Cultural competency education for Virginia teachers would create additional red tape for educators and would completely fail to have any sort of impact whatsoever.

Virginia requires too much of our teachers already. We have a serious shortage of not only labor but talent in teaching, and partially because of ridiculous, politically motivated wastes of time like this proposal. Leave politics out of the classroom and let talent in.

At whom does the state aim the proposed training? At those who treat Robin DiAngelo as God’s fifth prophet, those teachers who agree with those here among the comments clamoring that no reasonable person could take issue with the idea that access to certain ideas and perspectives may be prohibited based on the color of one’s skin? Because I can assure you that such training would bring no additional value for them. They spend their entire (and self-consuming) online lives retweeting and reposting propaganda about the latest gender identities and intersectional disparities.

Perhaps it is to change the minds of those teachers who agree with those here among the comments frothing at the mouth about “CRT” because they heard in a five-minute segment about it on the Tucker Carlson show that it was an evil Democrat plot to overthrow America? I don’t believe such a training would do much for them either.

Perhaps, then, the state aims the training at those teachers who, by some miracle, have remained nonpartisan in today’s political climate. Do we believe that these teachers, the wisest of the three groups, do not already treat their students fairly and with respect? Do we really believe that any of them is actually unaware of the contemporary focus on racial sensitivity and identity politics? Do we assume that such a politically motivated training would be seen by these educators as anything other than such? These educators would sit in the middle of the room, politely appear to take notes, and then go back to their classrooms with their pedagogical practices completely unchanged. Cultural sensitivity training would do nothing beyond add to the already onerous government burden on our teachers.