets to Brown, and they hear about Thayer Street and all those things.

And what they then come back to the table with is a reading journal where they keep track of what stands out to them, what they're confused by, what they wanna learn more about, and they meet in groups to talk about what they've learned.

- It doesn't sound that different from English class when I was in high school.

- Right.

- Eons ago.

I mean, I remember reading "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, which, - Amazing book.

- who's a Harlem Renaissance writer, amazing writer, who's writing about race, and identity, and how he feels invisible.

- Correct.

- So why are people freaking out?

- I think the shift into actually naming systemic racism and saying like, "This is a part of our history as a country," makes people uncomfortable.

(pages rustling) - [David] There's a sense that at least part of what people object to is the idea that teachers are presenting an unflattering view of America, unpatriotic.

Pop quiz.

- Hmm.

- Thomas Jefferson, what's the most important thing for our kids to understand about him?

- He was a founding father.

He was there at the beginning of our country, and he set it on the course for us to be a democracy.

There was never before then a democracy in the world.

- The fact that he was a slave owner, relevant or not relevant in your view?

- You know, listen, he was a slave owner.

Was that the only thing he is?

Is that why we should be disparaging his memory?

- No, but when somebody.

- And his contributions?

- I'm not saying disparaging, but understanding that his vision had limits, didn't it?

- Okay, we can defame his memory, and that's fine, if that's what's important.

And I guess that's what I think is destructive because he did so much more.

- Ask that same question to Jennifer Bergevine.

What is it important to teach our kids about Thomas Jefferson?

- The facts.

You know, I mean, we can't, you can't take a person and just say, "Okay, I'm only gonna look at this part of him, or her, or them."

We need to look at the whole person.

- Warts and all.

- Yes.

- We are focusing on warts and not on the goodness of America.

- If you constantly give kids these larger than life figures who never made a mistake, that's not real.

The half of life is learning to kind of rectify the good with the bad.

- Unfortunately, with that group of people who want to push this ideology, this narrative, they give us no redemption.

There's no redemption for America.

- Just as you are concerned about that ideology infecting the curriculum, isn't it possible that the reaction to it also politicizes the curriculum in an unhealthy way for our kids?

I mean, our kids are caught in the middle, right?

- So what you would suggest, that I allow this racialized and sexualized curriculum to go unchallenged?

- If that bill, the latest bill passed, I don't know, we would have to completely restructure Advanced Placement Language and Literature, and pull out whole units of instruction.

If we can't talk about race, that's a unit of study.

So we would have to reframe the whole thing, which can be done, but it will be to the detriment of the students.

- I don't think anybody's wrong or right in this conversation.

I think everybody has their own perspective.

I can only speak from my perspective, having been in schools for many, many years.

It's our job to empower our students, no matter what color they are, whether they're Black, white, Spanish, male, female, doesn't matter.

We don't want any student to feel that they're victimized.

- [David] One thing both sides agree on is that a good education is the best way to give kids of all races the opportunities they need to succeed.

And that if we, as a society, share Dr. King's dream, we still have some work to do.

- I think it's really important, and I think people don't stress this enough, that if we keep doing what we've been doing, the same result's gonna happen.

- [David] Eighth grader Naya Ossamagossier told us the future depends on getting this right.

- I think that Gilbert Stuart is doing good things, and we need to shine light on that, and we need more help.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.