These past few days a lot has happened.

There was continued “discourse” on the topic of Critical Race Theory. State Superintendent Catherine Truitt recently offered some insights to political cohorts on her definition of CRT.

“It’s the idea that every aspect of American society is racist. That racism permeates every aspect of our society, even though we have laws that we have passed and enacted on the books that are moving us towards a more perfect union. Okay. That is what critical race theory is. Critical race theory proponents also believe that because those laws were in place in 1783, that they can never really be amended, and therefore our nation will always be flawed. And that, my friends, goes against my core belief as a Christian.”

The Pultizer Prizes for 2021 were also awarded.

The prize for the “General Nonfiction” category was awarded to a journalist who wrote about a bloody chapter in the history of North Carolina.

There was continued fallout from the UNC-CH Board of Trustees decision to not extend a tenured position to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pultizer-Prize winning journalist from NC who attended UNC-CH. This week the university’s student body president penned an open letter to prospective black students.

And President Biden just signed into law a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday.

High school and middle school students are very aware of what is happening in their world. What if a question is posed by a student in class like a 11th or 12th grade English section that might be reading The Crucible or Huckleberry Finn or 1984 or Lesson Before Dying or The Color Purple or any piece of literature that talks about society in a critical way? What if that question links that piece of literature to a modern event of occurrence like one of those mentioned above?

State Supt. Catherine Truitt used to teach 11th and 12th grade English.

How would she have answered those questions?