“I didn’t realize Republicans were openly rooting for Fentanyl these days”.
That gave me the laugh I needed to kick off my day. Thanks!
Doctor Fauci calls Rand Paul a liar at a Senate hearing,
The Texas Senate is considering a bill to remove the requirement that schools teach that the KKK was wrong.
I teach United States history at a state university. I’ve also worked on federally-funded grants designed to help improve the teaching of American history in public schools.
To be quite frank, I don’t think that it’s necessary to have a law requiring teachers to explicitly state that the KKK and other manifestations of white supremacy were “morally wrong.” I teach about slavery, the KKK, and a whole bunch of other white supremacist stuff, and I’m not sure that I ever explicitly stand in front of the class and say to my students, “These people were morally wrong.” Quite honestly, I think that just about any modern student presented with an accurate history of white supremacist ideologies and actions is almost certain to recognize the moral bankruptcy of these ideologies and actions all by themselves.
I think that politicians should stop trying to micromanage education by laying out specific things that teachers must or must not say in the classroom. Of course, as someone who’s spent a fair bit of time studying the history of education in the United States, I know that there’s no chance of that happening.
I guess the next step is to encourage schools to create junior KKK troops, or pods, or whatever they’re called.
“Accuracy”-- there’s the rub.
Yup.
Also yup.
So John Whitey’s kid, who is taught that the KKK is the greatest thing EVAR, is just going to reach this conclusion on his own? Clearly we don’t have any white supremacists today, right? And the way we got here was just over-reach? It wasn’t necessary to “go that hard” against racism?
Don’t be a fucking moron.
First of all, if John Whitey’s kid has been taught that the KKK was the greatest thing ever, there’s a pretty decent chance that he will still think that after a teacher has told him otherwise.
Also, my point is NOT that teachers shouldn’t teach about the moral bankruptcy of white supremacist ideology. My point is that they don’t need point-by-point mandates from the government in order to do so.
And in fact, this change in Texas law does NOT prohibit teachers from teaching that the KKK was immoral. It simply stops mandating that they do. It’s interesting that one of the weets quoted on @Rick_Kitchen’s, a tweet that was critical of the repeal of the requirement, said “We must trust our teachers.” Well, maybe we can, in fact, trust them to make clear to their students that the KKK was immoral, without a line-item mandate in the state law.
I’d offer the same advice, but clearly you won’t take it; you’re unnecessarily hostile.
We’re done here, jackass.
LOL. “Unnecessarily hostile” from the person whose previous post, directed at me, was nothing but sarcasm and an implication that I don’t care about opposing white supremacy.
Go fuck yourself.
Matt Gaetz says we fought wars to keep kids from speaking with British accents after kids started copying Peppa Pig’s accent.
Good news, everyone!
To be honest, I don’t know that we can necessarily trust teachers not to teach that the KKK was the greatest thing EVAR if they are not mandated not to do so.
Most would not, but I have little doubt that there are at least some white supremacists among them.
I don’t get this stance. It’s okay to teach X, unless of course the government tells you to do so… then it isn’t…?
Who does the government mandate hurt?
The thing about mandates, or lack thereof, about teaching about KKK or other historical racism issues, is NOT likely that teachers will overtly tell their students “This was a GOOD thing” or “This was a BAD thing”.
Rather, teachers will slant their presentation, perhaps subtly, toward their own preferred point of view, and students will pick up their attitudes from that. Then they’ll go home and mention stuff to Mommy and Daddy, who will storm into the Principal’s office with wild accusations about what little Johnny is being taught in his history lessons, and shitstorm will ensue.
I had a history professor in college who had taught history in secondary schools (apparently in the 1950’s, Joe McCarthy era), and the had stories like that to tell.
“The KKK gets a bad rap. They were just social organizations looking out for the welfare of the community.”
First, my general position is that politicians should leave education to the educators. Sure, we need laws that lay out the broad general principles of the education system and its workings, but we don’t need legislators banning or mandating particular statements or topics in the classroom. As I said previously, though, the history of legislative interference in American classrooms doesn’t give me much hope in this area.
Second, the mandate doesn’t hurt anything, necessarily. At least not by itself. I’m just not sure it helps.
Quite a lot of states have, over the years, dropped a lot of these sorts of mandates into their laws dealing with school curricula, and the overall effect is to create long checklists of individual topics and observations and emphases that teachers must, or must not, include in their classes. Collectively, these mandates often make it more difficult to design a clear, coherent curriculum, because school districts and principals and teachers have to cross-check their lesson plans with a whole range of political mandates.And every new one that gets added means that every teacher has to then turn back and find a way to shoehorn it into what is already a full lesson plan.
And @Senegoid’s post hints at another problem with mandates like this. First, if they’re done at the state level, some school districts basically ignore, or some individual teachers do. Second, a committed ideologue at the front of the classroom can quite easily find ways to comply with the letter of the mandates while still presenting a historically distorted view of something like white supremacy or the KKK. And in connection with this, while parents in some places might complain that little Johnny or Joan is get too rosy a view of the KKK in their classroom, there are probably plenty of other parents in some states and some school districts who think that “all this race stuff they teach nowadays” is a load of hooey, and they should just stick to talking about how great America is.
I guess it’s possible that some people’s minds are actually changed by the presence of a mandate requiring that teachers explicitly note the immorality of the KKK, but as the last few years have shown, the presence of such mandates hasn’t exactly eradicated white supremacist ideology among some groups of Americans.
I think this is absolutely right, and it’s also precisely why the mandates are probably, at best, largely ineffective. Do you really think that a committed white supremacist teacher can’t find a way to get his or her beliefs across to the students while also complying with the letter or a state mandate? Or perhaps by ignoring the mandate altogether, if the teacher knows from experience that there are not likely to be any complaints?
What makes for good education is intelligent, thoughtful well-prepared and professional teachers, supported by competent administrators and school boards, and checked by engaged and concerned parents’ groups and individual parents.
Running education by state mandates means that changes of government, or changes in the social and political and cultural landscape, are going to lead to the introduction of more and more mandates or restrictions, and make the education system nothing but a political football.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Texas GOP’s intent, in removing the mandate to teach about the immorality of white supremacy, is repugnant and politically self-serving. There are other aspects of SB3 that are perhaps less obvious, but just as odious, like the fact that students are required to learn about the 13th, 14th, and 19th amendments, but there is no mention of the 15th, which prohibited discrimination by race in voting laws. But I actually think that, even with the mandate to teach about the immorality if white supremacy removed, most teachers will still probably continue to do a good, professional job of teaching this subject. And those that don’t, probably were already doing a crappy job.
I also think a lot of the other, more benign mandates in these sorts of laws are unnecessary. For example, the Texas law not only has a general requirement that students learn about the “founding documents of the United States,” but it actually mandates the inclusion of certain documents, such as Federalist #10 and #51, and excerpts from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. These are great documents, and I’ve used all of them in my college classes, but I don’t always use all of them in any given semester, because there are other documents that can do just as good a job at helping students understand American history. And, quite frankly, I think that those two Federalist papers by Madison are actually pretty damn difficult even for college students, and if I were a school teacher I’d be very reluctant to use them in the classroom in anything but an AP setting. Teachers should have flexibility to design lesson plans that their students will understand, and should not be required to use texts that might be too difficult.
Perhaps even worse than mandates is the growing trend, in some state legislatures, towards outright prohibitions on certain topics or source material. The Texas law forbids any schools or teachers to “require an understanding of the 1619 Project.” As anyone who follows the news probably knows, the New York Times’ 1619 Project has been the subject of a lot of debate over the last couple of years. It has been criticized by people on the right, but also but some eminent left and liberal historians. I think that it’s a valuable project with some important errors and limitations. But the idea that it should be banned from schools altogether–because a ban of requiring students to understand it is effectively a ban on the document itself–is complete intellectual bankruptcy.
Look, I know these are difficult issues, and the Texas GOP is a bunch of fucking neanderthals. I also know that this is, for the most part, a recreational outrage thread where we can fume about the idiocy of the modern GOP. But it would also be nice if some people could actually acknowledge that there might be some complexity and nuance to these issues, rather than confronting relatively minor differences over policy with comments like:
This sort of sophomoric sarcasm is fine, I guess, as long as you’re not interested in a rational discussion.
This isn’t sophomoric sarcasm-This is what I was taught in school in Northern Idaho.
I’m guessing your school wasn’t interested in a rational discussion.
There would of course, be no actionable complaints if they are not breaking any rules.
If there is a rule, however, and they break it, then they can be disciplined for it.
It’s not sophomoric sarcasm, it’s exactly what I hear by KKK defenders on a regular basis. To deny that on your part indicates that you are not interested in an informed discussion.
I’d rather keep that sort of defense of the KKK out of the classroom, and if making a law that you can’t use that sort of defense for the KKK in the classroom is what is necessary to do so, then such a law is merited.
Do you really think that, if there are no consequences, teachers with white supremacists leanings may not be inclined to give a more favorable view of the KKK than they would if there were consequences for expressing such?
California has much the same requirement for American Government. Anybody want to guess how much class time I actually devote to these mandates?