Once swept up in its promises, Chelsa Budd now calls it a hollow ideology that preaches justice but delivers only division
The journey of educator Chelsa Budd is not just a personal narrative. It’s an insightful window into false concepts taught in post-secondary education and how exposure to the correct arguments can undo a mountain full of wrong thinking.
Now a mother and home-based educator, Chelsa only embraced education as her vocation after a poignant experience while visiting Egypt. In an interview with this author, she recalled her reflections after seeing children selling postcards at the pyramids.
“This isn’t what a kid is supposed to be doing. They should be in school learning to read and write and learning about the world,” Budd told herself. With that, she switched from pre-law studies to earn an education degree at the University of Regina. Chelsa put her learning to work by teaching English grammar, writing and practical skills at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.
In 2015, Chelsa returned to university to pursue a master’s degree in education. Here, she became immersed in Critical Theory: a framework that interrogates power structures, privilege and oppression in society. One of her professors openly identified as a Neo-Marxist.
“I didn’t bat an eye at that,” Chelsa recalled. “She’s lovely, and I enjoyed her classes, and I just kind of went with it, to my shame, not really thinking, ‘What is that? What does that really mean?’”
At first, Chelsa found Critical Theory intellectually stimulating and emotionally gripping. It challenged her assumptions about Canadian society, privilege and the role of education. Assignments pushed her to question who benefits from the status quo and to consider the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed.
“It kind of captures your heart, and you think, ‘Oh, this is awful how people are being treated. I need to help try to stop this,’” Chelsa recalled. “We were told directly, ‘This is the purpose of education, [it] is social change.’”
Critical Theory frames individuals by their group identity within categories of dominance or oppression rather than as unique persons.
In time, Chelsa realized this approach stood in stark contrast to her Christian faith and its perception of individuals as image-bearers of God, each with inherent dignity and moral agency.
“You are not looked at as an individual, you’re just looked at within this category, and all these assumptions are made about you strictly based on the colour of your skin,” Chelsa explained.
“Everyone who is white is racist against everyone who is not white, just by virtue of them belonging to that group,” Chelsa said of the philosophy.
Critical Theory teaches that only those with power (typically whites in Western societies) can be racist. Others, such as Blacks or Indigenous, could be prejudiced but not “racist” because they lacked the systemic power required under Marxism’s definitions.
Chelsa calls this sophistry “linguistic theft.”
“Critical Theory takes a word that’s familiar to us and it gives us a new definition. We use it, and we can’t argue with what they’re saying because it sounds right. But if, then, if you were to substitute in their new definition, you might not feel so comfortable with what they’re saying,” she explains.
Remarkably, Chelsa did not catch on to these shortcomings until she received an article in her inbox in 2019 from The Gospel Coalition titled, The Incompatibility of Critical Theory and Christianity, by Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer. Even the title offended her.
“I thought, ‘This is so dumb. I’m a critical theorist and I’m a Christian. How dare you make that assertion.’” Then she read the article and found it made a lot of sense.
The authors outlined the problems mentioned above and more. They pointed out that Critical Theory failed because it could only tear down and not build up. Its call to overthrow existing power structures was not accompanied by a clear vision for what should replace them.
The article also showed Chelsa that Critical Theory, while critical of all systems, is rarely self-critical. Dissenting voices are often silenced rather than engaged.
As Chelsa read primary sources to complete her master’s thesis, she found herself in greater and greater disagreement with prominent critical theorists.
“I was just like, ‘I don’t want to put this person in my paper,’” Chelsa recalled thinking. “As I read, I came across writings that included what I saw as deviant sexuality, even references to pedophilia, and strands of extreme feminism. To me, it became clear these were being treated as part of the wider Critical Theory umbrella.”
Chelsa said educators and citizens should reconsider what is behind agendas for social change that are playing out in our schools and in our society.
“I think if people were to start looking beneath the surface on a lot of these ideas, then there might be a different viewpoint,” Chelsa said. “Maybe it’s not the morality that we truly want for Canada.”
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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