American Educational System

[Seacoaster(1)]

Only teach what is safe?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... h-anymore/

Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.

These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.

“I felt very bleak,” said Lisa Childers, an Arkansas teacher who was forced by an assistant principal, for reasons never stated, into yanking Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 polemic from her high school English class in 2021.

The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.

In response, teachers are changing how they teach.

A study published by the Rand Corp. in January found that nearly one-quarter of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 English, math and science teachers reported revising their instructional materials to limit or eliminate discussions of race and gender. Educators most commonly blamed parents and families for the shift, according to the Rand study.

The Washington Post asked teachers across the country about how and why they are changing the materials, concepts and lessons they use in the classroom, garnering responses from dozens of educators in 20 states.

Here are six things some teachers aren’t teaching anymore.

1 "Slavery was wrong’

Greg Wickenkamp began reevaluating how he teaches eighth-grade social studies in June 2021, when a new Iowa law barred educators from teaching “that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Wickenkamp did not understand what this legislation, which he felt was vaguely worded, meant for his pedagogy. Could he still use the youth edition of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”? Should he stay away from Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” especially as Kendi came under attack from conservative politicians?

That fall, Wickenkamp repeatedly sought clarification from the Fairfield Community School District about what he could say in class, according to emails obtained by The Post. He sent detailed lists of what he was teaching and what he planned to teach and asked for formal approval, drawing little response. At the same time, Wickenkamp was fielding unhappy emails and social media posts from parents who disliked his enforcement of the district’s masking policy and his use of Reynolds and Kendi’s text. A local politician alleged that Wickenkamp was teaching children critical race theory, an academic framework that explores systemic racism in the United States and a term that has become conservatives’ catchall for instruction on race they view as politically motivated.

Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”

Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”

“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”

She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”

As Wickenkamp raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, she added, “I’m sorry, on that part.”

Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

Contacted for comment, Noll wrote in a statement that “the district provided support to Greg with content through a neighboring school district social studies department head.” She did not answer a question asking whether she thinks teachers should be permitted to tell children that slavery was wrong.

2 Christopher Columbus’s journal

For 14 years, a North Carolina social studies teacher taught excerpts of Christopher Columbus’s journal without incident. The point was to show how Columbus’s marriage of enslavement with his quest for profit helped shape the world we live in today.

The teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of harassment, directed children to the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” titled “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress.” Throughout the chapter, students encountered paragraphs taken from the explorer’s journal in which Columbus delineated his views of, and interactions with, the Native peoples of America.

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force,” Columbus wrote in October 1492, in a slice of the journal quoted by Zinn. “They would make fine servants. … With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want,” he also wrote.

But last school year, when the North Carolina teacher tried to give this lesson to her sophomore honors world history class, a parent wrote an email complaining that her White son had been made to feel guilty.

The teacher recalled replying by asking, “Why would your child feel guilty about what Columbus did to the Arawak?” The parents of the student escalated the issue to human resources, the teacher said, spurring an administrator to warn that she needed to stop “pushing my agenda — telling me that having my children learn the truth about Columbus was biased.” Soon after, she said, New Hanover County Schools placed an admonitory letter in the teacher’s file and ordered her to halt the lesson on Columbus.

Asked about the teacher’s allegations, New Hanover schools media relations manager Russell Clark wrote in an emailed statement that the district “cannot comment on individual personnel matters due to privacy laws,” but that any “disciplinary action taken by our district is done in accordance with our policies and state and federal laws.”

To fill the time left over from cutting short her unit on Columbus, the teacher gave children extended versions of her usual lessons on the French and American revolutions, she said. At the end of the year, frustrated and tired, she switched to a different school, where she was able to resume teaching the chapter by Zinn, including snatches of Columbus’s journal, she said.

But she still thinks about her former world history students.

“They missed the truth about exploration; they missed the whole lesson on colonization,” the teacher said. “They were really wanting to learn about Columbus. And what Cortez does, too.”

3 A data set on police use of force

An officer with the New York Police Department monitors a roadblock ahead of a Lunar New Year parade in February. (Bing Guan/Reuters)
A self-described nerd, a Northern Virginia teacher has always used math to explain the world around her. The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional consequences, became a statistics teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools because she wanted to imbue children with that same love of math.

Last academic year, the teacher’s statistics class was diverse along racial lines, she said. Partly in hopes of appealing to her students of color but mostly because she wanted young people to know that math can be used to reveal how society works, she taught a lesson built around a data set exploring the outcomes of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program.

Analyzing the findings shows that citizens of color saw higher rates of police use of force, she told students.

“The whole purpose of that lesson was to drive home the point: ‘Okay, there is an association’ — but that we can’t necessarily conclude race is the cause of the difference,” the teacher said in an interview. “Association is not causation.”

She got no complaints from students or parents, she said. But at a mandatory professional development session the following summer, administrators warned that Virginia teachers — especially those in Loudoun County — were “under a microscope right now,” the teacher said. Staffers understood the comment, she said, as a reference to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first-day executive order limiting education on race and “divisive concepts,” the tip line he set up allowing parents to report teachers, and his intense scrutiny of the Loudoun district for its handling of two student sexual assaults.

The teacher asked higher-ups if she should stop teaching her lesson on the police use of force. She was told yes, because “it might make children uncomfortable” because of their race or if their parents are police officers, the teacher recalled.

Asked about the teacher’s account, Loudoun schools spokesman Dan Adams wrote in an emailed statement that the district remains “committed to maintaining an inclusive, safe, caring and rigorous learning environment.”

The teacher has not taught the data set since. Without bothering to ask, she has also stopped discussing a well-known, peer-reviewed 2003 study that found higher callback rates for job applicants with traditionally White, as opposed to Black, names. She had used the study to explain the concept of a statistically significant difference.

4 ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’

In Arkansas last school year, 12th-grade English teacher Lisa Childers was struggling to interest her students in Tara Westover’s “Educated,” a memoir about growing up in a survivalist Mormon family from a splinter sect that saw little point in educating women.

But she saw a glimmer of curiosity from a handful of female students intrigued by Westover’s references to Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th-century British philosopher and writer best known for her passionate argument for women’s equality, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”

Childers decided to suggest six passages of optional reading from the text. “Men considering females rather as women than human creatures,” Wollstonecraft wrote in one, “have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses and affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been … hobbled.”

Childers said she wanted female students to know that women had struggled to learn for centuries.

But on Jan. 18, 2022, the assistant principal at Bryant High School, apparently alerted to the Wollstonecraft assignment after reviewing Childers’s syllabus online, sent an email with the heading: “Questions about a document (please respond).”

The assistant principal wrote in the email, a copy of which was reviewed by The Post, that she had “a few questions” about Wollstonecraft’s essay: “What is the purpose of using it?” “How is it connected to what you are doing?” “Is it connected by skills?” “Is it connected by theme?”

The email spawned a lengthy back-and-forth over the next two weeks in which Childers sought to defend the assignment. She emphasized that it was optional — but gave up when the assistant principal kept peppering her with questions about why it was necessary.

A portion of a document in which Lisa Childers explains her assignment of Wollstonecraft's “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” (Lisa Childers)
The assistant principal never offered a reason for her objections. But earlier that academic year, the same person had objected to a teacher’s proposed assignment of an essay on toxic masculinity by writing in an email, reviewed by The Post, that educators should “bring in articles of empathy and compassion rather than something that could negatively trigger our students.” In 2021, Bryant Public Schools overhauled its middle and high school English curriculums to eliminate books including Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” with officials citing a need for more rigorous texts and tales that were not “overly dark and heavy.”

Asked about Childers’s account, Devin Sherrill, director of communication for Bryant Public Schools, wrote in a two-page statement that Childers did not supply a “requested lesson plan to adequately justify including Wollstonecraft’s work as a part of her lesson.” Sherrill wrote that Wollstonecraft’s text is not part of the district’s “curriculum map” and that Childers failed to show how “learning target(s) would be achieved” by assigning students “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”

Childers said her class finished “Educated” without enthusiasm. The incident, she said, felt like a chilling repeat of censorship that occurs in the memoir.

“We weren’t even allowed to read the things Tara Westover is so pleased to be reading,” Childers said, “when she finally goes to college.”

5 ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’

Across two decades of working in education, one Missouri English teacher said she received two complaints from parents objecting to Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” As best she can recall, both complaints came from Black parents upset by the use of the n-word.

Sensitive to these concerns, the teacher was careful in how she taught the novel, which she believes is important reading because it grants children a glimpse into lives far different from their own.

“We would have a conversation with the kids about trying to understand why the word was used so frequently in the book — and we weren’t reading [the n-word] out loud, we would skip over,” she said. “We would also talk about how this showed the view of minorities during that time.”

But over the past three years, White parents began lodging complaints against “Huck Finn” in the teacher’s largely White and conservative town, she said. The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity because her district forbids unsanctioned interviews with the news media.

The teacher said she received five complaints from White parents objecting to the n-word. She said several of her colleagues in the Wentzville School District reported similar objections.

In the 2021-2022 school year, right before she was slated to start teaching “Huckleberry Finn,” the teacher met with colleagues at her high school. They discussed how parents in the district had begun sharing on social media details of teacher behavior they disliked, sometimes naming the educators involved.

The teachers decided to cut “Huckleberry Finn.” Also nixed was John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” which had drawn similar objections over profane language — again from White parents.

“We didn’t wait for complaints,” the teacher said.

The teacher said her administrators stayed out of the issue, content so long as the educators “did not cause problems.” Officials did not request, endorse or question the books’ removal, she said. District chief communications officer Brynne Cramer wrote in a statement that “our educators are empowered to determine which texts best meet the needs of their learners,” adding that “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Of Mice and Men” are both “available for staff to incorporate” into lessons.

In place of the two books, the teacher sent students a list of dystopian and science-fiction novels, allowing them to choose whatever most appealed to them and read it in small groups. She figured books in those genres were least likely to cause controversy.

But she thinks her students have lost out.

“When you can’t have conversations about class and race … it makes it more difficult for children to understand why people try to fight for equality,” she said. “You’re doing them a disservice.”

6 A Library of Congress video of a ‘cakewalk’

Rebecca Fensholt, a teacher at a North Carolina high school, spent weeks developing a three-day unit on “identity power and subversion” for her semester-long social studies class. Students learned how racial, ethnic, sexual and gender identities can be wielded to uphold or undermine those in power.

One part of the lesson, which Fensholt taught for three years with no problems, involved showing videos of “cakewalks,” dances that Black Americans began performing in the antebellum era partly to mock the formal dances held by their White, wealthy enslavers. Fensholt played an old Library of Congress video of a cakewalk, in which five Black men and women clad in posh period outfits dance for 41 seconds in a circle.

Fensholt also assigned a prompt that, she said, usually led to thoughtful discussions: “When is imitation subversion, and when is it emulation?”

But things changed this fall when Fensholt decided to pair the video with an essay by bell hooks — “Is Paris Burning?” — in which the Black feminist and social critic dissects drag ball culture in 1980s-era New York.

Fensholt said she soon received a flurry of emails from four parents contending broadly that the cakewalk video and the bell hooks text were irrelevant to social studies. One parent accused her — in a profanity-laced message that also promised to report her to the district — of indoctrinating students, she said.

Fensholt devoted hours to replying to each parent, explaining and defending her lesson in emails she said she checked repeatedly for tone. She also contacted Durham Public Schools officials, meeting with building administrators, an instructional coach and a teacher who serves as her mentor. Overall, she felt she got insufficient support from the district, she said. And the parent complaints just kept coming.

Reached for comment, district communications specialist Crystal Roberts wrote in a statement that “Durham Public Schools is in the process of gathering information regarding the incident cited.”

This semester, Fensholt decided she couldn’t face a second round. She skipped the three-day lesson on subversion, the cakewalk video, the bell hooks text: “I just didn’t teach it.”

[a fan]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

[Seacoaster(1)]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Here again, the laboratory known as "Florida" will have the answer: lower the credentialing requirements, don't even require a teacher applicant to pass the "General Knowledge exam," and stuff the ranks of teachers with pre-intimidated educators aiming at getting the kids to memorize a few non-controversial key concepts, and politely pass everyone.

[runrussellrun]

Only teach what is safe?

For 14 years, a North Carolina social studies teacher taught excerpts of Christopher Columbus’s journal without incident. The point was to show how Columbus’s marriage of enslavement with his quest for profit helped shape the world we live in today.

It IS comical, that those that want to focus on THEIR thoughts about what was, IS, important.

And how that event IS interpreted.

IE: the above. The ignorance, or deleberate "we just leave that part out " context of what Columbus's journal infers, is laughably lost. Perhaps, on purpose. Gee, how DID a substantial part of the Americas culturally misappropriate the Spanish language. Columbus was the just a hench man. Essentially, a private contractor like Blackwater, etc.

The white European slave traders, from Spain.....who literally brought African slaves to the Americas......first......well, THAT part of history, just, sorta gets, ignored.

Brazil or Argentina teaching CRT and floating "reparations" , because of the awful practice of slavery?

unless the Monorachy from Spain DIDN'T fund the Columbus voyages ......geez.

"spanish Galleon, full of gold, found in waters of the island of ....." gee, where did the gold come from?

Amazing, how the SPanish , get a pass on all this.

GUess, teaching it, would be, umm, racist

[runrussellrun]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Was it wrong? (slavery? ) rhetorical, or not, if "teacher" Wickenkamp doesn't preface, or end, EVERY SINGLE history lesson with this question, just for topics HE feels are morally altuistic, blah blah blah.

Was it wrong to build bio weapon labs, with US tax dollars, in Eastern Ukraine?

Was it wrong for many posters on these threads to cheer with glee, and wish for the DEATH of the POTUSA, when he became ill ?

Was it wrong to create laws , for licensing and employment credentials, requiring economic bigotry practices. "college degree REQUIRED" stuff ?

Was it wrong to hurt a human being, while supporting the Ukraine, which IS supporting the effort to hurt human beings ?

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was Mountain Meadows massacre wrong? Was it wrong for the Donner family to eat the dead, in order to survive? Was it wrong for US troops to fire upon, dropping bombs from planes, on fellow US citizens, who only wanted safe working conditions and a living wage. (battle at Blair Mtn. )
Was it wrong to assault the British soldiers in Boston, forcing them to defend themselves ? (they were acquitted of naughtyness, yes )
Was it wrong that US tax payers bail out the rich ?.....blah blah blah blah

[Farfromgeneva]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Here again, the laboratory known as "Florida" will have the answer: lower the credentialing requirements, don't even require a teacher applicant to pass the "General Knowledge exam," and stuff the ranks of teachers with pre-intimidated educators aiming at getting the kids to memorize a few non-controversial key concepts, and politely pass everyone.

Restocking the pool for the next Epstein?

[a fan]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Was it wrong? (slavery? ) rhetorical, or not, if "teacher" Wickenkamp doesn't preface, or end, EVERY SINGLE history lesson with this question, just for topics HE feels are morally altuistic, blah blah blah.

Was it wrong to build bio weapon labs, with US tax dollars, in Eastern Ukraine?

Was it wrong for many posters on these threads to cheer with glee, and wish for the DEATH of the POTUSA, when he became ill ?

Was it wrong to create laws , for licensing and employment credentials, requiring economic bigotry practices. "college degree REQUIRED" stuff ?

Was it wrong to hurt a human being, while supporting the Ukraine, which IS supporting the effort to hurt human beings ?

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was Mountain Meadows massacre wrong? Was it wrong for the Donner family to eat the dead, in order to survive? Was it wrong for US troops to fire upon, dropping bombs from planes, on fellow US citizens, who only wanted safe working conditions and a living wage. (battle at Blair Mtn. )
Was it wrong to assault the British soldiers in Boston, forcing them to defend themselves ? (they were acquitted of naughtyness, yes )
Was it wrong that US tax payers bail out the rich ?.....blah blah blah blah

I can't speak to how everyone else's post HS education went, but for me?

Every good teacher asked the questions, and couched all their instructions as questions....and it was up to the students to answer them, not the other way around. And this was both here in the US, and in Germany.

All this nonsense about teaching tells me that Americans don't know how education works. It's just like parenting: you're not supposed to answer your kids questions and problems for them. You're supposed to teach them how to think about these problems.

[Farfromgeneva]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Was it wrong? (slavery? ) rhetorical, or not, if "teacher" Wickenkamp doesn't preface, or end, EVERY SINGLE history lesson with this question, just for topics HE feels are morally altuistic, blah blah blah.

Was it wrong to build bio weapon labs, with US tax dollars, in Eastern Ukraine?

Was it wrong for many posters on these threads to cheer with glee, and wish for the DEATH of the POTUSA, when he became ill ?

Was it wrong to create laws , for licensing and employment credentials, requiring economic bigotry practices. "college degree REQUIRED" stuff ?

Was it wrong to hurt a human being, while supporting the Ukraine, which IS supporting the effort to hurt human beings ?

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was Mountain Meadows massacre wrong? Was it wrong for the Donner family to eat the dead, in order to survive? Was it wrong for US troops to fire upon, dropping bombs from planes, on fellow US citizens, who only wanted safe working conditions and a living wage. (battle at Blair Mtn. )
Was it wrong to assault the British soldiers in Boston, forcing them to defend themselves ? (they were acquitted of naughtyness, yes )
Was it wrong that US tax payers bail out the rich ?.....blah blah blah blah

I can't speak to how everyone else's post HS education went, but for me?

Every good teacher asked the questions, and couched all their instructions as questions....and it was up to the students to answer them, not the other way around. And this was both here in the US, and in Germany.

All this nonsense about teaching tells me that Americans don't know how education works. It's just like parenting: you're not supposed to answer your kids questions and problems for them. You're supposed to teach them how to think about these problems.

I do tell my daughters that boys are the devil. But that’s a temporary phenomenon I’m aware.

[youthathletics]

From your cite: Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

What's Iowa parents plan when no one wants to teach their kids?

Was it wrong? (slavery? ) rhetorical, or not, if "teacher" Wickenkamp doesn't preface, or end, EVERY SINGLE history lesson with this question, just for topics HE feels are morally altuistic, blah blah blah.

Was it wrong to build bio weapon labs, with US tax dollars, in Eastern Ukraine?

Was it wrong for many posters on these threads to cheer with glee, and wish for the DEATH of the POTUSA, when he became ill ?

Was it wrong to create laws , for licensing and employment credentials, requiring economic bigotry practices. "college degree REQUIRED" stuff ?

Was it wrong to hurt a human being, while supporting the Ukraine, which IS supporting the effort to hurt human beings ?

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was Mountain Meadows massacre wrong? Was it wrong for the Donner family to eat the dead, in order to survive? Was it wrong for US troops to fire upon, dropping bombs from planes, on fellow US citizens, who only wanted safe working conditions and a living wage. (battle at Blair Mtn. )
Was it wrong to assault the British soldiers in Boston, forcing them to defend themselves ? (they were acquitted of naughtyness, yes )
Was it wrong that US tax payers bail out the rich ?.....blah blah blah blah

I can't speak to how everyone else's post HS education went, but for me?

Every good teacher asked the questions, and couched all their instructions as questions....and it was up to the students to answer them, not the other way around. And this was both here in the US, and in Germany.

All this nonsense about teaching tells me that Americans don't know how education works. It's just like parenting: you're not supposed to answer your kids questions and problems for them. You're supposed to teach them how to think about these problems.

I do tell my daughters that boys are the devil. But that’s a temporary phenomenon I’m aware.

Hey, we didn't bite the damned apple.

[NattyBohChamps04]

Hey, we didn't bite the damned apple.

Bible says we did. And with a lot less persuasion. Just one pretty lady.

[Farfromgeneva]

Hey, we didn't bite the damned apple.

Bible says we did. And with a lot less persuasion. Just one pretty lady.

As clay Davis would’ve said, sheeeeeeet-call me Johnny Appleseed

[Seacoaster(1)]

Florida:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/f ... story.html

"The nitty-gritty process of reviewing and approving school textbooks has typically been an administrative affair, drawing the attention of education experts, publishing executives and state bureaucrats.

But in Florida, textbooks have become hot politics, part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign against what he describes as “woke indoctrination” in public schools, particularly when it comes to race and gender. Last year, his administration made a splash when it rejected dozens of math textbooks, citing “prohibited topics.”

Now, the state is reviewing curriculum in what is perhaps the most contentious subject in education: social studies.

In the last few months, as part of the review process, a small army of state experts, teachers, parents and political activists have combed thousands of pages of text — not only evaluating academic content, but also flagging anything that could hint, for instance, at critical race theory.

A prominent conservative education group, whose members volunteered to review textbooks, objected to a slew of them, accusing publishers of “promoting their bias.” At least two publishers declined to participate altogether.

And in a sign of how fraught the political landscape has become, one publisher created multiple versions of its social studies material, softening or eliminating references to race — even in the story of Rosa Parks — as it sought to gain approval in Florida.

“Normally, a state adoption is a pretty boring process that a few of us care about, but there are a lot of people watching this because the stakes are so high,” said Jeff Livingston, a former publishing executive who is now an education consultant.

It is unclear which social studies textbooks will be approved in Florida, or how the chosen materials might address issues of race in history. The state is expected to announce its textbook decisions in the coming weeks.

The Florida Department of Education, which mandates the teaching of Black history, emphasized that the requirements were recently expanded, including to ensure students understood “the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on individual freedoms.”

But Mr. DeSantis, a top Republican 2024 presidential prospect, also signed a law last year known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which prohibits instruction that would compel students to feel responsibility, guilt or anguish for what other members of their race did in the past, among other limits.

The state’s guidelines for evaluating textbooks targets “critical race theory,” a graduate-level academic theory that rarely appears in younger grades but has become a catchall to some conservatives; and “social emotional learning,” an approach that tries to help students develop positive mind-sets and that is viewed by the DeSantis administration as extraneous to core academics.

Florida — along with California and Texas — is a major market for school textbook publishing, a $4.8 billion industry.

It is among more than a dozen states that approve textbooks, rather than leaving decisions only to local school districts. Every few years, Florida reviews textbooks for a particular subject and puts out a list that districts can choose from. (Districts also have some discretion to choose their own materials.)

Because state approval can be lucrative, publishers have often quietly catered to the biggest markets, adjusting content for their local needs and political leanings.

Publishers and Politics

The Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group, has urged the state to reject 28 of the 38 textbooks that its volunteers reviewed, including more than a dozen by McGraw Hill, a major national publisher.

The alliance, whose co-founders served on Mr. DeSantis’s education advisory team during his transition to governor, has helped lead a sweeping effort to remove school library books deemed as inappropriate, including many with L.G.B.T.Q. characters. It trained dozens of volunteers to review social studies textbooks.

In a summary of its findings submitted to the state last month, the group complained that a McGraw Hill fifth-grade textbook, for example, mentioned slavery 189 times within a few chapters alone. Another objection: An eighth-grade book gave outsize attention to the “negative side” of the treatment of Native Americans, while failing to give a fuller account of their own acts of violence, such as the Jamestown Massacre of 1622, in which Powhatan warriors killed more than 300 English colonists.

In a statement, McGraw Hill said it was awaiting word about approvals. “We look forward to supporting Florida educators and students as we have for many decades,” the company said.

The Florida Citizens Alliance is pushing the state to add curriculum from Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan that is active in conservative politics.

Hillsdale has drawn admiration from the DeSantis administration, but its K-12 history and civics materials, which emphasize primary sources, are meant to guide teachers — not be a textbook for students. The curriculum was not included in Florida’s official review, and the state did not comment on the group’s recommendations.

Of the nearly 20 publishers who applied in Florida, one major player was not on the list: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, or HMH.

HMH, which won approval for social studies textbooks during Florida’s last review six years ago, was among the publishers whose math textbooks were initially rejected last year for “prohibited topics” and other unsolicited strategies, such as critical race theory or social emotional learning. (The textbooks were later approved after what HMH described as minor revisions.)

The company said in a statement that it did not compete in Florida this year because of “business priorities” and that the math textbook rejections and Florida’s legislation around race were not factors in its decision.

“For competitive reasons, we do not share our strategic decision-making process,” the company said.

The company, though, is pursuing social studies bids in other states, including South Carolina, North Carolina and New Mexico.

Another previously approved publisher, Discovery Education, also chose not to participate this year. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

One Publisher’s Edits: Rosa Parks

In an attempt to cater to Florida, at least one publisher made significant changes to its materials, walking back or omitting references to race, even in its telling of the Rosa Parks story.

The publisher, Studies Weekly, mostly serves younger students, with a focus on science and social studies, and its curriculum — short lessons in weekly pamphlets — is used in 45,000 schools across the country, according to its website. Its social studies materials are used in Florida elementary schools today.

The New York Times compared three versions of the company’s Rosa Parks story, meant for first graders: a current lesson used now in Florida, an initial version created for the state textbook review and a second updated version.

Some of the material was provided by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a progressive parent group that has fought book ban efforts in the state, and confirmed by The Times.

In the current lesson on Rosa Parks, segregation is clearly explained: “The law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down.”

But in the initial version created for the textbook review, race is mentioned indirectly.

“She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin,” the lesson said.

In the updated version, race is not mentioned at all.

“She was told to move to a different seat,” the lesson said, without an explanation of segregation.

It’s unclear which of the new versions was officially submitted for review. The second version — which doesn’t mention race — was available on the publisher’s website until last week.

Studies Weekly made similar changes to a fourth-grade lesson about segregation laws that arose after the Civil War.

In the initial version for the textbook review, the text routinely refers to African Americans, explaining how they were affected by the laws. The second version eliminates nearly all direct mentions of race, saying that it was illegal for “men of certain groups” to be unemployed and that “certain groups of people” were prevented from serving on a jury.

With these changes, it is unclear if Studies Weekly is an outlier, or if other publishers may also have curbed their materials.

The Florida Department of Education suggested that Studies Weekly had overreached. Any publisher that “avoids the topic of race when teaching the Civil Rights movement, slavery, segregation, etc. would not be adhering to Florida law,” the department said in a statement.

But Studies Weekly said it was trying to follow Florida’s standards, including the Stop W.O.K.E. Act.

“All publishers are expected to design a curriculum that aligns with” those requirements, John McCurdy, the company’s chief executive, said in an email.

The company’s curriculum is no longer under consideration by the state.

After questions from The Times, the company removed its second, scrubbed-down version of the curriculum from its website last week and said that it had withdrawn from the state’s review.

The Florida Department of Education said it had already rejected the publisher, citing a bureaucratic snafu in the company’s submission.

The company may still try to win over individual Florida districts. It has now gone back to its first version of the new curriculum — the one that says Rosa Parks was told to move her seat “because of the color of her skin.”

[runrussellrun]

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was ....blah blah blah blah

I can't speak to how everyone else's post HS education went, but for me?

Every good teacher asked the questions, and couched all their instructions as questions....and it was up to the students to answer them, not the other way around. And this was both here in the US, and in Germany.

All this nonsense about teaching tells me that Americans don't know how education works. It's just like parenting: you're not supposed to answer your kids questions and problems for them. You're supposed to teach them how to think about these problems.

[/quote]

just "google it" ain't teaching either......and yet....we can just feel the addiction to " let ME LOOK that UP ", say, as a debate source. But, mostly landing, contentdantly, on wiki island

[Farfromgeneva]

Nay......education IS better off without these mask mandaters, "Ill teach it the way I WANT IT TO be taught". woke nonesense.

keep on ignoring the real social outcome of teaching CRT and the impacts of "white guilt" on young white males. How the heck IS slavery their fault?

repeat, if history lessons, ALL of them, have the exact same question (was it wrong?), perhaps some more context for the woke teachers. Was ....blah blah blah blah

I can't speak to how everyone else's post HS education went, but for me?

Every good teacher asked the questions, and couched all their instructions as questions....and it was up to the students to answer them, not the other way around. And this was both here in the US, and in Germany.

All this nonsense about teaching tells me that Americans don't know how education works. It's just like parenting: you're not supposed to answer your kids questions and problems for them. You're supposed to teach them how to think about these problems.

just "google it" ain't teaching either......and yet....we can just feel the addiction to " let ME LOOK that UP ", say, as a debate source. But, mostly landing, contentdantly, on wiki island
[/quote]

Rambling incoherently and ignoring requests for further understanding of a one man islands language aint exactly teaching anyone either

[Seacoaster(1)]

Back to the Pledge:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opin ... olina.html

"On Nov. 29, 2022, Marissa Barnwell, an honor student at River Bluff High School in Lexington, S.C., was walking to class when the Pledge of Allegiance came on over the loudspeaker. It was Marissa’s 15th birthday and, as she told me recently, “I started off that day very happy, just living life.” Though other students passed in the hallway without incident, school camera footage shows a confrontation between Marissa and a teacher. According to Marissa, the teacher yelled at her to stop walking, grabbed her by the arm and pushed her against a hallway wall. She was then escorted to the principal’s office.

Once there, Marissa says she told the principal she’d been assaulted by a teacher for exercising her First Amendment right not to participate in the pledge. As Marissa recalls, he responded, “Don’t you love this country?”

There are many ways to express patriotism. In the grand, short scheme of American history, the Pledge of Allegiance, in its current form, is relatively new. The authorship of the pledge has recently been disputed, but it is commonly attributed to Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian socialist who claimed to have written it in 1892. In the 1920s, it was amended to refer specifically to the flag “of the United States of America,” in case any recent immigrants got the wrong idea about which country they were heeding. It wasn’t until 1954, at the height of the Red Scare, that President Eisenhower succumbed to pressure from McCarthyites in Congress to insert the words “under God” into the pledge.

In 1935, a seventh-grade student, Lillian Gobitas, and her brother William, a fifth grader, both Jehovah’s Witnesses, refused to recite the pledge in school on religious grounds. They were harassed and ostracized; children threw rocks at Lillian, and she and William were expelled. The case eventually rose to the Supreme Court, which decided against them. That decision was overturned in 1943. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the majority opinion.

I knew none of this history in the late 1970s, when I moved from one suburban New York town to another and wound up in a second-grade public school classroom where each day began with the pledge. Students rose from their desks, affixed their right hands to their hearts and repeated the words in unison.

Only I wouldn’t do it — and as a consequence, I was sent to the principal’s office. I remember explaining that I did not believe in God and therefore didn’t wish to participate. I remember my mother being called and that whatever she said must have appeased them. I was released back to class, presumably having lain to rest any concerns that the new kid was some kind of troublemaker.

Marissa Barnwell and I chose not to recite the pledge for different reasons and under very different circumstances. My confrontation took place during the relatively apathetic ’70s in liberal New York. I was 7 years old, white, painfully shy. Marissa is a Black 15-year-old attending a predominantly white school in red state South Carolina during a highly polarized time; she was singled out among numerous students walking during the pledge in the hallway that day. When her story broke, she was denounced on social media, often in incendiary and hateful terms; on Facebook, one comment urged her to “go back to her monkey cage in Africa if she doesn’t like to recite the pledge to the country that’s doing her and her retarded family a favor by letting them live among decent humans.”

This kind of repellent racism is the very reason Marissa first stopped reciting the pledge in third grade, inspired by Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem. Marissa told me: “Protesting the Pledge of Allegiance is basically saying that I’m aware of the way American society treats Black people, that we are not all treated equally, with liberty or with justice. I want to be sure to acknowledge that what’s being pledged isn’t the truth.” In 2019, an 11-year-old boy was arrested in Florida after a dispute over his refusal to stand for the pledge, which also served as a protest against racism.

People may have many reasons to exercise their First Amendment right not to recite the pledge. Those reasons can be personal and private; they should not need a public defense. No federal law requires citizens to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, stand when it is delivered or stop to acknowledge its recitation. State law, however, sometimes does. Texas, for example, requires students to pledge allegiance every day, not only to the United States but to the Lone Star State as well.

Many Americans may not be aware of just how unusual it is for students to recite a daily oath to their country or their country’s leader. The oddity probably stands out most to those who have immigrated here or who have lived outside this country for any significant time. In Britain, students don’t start their school day with “God Save the King.” In France, public schoolchildren don’t pay fealty to the tricolor before setting to the day’s lessons.

In some countries, students sing a national anthem before school events, but few require regular loyalty pledges from their students; among those that do are North Korea, Singapore and, until recently, Turkey. When I lived in Thailand in the ’90s, movie audiences had to stand before every film while the royal anthem played, accompanied by a short film about the king. As a noncitizen resident of the country and out of respect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, I also stood up. These days, in a sign of civic unrest, more Thais are staying seated in quiet protest of his successor, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Some people believe that protest itself is a form of patriotism — that only those who are deeply invested in their country and who believe in its capacity to overcome wrongs would bother pointing out injustices. Should such dissent be viewed as any less patriotic than the indifference exhibited by those who absent-mindedly put a hand to their chest while repeating words to which they may not have given consideration?

Marissa Barnwell, a high-achieving and conscientious teenager, understood her constitutional rights and exercised them. (Her family is now suing the school district and others, accusing them of violating the First and Fourteenth amendments.) Isn’t that — more than reciting a loyalty oath, whether you believe in it or not — what citizenship is about? That’s how Marissa sees it. When she grows up, she told me, she wants to be a lawyer because, as she put it, “I want to make sure there is representation for fair treatment for all, and I want to be that person.”

[cradleandshoot]

Back to the Pledge:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/opin ... olina.html

"On Nov. 29, 2022, Marissa Barnwell, an honor student at River Bluff High School in Lexington, S.C., was walking to class when the Pledge of Allegiance came on over the loudspeaker. It was Marissa’s 15th birthday and, as she told me recently, “I started off that day very happy, just living life.” Though other students passed in the hallway without incident, school camera footage shows a confrontation between Marissa and a teacher. According to Marissa, the teacher yelled at her to stop walking, grabbed her by the arm and pushed her against a hallway wall. She was then escorted to the principal’s office.

Once there, Marissa says she told the principal she’d been assaulted by a teacher for exercising her First Amendment right not to participate in the pledge. As Marissa recalls, he responded, “Don’t you love this country?”

There are many ways to express patriotism. In the grand, short scheme of American history, the Pledge of Allegiance, in its current form, is relatively new. The authorship of the pledge has recently been disputed, but it is commonly attributed to Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian socialist who claimed to have written it in 1892. In the 1920s, it was amended to refer specifically to the flag “of the United States of America,” in case any recent immigrants got the wrong idea about which country they were heeding. It wasn’t until 1954, at the height of the Red Scare, that President Eisenhower succumbed to pressure from McCarthyites in Congress to insert the words “under God” into the pledge.

In 1935, a seventh-grade student, Lillian Gobitas, and her brother William, a fifth grader, both Jehovah’s Witnesses, refused to recite the pledge in school on religious grounds. They were harassed and ostracized; children threw rocks at Lillian, and she and William were expelled. The case eventually rose to the Supreme Court, which decided against them. That decision was overturned in 1943. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the majority opinion.

I knew none of this history in the late 1970s, when I moved from one suburban New York town to another and wound up in a second-grade public school classroom where each day began with the pledge. Students rose from their desks, affixed their right hands to their hearts and repeated the words in unison.

Only I wouldn’t do it — and as a consequence, I was sent to the principal’s office. I remember explaining that I did not believe in God and therefore didn’t wish to participate. I remember my mother being called and that whatever she said must have appeased them. I was released back to class, presumably having lain to rest any concerns that the new kid was some kind of troublemaker.

Marissa Barnwell and I chose not to recite the pledge for different reasons and under very different circumstances. My confrontation took place during the relatively apathetic ’70s in liberal New York. I was 7 years old, white, painfully shy. Marissa is a Black 15-year-old attending a predominantly white school in red state South Carolina during a highly polarized time; she was singled out among numerous students walking during the pledge in the hallway that day. When her story broke, she was denounced on social media, often in incendiary and hateful terms; on Facebook, one comment urged her to “go back to her monkey cage in Africa if she doesn’t like to recite the pledge to the country that’s doing her and her retarded family a favor by letting them live among decent humans.”

This kind of repellent racism is the very reason Marissa first stopped reciting the pledge in third grade, inspired by Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem. Marissa told me: “Protesting the Pledge of Allegiance is basically saying that I’m aware of the way American society treats Black people, that we are not all treated equally, with liberty or with justice. I want to be sure to acknowledge that what’s being pledged isn’t the truth.” In 2019, an 11-year-old boy was arrested in Florida after a dispute over his refusal to stand for the pledge, which also served as a protest against racism.

People may have many reasons to exercise their First Amendment right not to recite the pledge. Those reasons can be personal and private; they should not need a public defense. No federal law requires citizens to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, stand when it is delivered or stop to acknowledge its recitation. State law, however, sometimes does. Texas, for example, requires students to pledge allegiance every day, not only to the United States but to the Lone Star State as well.

Many Americans may not be aware of just how unusual it is for students to recite a daily oath to their country or their country’s leader. The oddity probably stands out most to those who have immigrated here or who have lived outside this country for any significant time. In Britain, students don’t start their school day with “God Save the King.” In France, public schoolchildren don’t pay fealty to the tricolor before setting to the day’s lessons.

In some countries, students sing a national anthem before school events, but few require regular loyalty pledges from their students; among those that do are North Korea, Singapore and, until recently, Turkey. When I lived in Thailand in the ’90s, movie audiences had to stand before every film while the royal anthem played, accompanied by a short film about the king. As a noncitizen resident of the country and out of respect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, I also stood up. These days, in a sign of civic unrest, more Thais are staying seated in quiet protest of his successor, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Some people believe that protest itself is a form of patriotism — that only those who are deeply invested in their country and who believe in its capacity to overcome wrongs would bother pointing out injustices. Should such dissent be viewed as any less patriotic than the indifference exhibited by those who absent-mindedly put a hand to their chest while repeating words to which they may not have given consideration?

Marissa Barnwell, a high-achieving and conscientious teenager, understood her constitutional rights and exercised them. (Her family is now suing the school district and others, accusing them of violating the First and Fourteenth amendments.) Isn’t that — more than reciting a loyalty oath, whether you believe in it or not — what citizenship is about? That’s how Marissa sees it. When she grows up, she told me, she wants to be a lawyer because, as she put it, “I want to make sure there is representation for fair treatment for all, and I want to be that person.”

I thought this issue was settled law just a few years ago? I believe the 1st amendment clearly covers not having to recite the pledge. It sounds odd to me that any school district would allow any teacher to treat a student in such a manner. This is where the lawsuits come in to play after all. You assuage peoples anger with enough money. If the argument is based purely at face value what money could ever satisfy you?

[Seacoaster(1)]

I don't think it is as simple as "assuaging people's anger with money." The lawsuit and potential damage award are incentives to encourage the school district and the members of staff inclined to require a loyalty oath to respect the rights of dissenters. The lawsuit vindicates the rule of law. The lawsuit outwardly demonstrates the risks of adults imposing their and the State's will and belief systems on young people in a way that crosses the free expression line.

[MDlaxfan76]

I don't think it is as simple as "assuaging people's anger with money." The lawsuit and potential damage award are incentives to encourage the school district and the members of staff inclined to require a loyalty oath to respect the rights of dissenters. The lawsuit vindicates the rule of law. The lawsuit outwardly demonstrates the risks of adults imposing their and the State's will and belief systems on young people in a way that crosses the free expression line.

Agreed.

And those two articles above, the NYT about teachers around the country modifying (dumbing down/eliminating) their coursework in reaction to heavy pressure from right-wing activist parents and weak administrators and the WaPo article on Florida's impact on book selection and editing of textbooks under pressure from DeSantis and the right wing activists...are both horrifying. National, not just local, implications.

Folks, this culture war stuff, while seemingly stupid and doomed to failure, is nevertheless very real, and yes, dangerous.

Thanks for posting.

[a fan]

House passed the "Parents Bill of Rights".

What's the plan when teachers don't want to waste their time dealing with this stuff instead of actually teaching their kids?

Read the text. These are the same people who whine about administrative bloat, and wonder where all the money goes. And naturally, the Republicans who passed this bill have zero intention of funding alllllll the reams of paperwork and written notices required by this act.

This is where the money goes. They're demanding that teacher's double down on pointless TPS reports because "they read on the internet" that teachers are bad, and indoctrinating kids.

This'll pass in two years, no question.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-con ... ill/5/text

[Seacoaster(1)]

House passed the "Parents Bill of Rights".

What's the plan when teachers don't want to waste their time dealing with this stuff instead of actually teaching their kids?

Read the text. These are the same people who whine about administrative bloat, and wonder where all the money goes. And naturally, the Republicans who passed this bill have zero intention of funding alllllll the reams of paperwork and written notices required by this act.

This is where the money goes. They're demanding that teacher's double down on pointless TPS reports because "they read on the internet" that teachers are bad, and indoctrinating kids.

This'll pass in two years, no question.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-con ... ill/5/text

More stupid, performative nonsense from the GOP. If it actually had a "purpose," it would be (1) drive out teachers who want to teach by allowing children to inquire, pursue and learn; and (2) creating a generation of kids who will not gainsay the stupid things their right-wing parents comfortably prefer. The bill aims to criminalize teachers and teaching, ban books and make an avenue for censorship and the experiences of people on the margins of our society, and you know who they are. Can we stop the bullsh*t about the relative equivalence between the two political parties?