Margaret Renkl, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, wrote recently about the cultural controversies that are roiling the state of Tennessee. Everyone by now knows about the removal of MAUS from the eighth-grade curriculum in McMinn County. But book-banning and censorship are not limited to Tennessee, or even to the South, nor are they new. What is far more dangerous in Tennessee, she writes, is the “existential threat” to the future of public schools posed by Republican Governor Bill Lee and a like-minded legislature.
She wrote:
NASHVILLE — Tennessee school boards, you may have heard, have been busy lately striking long-beloved, award-winning classic literature from their social studies and language arts curriculums. The Williamson County School Board recently took a hard look at more than 30 texts, restricting the use of seven and striking one altogether: “Walk Two Moons,” a Newbery Medal-winning, middle-grade book by Sharon Creech that follows the story of a 13-year-old girl whose mother is missing. According to the group Moms for Liberty, who lodged the formal “reconsideration request” that caused the school board to take up the issue, “Walk Two Moons” is inappropriate for fourth-grade readers because it features “stick figures hanging, cursing and miscarriage, hysterectomy/stillborn and screaming during labor.”
Well, may God save all American children from the knowledge that women in labor are apt to scream.
The media didn’t pay much attention to Williamson County because the outrage over MAUS made international news. She notes that the American Library Association’s list of books that are challenged includes some that offend parents who are not southerners.
She continues:
Still, it is possible to trust that the parents in McMinn County are acting in what they believe is the best interest of their children, and also to recognize that these parents are being manipulated by toxic and dangerous political forces operating at the state and national levels. Here in Tennessee, book bans are just a small but highly visible part of a much larger effort to privatize public schools and turn them into conservative propaganda centers. This crusade is playing out in ways that transcend local school board decisions, and in fact are designed to wrest control away from them altogether.
I don’t mean simply the law, passed last year, that limits how racism is taught in public schools across the state. I’m talking about an array of bills being debated in the Tennessee General Assembly right now. One would purge books considered “obscene or harmful to minors” from school libraries across the state. Another would ban teaching materials that “promote, normalize, support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) issues or lifestyles.” Yet another would prevent school districts from receiving state funding for undocumented students.
Most of all I’m talking about Gov. Bill Lee’s announcement, in his State of the State address last week, that he has approached Hillsdale College, a Christian institution in Michigan, to open 50 charter schools in Tennessee — Mr. Lee reportedly requested 100— that would follow a curriculum designed to make kids “informed patriots.” Not informed citizens; informed patriots, as conservative Christians define that polarizing term.
“What strikes me as the unusual takeaway is that the governor is intentionally wheeling the state into this very ideologically loaded and electorally loaded civics education,” said Adam Laats, the author of “Fundamentalist U: Keeping the American Faith in Higher Education,” in an interview with The Tennessean.
That’s not surprising at all if you know anything about the Tennessee Republican Party, which is in lock step with right-wing oligarchs funding their campaigns. The fact that so many of these challenged books have been in the literary canon for decades is a dead giveaway that the new bans are a response to contemporary political forces whose true motivation has nothing to do with books. What they really want is to destroy public education. As Christopher Leonard, the author of “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” notes in an interview with Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider for the “Have You Heard” podcast: “The ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system.” (Read a transcript of the full interview here.)
The real tragedy in Tennessee, and across the red states, is this existential threat to public education, which is the very foundation of a functioning democracy. And that’s where our outrage should lie — not at school boards whose decisions are formed by parental concerns that simply differ from our own. [emphasis added]
@Edu_Historian (Jack Schneider) notes in a Tweet this morning at least they aren’t pretending. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/time-the-school-choice-movement-embrace-the-culture-war#
(Left off the end of sentence) …any more.
Republicans only care about “problems” that don’t exist.
The idea that CRT is pervasive around the country is a lie designed to win policy approvals.
The conservative elite in this country have no bottom to their ethics.
When reading those polls, the questions are presented as if these are commonplace occurrences. They aren’t. Scare tactics, plain and simple.
I teach in a county that votes primarily Democrat. And no school here has a CRT module in the classroom.
These are simply lies in the article and the polling questions just state calmly and matter-of-factly that there’s all of this teacher activism. The worst part is that you can tell that the authors know that they are promoting a lie. But they are willing to do so in order to achieve a ;policy goal that they could not find enough support for otherwise.
sad line for those who see it: The worst part is that you can tell that the authors know they are promoting a lie…
LOL. Well said, Sally!
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum
“The Education American Students Deserve“
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum is a complete collection of lesson plans for teaching American history, civics, and government to K-12 students. Students who study using this curriculum learn about American history from the colonies through the Civil War at four different times during their K-12 years, each time increasing in depth. The curriculum also includes American history since the Civil War and American government and civics for both middle and high school students.
This curriculum provides teachers with guidance—not dictates—about how to plan and teach a given topic in American history or civics. This guidance includes Hillsdale College-vetted books, online courses, and other resource recommendations; lists of content topics, stories to tell, and questions to ask of students; “Keys to the Lesson” that clarify important points for teachers to keep in mind; student-ready primary sources; and sample assignments, activities, and assessments.
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum is the product of Hillsdale College professors and some of the very best K-12 teachers, both past and present, derived from and created for real classrooms with real students taught by real teachers.
https://k12.hillsdale.edu/
Hillsdale is every bit as activist as the woke community they so despise. I live in Michigan. I’m familiar with what the school stands for.
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum is a comic book d4istorti4on of Ameri4can history, civics, and economics w4ith the follow4ing purpose: indoctrination in jingoistic Christian fundamentalist nationalism.
And this shocks us ?
At the Imaginative Conservative, a Hillsdale history professor described being asked by a conservative publisher to write a history of Andrew Jackson. At the site, the professor posted his novel view of the Trail of Tears and Andrew Jackson.
ALEC has been poisoning Southern Politics for over a decade now. The biggest challenge is that state a local politics are opaque in their operations because media no longer covers local legislating. Few individuals even know who their representatives are or what they stand for. In the South, as long as there is an “R” before their name, people vote for them usually due to their hypocritical stand on abortion. The national media spends significant time wringing their hands over political behavior at the national level, but it is state and local politics that has taken away representative government and is the greatest threat to our democracy and public education.
ALEC poisons the midwest as well.
The lack of pushback or criticism to this from the supposedly “liberal” or “Democratic” part of the ed reform echo chamber is really amazing.
Are they forbidden from criticizing their fellow echo chamber members on the Right? Do you lose your Gates, Walton, Koch or Zuckerberg funding if you veer at all from the anti-public school dogma?
Forget “criticism”. You won’t find any real analysis at all. If it says “charter” or “voucher” and bashes public schools it gets lockstep approval and promotion.
It would be such a shame if the United States allowed the same ed reform echo chamber who have utterly dominated education policy for the last 20 years to “reinvent” vocational training.
We’re really going to do this? We’re going to let Gates, Walton, Koch and Zuckerberg and their loyal and lockstep employees design workforce training for 10th graders?
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/course-theres-tracking-high-schools-get-over-it
Ideologically Right wing, anti union and low wage. We’re pushing this into high schools now? It will replace high school for the lower classes?
Boy, Democrats in education reform must be proud of what they’ve created. They created a lock step Right wing education policy juggernaught with no dissenters, no real analysis, and little or no debate. Good job, folks.
Amazon will now be running US high schools. They’ll buy some consultants and a couple of university departments and create their own low wage, compliant workforce.
And from Petrilli of all people. The very policy expert who insisted that CCSS, test score and data would determine the fate of schools and teachers.
Hey, Mike. You created the college prep mantra with your other policy buddies. Now you’re criticizing it? What opportunism and hypocrisy.
The insane thing is that they are now criticizing schools and systems for adhering to the same systems they promoted endlessly as if schools wanted to do this all along.
In order to meet the test-and judge model, more core classes and more intensity was placed on reading and math. Because guys like Petrilli were determined to make it happen.
Now, they criticize schools for being forced to follow their advice.
What breathtaking hypocrisy in the Petrilli piece. For years now, this guy has insi4sted on a Common [sic] Core [sic]-based “college and career ready” education for every student, and he knows it.
Petrilli helped push the no excuse charter school lie that every at-risk student could become a high performing scholar if only he attended the right no-excuse charter and was taught by the non-union no-excuses teacher who had the proper “high expectations” for them.
Petrilli is a coward who would never call out that lie that is the basis of the ed reform movement because the entire ed reform movement was dependent on the “success” of those schools to justify their attacks on public schools. Charters that taught all students had no better results than public schools. So the dishonest ed reformers claimed that no-excuses were teaching all students and proved how easy it was if only public school teachers weren’t so lousy.
But I always knew that if billionaires were suddenly pro-vocational training or pro-public school or anti-charter school that the folks at Fordham Institute would suddenly “see the light” and completely change what they were pushing.
Clearly, this article by Petrilli means that this POV is now acceptable to the ed reform movement and the fact that it is exactly the opposite of what the billionaires wanted them to be pushing last year is absolutely fine with them because they all seem to lack a basic sense of integrity.
The informed patriots luncheon will begin with a bowl of chilled Gestapo.
I think MTG was referring to the Soup Nazi and his gazpacho secret police. I guess she thinks that revenge is best served cold. Ha, ha, ha, you can’t make this stuff up, she’s a certified baffoon (buffoon, too).
Thank goodness we have Marjorie to save us from Biden’s Storm Groupers!
MTG: Don’t make Election Day a national hollandaise!
Oops.
Don’t make elections national hollandaise.
LOL
Marjorie opposes this administrone.
MTG–Perhaps she could start her own militia, the Storm Bloopers.
My own local public school has increased attendance to where it’s now where it was pre pandemic. They came back.
Ed reformers authored tens of article gleefully predicting the demise of public schools. If that turns out not to be true, will they correct? I was told this was a “data driven” movement. Just data that promotes the agenda? If public schools rebound- despite best efforts by this “movement”- will they promote that like they promoted the decline in attendance?
Don’t hold your breath. There’s only one narrative permitted in the “movement” and it must be negative on public schools.
Yes. Chiara. As I noted above, it seems to go like this.
People who had pull with “philanthropists” like Gates got to push their education agenda. Especially with the likes of Arne Duncan.
In the process, guys like Finn and Petrilli made schools a bastion of boredom because of ideas like closed reading and forcing schools to be reliant on improving test scores to stay alive.
Now that their policies have failed and school is irredeemably repetitious, they say that public schools don’t work. Well, part of the reason (if not most of it) is because. of your handiwork.
So now they walk away with all of their epolicy prescriptions in the memory hole.
Psst, I’ll let you in on a little secret from MD. Petrilli does some complaining about his own children’s public school curriculum. I think he’s finally realizing that he took down his own kids education by pushing his stupid agenda on every one else’s kids. I know parents in the area try to keep him out of private parent groups and he gets his knickers in a bunch over it. Finn is just an old guy that couldn’t hack teaching decades ago and he likes to blame it on “those unruly kids” instead of looking in the mirror and realizing that the job wasn’t as easy as he though it would be. Bozos….both of them!
Thanks for that, Lisa. Makes me feel a little better.
Finn is at Hoover with Hanushek. Finn was on the Maryland state Board of Education.
Non-Partisan Education Review by Richard Phelps posted an article describing exactly what Fordham and Finn are.
Does the United States really, really, really need all of the RED states or RED counties?
POLITICS
Democratic counties represent 70% of U.S. GDP, 2020 election shows
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/election-2020-democrats-republicans-economy.html
Too bad there isn’t some way we may easily split the United States into two countries made up of all the RED counties and Blue counties.
But I think there would be a problem with that. Then instead of Russia being thousands of miles away, they’d end up with troops in those RED counties that make up Trump-eek-stan.
They Are Training For A Takeover
A White House speechwriter who cut her teeth writing for Ted Cruz in the Senate, Brittany Baldwin, is a Hillsdale class of 2012 and she gets credit from former classmates for the most convincingly conservative remarks.
And while working for the Senate Judiciary Committee, another Hillsdale alumna deftly ran the advise-and-consent process to approve Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Associate White House counsel Dave Morrell graduated from Hillsdale in 2007, and three years later, so did vice presidential speechwriter Stephen Ford.
Beyond the White House, House Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both have recent Hillsdale graduates prominently placed within their office staff.
Finally, Michael Anton is Lecturer in Politics and Research Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington, DC. He previously served in national security positions in the Trump and Bush (43) administrations, as well as in the administrations of California Governor Pete Wilson and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/12/hillsdale-college-trump-pence-218362/
This is ed reform’s big issue right now:
“Charter schools no longer enjoy the era of broad political agreement that once fueled their birth. Where the Democrats for Education Reform were once the “it crowd” on the education left, leading Democrats now denounce school choice as racist and favor the anti-charter, pro-union disciples of Bernie Sanders and AOC. This has left pro-charter Democrats an embattled minority, obliged to take symbolic stands or accept half-measures in order to assuage progressive concerns.
Whereas prominent Republicans once set aside questions of faith or values to advance school reform, it’s now homeschooling, faith, values, and anger at the public-school establishment that dominate talk of school choice. This has brought a commensurate shift in interest from charter schools to other measures—like learning pods, universal vouchers, and Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs—that promise to address these priorities more directly.”
They dispensed with public schools completely in the first paragraph- one big failure, apparently- and the entire focus on their work is now on charters and vouchers.
If no one in ed reform has any interest in public schools or public school students could we possibly find and hire our own people who do? Or is that forbidden? Seems like a reasonable request- that a few of the people the public pays for public school policy could actually have some interest in public schools, other than replacing them with privatized systems.
To use the corporate speak of education reform- where’s the “value add” for public schools in this “movement”? If they add nothing can we find and hire people who will?
https://www.educationnext.org/big-choice-for-charter-schooling-red-state-blue-state-strategy/
To anyone who has a reasonable acquaintance with American history, the Hillsdale 1776 Nationalist Curriculum is an extended exercise in dramatic irony, in which the audience (the reader) knows that precisely the opposite of what is being said is true.
It flirts with self-parody and then plunges right in.
Soviet style history, eh!
yup
Try as you might, Tennessee, you aren’t going to recapture the halcyon days of the Scopes Trial, and Flor-uh-duh will always be the most backward state in the nation.
We’re No. 1!
There’s exceptionalism for you.
Before I read the link, post, and comments, just regarding the title of the post: Yes, yes, YES!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/you-thought-the-scopes-trial-was-something-well-you-aint-seen-nothin-yet/
“Least of our problems”
The one Biden pick for SCOTUS who isn’t Ivy League is anti-union according to an article at Daily Beast. It’s not surprising that Judge Childs has the support of Lindsay Graham and Clyburn.
Bingo
I have read articles about Judge Childs. She worked for a law firm that defended corporations. That was her job. I’m not convinced she is anti-union.
Pro-corporation? American Prospect 1-31-2022
Prospect’s reporter reviews Childs’ record as a lawyer and as a judge.
I’ve been surprised by the number of prominent POC with influence who subscribe to and act upon opinions they hold in similarity with Clarence Thomas.
I read the critique in The American Prospect.
The NY Times wrote a long story about her life. This is the section about representing employers.
Judge Childs was hired out of law school as a law clerk at Nexsen Pruet, a prestigious, predominantly white law firm in Columbia that specializes in labor law and represents employers.
Susan P. McWilliams, a lawyer there who helped hire her, recalled that there was considerable competition among law firms trying to recruit the new graduate. “I can tell you, no one outworks Judge Childs — that’s true today,” Ms. McWilliams said.
As an associate at Nexsen Pruet in the 1990s, she defended companies accused of racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, found that Judge Childs participated in about two dozen such cases. In one of those cases, Harris v. L&L Wings, two women made accusations of chronic sexual assault.
Some union leaders and progressive groups have started raising concerns about Judge Childs’s work defending employers against such claims.
David Borer, the general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, which has not yet taken an official position on potential nominees to succeed Justice Breyer, said a background defending corporations was “disqualifying” for any candidate.
“There’s a whole raft of those in the federal judiciary,” he said. “We need somebody, somewhere, to speak up on behalf of workers.”
In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, defended Judge Childs’s record, noting that when she served on South Carolina’s Workers’ Compensation Commission, “her tenure was defined by fighting for injured workers.”
Judge Childs’s supporters and former colleagues noted that at Nexsen Pruet, she also represented plaintiffs in discrimination cases against their employers, and went above and beyond to advocate on behalf of vulnerable clients.
As an associate, she took on a pro bono case of an immigrant woman whom the court would not allow to see her children without supervision after her marriage broke up. Over a holiday weekend, when child welfare officials refused to send someone to supervise, Judge Childs took on the duty herself.
Eight years into her time there, in 2000, Judge Childs became the first Black woman to be a partner at a major South Carolina law firm.
That year, Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, a Democrat, was looking for someone to help run the state’s labor department; Judge Childs’s name came up repeatedly, he recalled. She was hired to be the department’s deputy director and later served on the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission.
From Prospect-
As a judge, ” she has a track record of opposing workers in cases of alleged discrimination.”
Linda, I don’t know the answer. I am waiting to learn more about Judge Childs.