#188 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday November 5)
Good morning!
PRIVATE SCHOOL SHAME
Private preparatory schools have experienced more than their share of negative press. Beyond the “pay to play” Varsity Blues scandal, these schools are under scrutiny for over-preparation for college testing, non-diverse student bodies, and a social environment that is racially insensitive. But an area that has also received scrutiny is in pedagogy and “giving every point of view a voice.” I have my own story.
“YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T KNOW YOUR HISTORY”
My daughter came home from middle school to relate the following story:
Her history class was studying the history of Nazi Germany. When someone asked a question, another student said, “Ask her,” pointing at a student of German extraction, who had a family member in Hitler’s military. Obviously, that was uncalled for and heartless to single-out a classmate. The student could have been admonished within the confines of the classroom. Instead, a “special assembly” of the entire student body was held. At that assembly, the Head of the Middle School, presumably in an effort to shock the students, noted that they really needed to “learn their history.” The Nazi regime, she noted, did not begin as a racist, genocidal regime, but as a labor movement that Hitler only joined and redirected later.
Needless to say, I was both stunned by Lauren’s recollection of the story and worried that she had perhaps overreacted. Then I received calls from several of the parents, asking what I was going to do (they clearly knew that I was more than willing to act as their spokesperson—I’m no shrinking violet). So I called the Head of School, only to have the facts and circumstances confirmed.
I had indicated to her that, while we live in a world where we are forced to hear (and give equal time) to “every view,” regardless of logic or fact, institutions of learning should be more discerning. I pointed out that the top sites disclosed when googling “Nazi” were hate sites. I also reminded her that the Nazi movement was fundamentally racist at its inception. She quickly backed-down. Then I said that we live in a world where everyone gets a position and that’s wrong—certain positions are beyond the pale. I said that if we were going to give Nazis equal time, perhaps we should do the same for the KKK (this was for effect, as she is Black). Neither, I said, had standing. And there are other views—including those that fly in the face of science, that are equally unworthy of “equal time.” In fairness to her, she said “I understand what you are saying. I was wrong.”
NOW IT’S PART OF THE CURRICULUM
By now, most people have read of the kerfuffle in the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas. The head of curriculum told a teacher that Texas’s new law requiring teachers to show “both sides” of subjects required, in his words, “Just try to remember…that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you need one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.” Of course, six million Jews were the targets, and victims of, the Nazi regime. You can’t make this stuff up… Texas has gone mad.
HOW SHOULD WE TEACH?
Texas’s latest foray into curriculum doesn’t sound bad, directing that students should have “an understanding of the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government; the history, qualities, traditions, and features of civic engagement in the United States; the structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels.”
The law requires (quite rightfully) that students should be taught through study of the Declaration of Independence; the United States Constitution; the Federalist Papers, including Essays 10 and 51; excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; the transcript of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate; and the writings of the founding fathers of the United States; the history and importance of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964; and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
WHAT WON’T BE TAUGHT
Heather Cox Richardson Texas to task on the limited nature of the source materials studied. She is worthy of being quoted at length:
“While they managed to add in de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America—and I would be shocked if more than a handful of people have ever read that account of early America—there are some pointed omissions from this list. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees Black voting, didn’t make it, although the Nineteenth Amendment, which grants women the right to vote, did. Also missing is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, although the Civil Rights Act of the previous year is there.
Topics explicitly eliminated from the teaching standard are also instructive. Those things cut from the standards include: “the history of Native Americans,” and “[founding] mothers and other founding persons.”
Under “commitment to free speech and civil discourse,” topics struck from the standards include “the writings of…George Washington; Ona Judge (a woman Washington enslaved and who ran away); Thomas Jefferson, [and] Sally Hemings
The standards lost Frederick Douglass’s writings, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that forced Indigenous Americans off their southeastern lands, and Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists defending the separation of church and state. The standards lost “historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations” including documents related to the Chicano movement, women’s suffrage and equal rights, the civil rights movement, Indigenous rights, and the American labor movement.
The standards also lost “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong” and “the history and importance of the civil rights movement.” The legislature took three pages to outline all the things that teachers may not teach, including all the systemic biases the right associates with Critical Race Theory (although that legal theory is not taught in K–12 schools...
WHAT IT MEANS
Editing from our history Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farmworkers’ Association—she was eliminated by name—as well as Abigail Adams and Frederick Douglass and the 1924 Snyder Act (by which the nation recognized Indigenous citizenship) does more than whitewash our history. That editing warps what it means to be an American.
Our history is not about individual feats of courage or honesty in a vacuum. It is about the efforts of people in this country to determine their own fate and to elect a government that will enable them to do that.
A curriculum that talks about individual courage and integrity while erasing the majority of us, as well as the rules that enable us to have a say in our government by voting, is deliberately untethered from national democratic principles.
It gives us a school that does not dare take a position on the Holocaust.”
AND SO
As Crosby, Stills and Nash reminded us generations ago, “teach your children well…”
Have a good day,
Glenn
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