NYC council candidate slams city for 'wasting time and money' on 'ideological training, critical race theory'

close

Video

NYC council candidate pushes back on cancel culture, critical race theory

NYC Council candidate Maud Maron on dangers of cancel culture and challenging critical race theory.

New York City Council candidate Maud Maron spoke out against cancel culture Thursday, explaining how she was forced out of her job as a public defender after rejecting the push to teach critical race theory in schools.

"I was elected to a school board in Manhattan where I live. I have four kids in the public school system here in New York City. I spoke out about issues in education that were important and one of the things I spoke out about was that we should focus on education and not so much on ideology, introducing indoctrination and ideology into our schools. And my employer didn’t agree with me and they chased me out of my job over it," Maron told "America’s Newsroom."

ANTI-CRITICAL RACE THEORY ORG TAKING AIM AT LOUDOUN COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD IN HALF-MILLION DOLLAR AD BUY

Maron wrote a recent op-ed in the New York Post blasting New York City's public school system for focusing on critical race theory as opposed to basic education such as math and writing.

In the op-ed, Maron wrote that "at a city Department of Education anti-bias training, she was instructed to refer to herself as a ‘white woman' as if her whole life is reduced to race."

"Those who oppose this ideology are shunned and humiliated, even as it does nothing to actually improve our broken schools," Maron wrote.

In Maron's piece, she noted the "severe budget cuts made by the local government." The former public defender explained that the DOE spent more than $6 million for anti-bias training, which defines qualities such as "worship of the written word," "individualism" and "objectivity" as "white-supremacy culture."

Maron said she's a liberal Democrat but is "questioning the politics" in America and "thinks she is not alone." Maron agreed with Sharon Osbourne, who said she does not want to return to television because of cancel culture.

"She speaks for a lot of Americans who are afraid they can say something that's slightly wrong or not permissible and lose their job over it," said Maron.

Video

Maron highlighted that more than half of NYC schools kids struggle with basic math and English. According to the NYS Department of Education 2019 report on state test results, 45.6% of students in grades 3-8 were proficient in math and 47.4% of students in grades 3 to 8 scored at proficient levels in English.

According to the New York Post, "the city’s overall English proficiency rate edged up by 0.7 percent from the prior year and math scores improved by 2.9 percent, the numbers show."

Considering the "upsetting" academic results in American students, Maron pressed for more of a focus on helping students become more competitive in the job market.

"Those numbers, as upsetting as they are, our long-standing numbers; New York City public schools haven’t been able to budge the state test proficiency numbers for years and years. We’re talking generations of failing kids to teach them how to read and how to write and how to graduate from New York City public schools able to be competitive in a job market," Maron said.

"We need not just New York city kids but all American kids to be competitive in the global market. So, of course, we have to focus on reading and writing and math and, of course, we have to focus on teaching kids basic skills and not waste time and money in ideological training that doesn’t teach those basic skills and don’t help students with how to learn."

CRT curriculum has sparked a national conversation about the role of race and racism in school districts across the country. Often compared by critics to actual racism, CRT is a school of thought that generally focuses on how power structures and institutions impact racial minorities. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Defenders argue that CRT-type training helps enhance dominant groups' understanding and empathy of what the oppressed experience on a regular basis. These types of trainings have also been promoted as ways to "dismantle" or weaken alleged structures imposing burdens through bias and discrimination.

Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.