> Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going through the school system?
Not op and not taking a stance on any of these here, but:
1. Critical race theory (CRT)
2. Gender fluidity
3. Endorsement and use of Christianity/Bible in public schools
These are all hot-button issues in education today, at least in some states and districts.
> No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere other than law school (or possibly undergraduate sociology classes that pre-law students would be likely to take).
Yes and no.
You are correct that almost no one is learning full CRT legal theory in K-12.
That said, CRT principles have expanded beyond legal studies, and they have certainly made their way into classrooms. Here is an example of an article that makes a case for it:
https://www.uclalawreview.org/yes-critical-race-theory-shoul...
I’m not sure if you know many education academics, but I assure you that CRT and derivatives thereof have been some low-hanging fruit in education research for over two decades (i.e., relatively easy to get published).
There were two definitions of Critical Race Theory. In 2021, the National Education Association adopted a Business Item [1] to "Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is not; [...] and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members."
This included "Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project." [1]
Which is pretty wild, because that's a great summary of everything conservatives were objecting to in social studies classes, and provides a good wording for Christopher Rufo's redefinition of CRT.
However, I agree with you that this was a very recent redefinition of the term Critical Race Theory: As far as I can tell, the application of legal scholarship's CRT to education scholarship in the late 1990s was focused on the Critical analysis of teaching outcomes [2, 3, 4], especially racial discrimination in school districts. This seems to have been focused on administrative things rather than course content. There was a subsequent movement around 2016 to bring "Critical Race Praxis" into school districts, which again seems to be focused on removing inequities from school administration and teaching counter-narratives to "K-12 leaders". So I think that this is where conservatives found the term and decided to repurpose it to label the antiracist content which was being incorporated into social studies courses.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210705234008/https://ra.nea.or...
[2] https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/22/02/state-critica...
[3] https://thrive.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/Just%20what%2...
[4] https://ed.fullerton.edu/lift/_resources/pdfs/multicultural_...
[5] https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Envisioning-a-Critical-R...
No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere other than law school (or possibly undergraduate sociology classes that pre-law students would be likely to take). It's a heterodox thread in legal scholarship. Whatever you think primary schoolers are learning about race, it's not Critical Race Theory.