Summer Reading List: Ideology Destroyers and Pedagogy Restorers

This heterodox collection serves as the perfect antidote to social justice pieties

Jun 12, 2023

Summer vacation! (or staycation as the case may be). What once was an elusive fantasy glimpsed dimly through a haze of parent-teacher conferences, endless admin meetings, and stacks of late homework to grade, is finally here. When you’re relaxing at a beach, be it Brighton (probationary teacher) or Barbados (Veteran union rep), you need to keep your brain sharp and with it, your sanity after dealing with progressive orthodoxies all year long. That means reading a book or two.

Of course you surely have a mandatory “Faculty selection” that you are duty-bound to at least skim, with the threat of looking foolish at your Fall PD discussion group. But wouldn’t it be great to have some pithy counter-arguments to stick some cognitive dissonance in the craw of your colleagues, principal, and the overpaid DEI flunky who relishes “difficult conversations”?

So in that spirit, we’ve compiled a seasonal reading list which we’ve divided into two categories: Ideology Destroyers & Pedagogy Restorers.

Ideology Destroyers:

#1: Red, White, and Black edited by Robert L. Woodson

History teachers, have you had it up to here with the extreme bias of works like Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History” and the slanted lesson plans of Learning for Justice? This collection by the Woodson Center offers a rebuttal to the dominant narrative that reduces America’s past (and present) to an endless litany of examples of systemic racism. An ideologically-balanced roster of top black academics and intellectuals (John McWhorter and Clarence Page are included) show how great black Americans were able to make profound contributions to our nation despite significant obstacles. Learn about the Rosenwald schools; Harlem’s Hellfighters; and how our nation’s ideals of freedom and equality under law made racial reconciliation possible. The story of how black churches, schools, banks and businesses were built (and rebuilt) is a testament to black ingenuity, resilience and a victor-not-victim mindset.

#2: Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

Gender ideology is currently de rigeur in almost all our nation’s schools, and for this year’s Pride month we’ve of course noticed an update to the ubiquitous rainbow, reflecting the addition of the T, Q, and + tranches to the collateralized debt obligation that is the “alphabet coalition”. Our national transmania is having tragic consequences for young girls and boys who are pipelined from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones to breast removal and “bottom surgery”. Shrier’s book documents this slow train wreck of “gender-affirmation” with plenty of facts and logic. Also check out the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) for more info.

#3: Race Crazy by Charles Love

Fed up with the one-sided history and half-truths in the 1619 project? Pick up a copy of Race Crazy. Formerly a beloved Chicago radio host, author Charles Love has gone from a regional to a national treasure with the publication of his most recent book, a thoroughly well-reasoned takedown of both the 1619 project and Movement for Black Lives (the corporate entity, not just BLM in general). It’s also chock full of statistics and facts that will leave a few mouths agape if you feel like sharing them with colleagues in the faculty lounge next year.

More great ideology destroyers:

Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose

White Guilt by Shelby Steele ← the perfect antidote to “White Fragility”

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Don’t Label Me by Irshad Manji

Racecraft by Karen Fields and Barbara Fields

Destructive Generation by David Horowitz and Peter Collier

The Problem With Everything by Meghan Daum

Losing My Cool, by Thomas Chatterton Williams

Self-Portrait in Black and White, by Thomas Chatterton Williams

Woke Racism by John McWhorter

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell

Antisemitism Here and Now, by Deborah Lipstadt

Woke Antisemitism by David Bernstein

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason L. Riley

Free Speech and Why It Matters by Andrew Doyle

Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch

Pedagogy Restorers:

#1) The Power of Culture edited by Katharine Birbal-Singh

In case you haven’t heard, there is a school in London that is making waves—big waves—giving devotees of the Paulo Freire educational approach fits. Katharine Birbal-Singh’s Michaela School has recently proved naysayers wrong by achieving phenomenal gains with a student body of inner-city kids from challenging backgrounds. How did her team of dedicated traditional teachers—and their hard-working students—accomplish what their more progressive-minded counterparts could not? By insisting on a culture of rigor, consequences, excellence, and traditional pedagogy. Like its predecessor, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, this latest collection is written by Michaela’s teachers themselves. Learn how they make a difference in their classrooms, so you can too.

#2) What is Wrong With Our Schools? by Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck skillfully lays out the disconnect between the trendy pedagogy taught in ed degree schools, and the disastrous results they generate for students. The dysfunction he lays out isn’t systemic, it’s ideological. But he comes not just to criticize, he tells you what works. Content over “skills”. Teacher-centered over student-centered. Challenging texts over relatable readings. Explicit over exploratory learning. This book is chock full of great ideas about how to keep students authentically engaged with traditional methods.

#3) Undoctrinate by Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder, D.Ed.

We all know intuitively that indoctrinating kids is wrong. It's so patently bad that we've probably never even considered the reasons why educators have refrained from doing so for centuries. Undoctrinate takes a deep dive into the literature and outlines the Philosophical, Pedagogical, Emotional, Ethical, Developmental, Democratic, and Legal reasons why principled educators allow intellectual freedom to reign supreme in their classrooms. This is a great read for anyone looking to be able to cite the academy theory and literature when pushing back on classroom activists and ideologues.