Alexandra Petri writes humorous articles for the Washington Post. She wrote this column in response to a furor in the governor’s race in Virginia. Democratic candidate Terry MacAuliffe asserted that parents should not tell teachers what to teach, and Republicans are outraged by his statement. They say that parents should have that power. Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin released a commercial featuring an angry mother complaining that her son in an AP class was required to read Beloved by Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison.
Petri writes:
Hello, everyone! We’re going to have a great year! Some minor, barely noticeable adjustments to the curriculum have taken place since Glenn Youngkin took office. This is a college-level class in which we’re supposed to be tackling challenging material. But you may remember the Glenn Youngkin commercial starring the mother who was trying to stop “Beloved” from being taught in her senior son’s AP English class on the grounds that he thought it was “disgusting and gross” and “gave up on it.” Anyway, he supported that kind of parental control over the curriculum, so we’ve had to tweak just a couple of things!
Below please find our reading list new and improved reading list after being forced to bend to every concern from a parent:
“The Odyssey” mutilation and abuse of alcohol, blood drinking
“Brideshead Revisited” not sure what’s going on with that teddy bear; house named after something that should be saved for marriage
“The Handmaid’s Tale” everything about book was fine except its classification as ‘dystopia’
“The Catcher in the Rye” anti-Ronald Reagan somehow though we’re not sure how
“The Importance of Being Earnest” includes a disturbing scene where a baby is abandoned in a train station in a handbag and the people in the play regard this as the subject of mirth
“Candide” buttock cannibalism
“Don Quixote” makes fun of somebody for attacking a wind-or-solar-based energy source
“Great Expectations” convict presented sympathetically
“Les Miserables” see above
“King Lear” violence and it’s suggested that there are scenarios where parents actually do not know best
“The Sun Also Rises” offensive to flat-Earthers
“Death of a Salesman” features a White man to whom attention is not paid
Okay, well, I’m sure there are still some books we can agree on even if they aren’t at the college level! We can probably extricate meaning from these.
“Charlotte’s Web” valorizes someone who uses her hindquarters to communicate
“Matilda” suggests that the tyranny of school administrators can create a stultifying environment for their children
“Harold and the Purple Crayon” contains The Color Purple which we have been told is badStory continues below advertisementnull
“Clifford the Big Red Dog” communist???
“The Snowy Day” several concerns, most to do with CRT
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” this gave my son a nightmare
Nope, sorry, we aren’t reading anymore. A parent complained that the books on the reading list transported them to different times and places against their will and forced them to imagine the lives of people different than themselves. This is like kidnapping and probably also brainwashing, and we can’t possibly read any texts that do this.
We’re looking forward to engaging with complex, challenging texts that will teach us to read critically, write compellingly and look at the world with new eyes sitting here staring at the wall thinking about what it might have been like to read books all semester long!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hilarious (and scary). So appropriate on this day when the veil is thinnest and Repugnicans roam the streets looking for brains to eat, not having any themselves.
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Bob,
Off topic
From the Mae West story recently shown on PBS, viewers can learn about the fears, tactics and the historical cycle of campaigns to prevent women from gaining power. Where they govern, the most powerful of the American conservative religions, dictate the culture and vulnerabilities of U.S. women.
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Yes, Alexandra Petri writes humorous articles.
The college-level “forbidden fruit” list might
“inspire” the high schoolers to take a bite,
just for kicks.
Maybe it’s Harvard humor, as Alexandra, her
hubby Stephen, and Glenn are all Harvard spawned.
Not that Harvards are Gatekeepers of the Oligarchy,
or birds of a feather flocking together, they just
happen to be unique.
Alexandra gets extra points. She was schooled
at National Cathedral School (NCS) an independent
Episcopal private day school for girls in grades
4-12 located on the grounds of the Washington
National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
NCS is the oldest of the institutions constituting
the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation.
What’s up with the parents, thinking they have
some “magic” power? It’s high time they
“get it”. The state knows what’s “best” for
“their” children, no ifs, ands, or buts…
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It has come to my attention that Diane Ravitch has yet to endorse my campaign to become King of Thailand, but I am every bit as qualified for that position as Glenn Youngkin is to be Governor of Virginia. What gives?
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You need to do some perusing research on the actual king of Thailand. He’s a real doozy.
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All the more reason why I should be crowned, Greg!
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Parents were always like this though (not an excuse). My mother was an “older” mom (mid-40s) when I was in elementary and she said she had to quit the PTA because the young parents were highly opinionated and could do no wrong. This was in the 60’s.
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This all goes hand in hand perfectly with Common Core. Arne Duncan had and still has 3rd to 8th grade students reading nothing but snippets of meaningless nonfiction “text”, such as instructions for operating Microsoft PowerPoint, or how Mark Zuckerberg invented the greatest invention of all time. Billionaires have been telling teachers what to teach for a decade. Why not let everyone who’s ever parented a child tell teachers what to teach? Heck, how about international cult leaders and charter chain backers like Fethullah Gülen telling U.S. teachers what to teach! Everyone gets to choose choose choose the freedomiest choices in the high quality seats of reforminess. And you can choose whether to wear — you thought I was going to say a mask, didn’t you — clothes. Freedom! Got to love the 21st century.
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It has also come to my attention that the owner of this blog has been known to consort with books. Scandalous.
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Too little, and way too late.
The thing is, for the past few weeks the media has amplified the right wing narrative that Democrat Terry MacAuliffe made a huge mistake by saying that parents shouldn’t be deciding what public schools teach.
What they should have done is push this narrative from the beginning — that Republican Youngkin wants parents who voted for Trump to decide what schools are allowed to teach.
But they didn’t.
And it isn’t just Wisconsin. The NYT has written major front page articles about supposedly “regular’ midwestern parents who just want what is best for their children and are fighting CRT because their white children feel under attack — but the NYT made no mention that these very same parents thought their white children would be well-served by President Trump’s promotion of white supremacist views and racist attacks.
Twenty years ago, the NYT would be writing stories about how appalling it was that some white supremacist parents wanted to dictate the public school curriculum. Now the NYT writes sympathetic stories about them without mentioning their extreme political views.
Why is that? Because those extreme political views are now mainstream Republican philosophy, and the NYT believes that “good” journalism means that anything the Republicans – no matter how dishonest or racist – is now presented as a “both sides” issue, with facts and truth simply presented as “the other side”.
Any parent who voted for Trump and the Republicans because lies don’t matter to them should be presented as a parent who does not believe in facts who wants to order public schools to only teach what they want.
Too little, too late. Youngkin should have been asked every day since MacAuliffe made his comment whether parents who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who believe that Trump knows more than scientists should decide what public schools teach.
Because too many suburban parents who would never support this kind of view are being presented with a false – and harmless – version of what this is about.
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^^Correction: “This isn’t just Virginia” (not Wisconsin)
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MacAuliffe’s comment is being presented as anti-parent involvement in public education. He is also being accused of “pandering to the teachers union.” I doubt this is what MacAuliffe intended, but he is getting lots of negative press. His comment was clumsy and could have been expressed more diplomatically. I hope the backlash does not cost MacAuliffe the election.
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“MacAuliffe’s comment is being presented as anti-parent involvement in public education.”
That’s exactly my point. That is the right wing framing, amplified by the so-called “liberal” media.
What if MacAuliffe’s comment was being presented as a question to Youngkin: “Should the parents who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump be allowed to dictate what public schools teach, or should public schools teach that some facts are true and some aren’t, even if Trump says they are?”
Should white supremacist parents be able to tell public schools what to teach? What would Youngkin say if asked?
Should parents who don’t believe in science be able to tell public schools what to teach? What would Youngkin say if asked?
The media never asks any questions that Republicans don’t want to answer, and instead they simply present the right wing framing uncritically as the big issue of the day.
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nycpsp– To me, this shows that MSM reflects the public re: education, i.e., a vast indifference, except when it occasionally can be jerked around as a political football.
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I think it’s deliberately told this way because of who owns the media: Murdoch and other billionaires. It’s not that extreme opinions are mainstream, it is presented it that way on purpose; to promote it so it becomes mainstream and to distract us from asking the questions that would hold them accountable. “Youngkin should have been asked every day since MacAuliffe made his comment whether parents who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who believe that Trump knows more than scientists should decide what public schools teach.” Yes!
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YES: ” It’s not that extreme opinions are mainstream, it is presented it that way on purpose; to promote it so it becomes mainstream and to distract us from asking the questions that would hold them accountable.” So true and so dangerous.
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V– I suspect there is some of that going around—certainly very obvious with Murdoch & the WSJ. Not so much with Bezos & WaPo, though time will tell. And doesn’t apply to NYT. To me it has more to do with the fact that media is for-profit, and the struggles of print transition to digital world, & the consequent buyouts/ mergers that leave us with too little competition to make the for-profit model work.
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It is obvious that the people who post here do not see both sides of the issue.
If a parent just happens to be a white supremacist, is that any reason to cancel his opinion? If I just happen to believe that Europeans are fundamentally superior to other ethnic groups, why does that make me a bad person? I have the right to keep the truth of history away from my children so they will follow me down the same path as the White Supremacy advocates of the last century.
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Slavery was so much fun. Don’t forget the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago. People with any other ideas do not have rights. Don’t forget about prayer in schools, and to Whom you must pray in school. And what He looks like.
A flying spaghetti monster.
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Except in extreme (and thankfully limited) circumstances, banning books from the curriculum is a bad idea when right-wing loons try to do it and when left-wing loons try to do it.
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What is an example of an extreme circumstance?
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