Education Week reported the results of a poll that showed that half of Americans don’t want children to learn about racism today. How will they understand the events of the day? What will they make of the national protests after the murder of George Floyd? How do they sense of hate crimes? How do they make sense of persistent segregation and inequality?
Madeline Will writes:
The public is divided on whether schools have a responsibility to ensure that all students learn about the ongoing effects of slavery and racism, a new national survey shows.
And as debates over how children learn about sensitive subjects bubble up across the country, Americans are also split on whether parents or teachers should have “a great deal of” influence over what is taught in schools, the survey shows. Republicans tend to defer to parents of schoolchildren, while Democrats tend to think teachers should get to decide how to teach about certain issues.
“These results suggest that not only are we divided about what’s the best curriculum, but we’re also divided about who gets to figure that out and who gets to decide,” said Eric Plutzer, a professor of political science and sociology at Pennsylvania State University who co-authored the report. “That makes it hard to solve a problem if we can’t even agree on the process, and it suggests that these kinds of issues are going to continue to come up at the local level, and we won’t be able to solve by consensus.”
The nationally representative survey of 1,200 U.S. adults, conducted in early December, was designed by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and analyzed by the American Public Media Research Lab. The goal was to understand how Americans think three controversial subjects should be taught in school: slavery and race, evolution, and sexual education.
While most Americans think schools have a responsibility to teach about slavery, only about half think schools should teach about the ongoing effects of racism. However, responses differed when separated by race: 79 percent of Black Americans think that students should learn about the ongoing impacts of slavery and racism, while 48 percent of white Americans think schools should teach about historical slavery but not contemporary race relations.
The survey also found that 10 percent of Americans don’t think that schools have a responsibility to ensure that all students learn about the history of slavery and racism in the United States.
As Orwell wrote, “ignorance is strength,” and in this day and age, it’s growing by leaps and bounds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In a haven of conservative White rural America, Recently Published “Black History of Highland County,” brings to light important OHIO events long suppressed. The county historical society published despite despite the THREAT of legislation restricting how race is taught.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Thanks for the info. It led me to the the history of the Oh./Ind. German Belt and Sundown towns (Jim Jordan’s district is in the German belt.)
The report about the poll should have included a breakdown by state.
A breakdown by state would have provided much more useful information. Averages do not really tell the whole story.
The GOP would also reject expanded lessons about how women are and, have been denied opportunity. Some men want to continue advantaging themselves through a rigged system. Only 9 Governors are women. Of those, 6 are Democrats and 3 are Republican.
There’s only one female governor in the 16 states that the federal government designates as the “South”.
The poll probably wasn’t large enough to give a reliable state-by-state breakdown. Probably would need 50 different surveys to get large enough samples.
Just one more example that we are currently in a Cold Civil War.
Cold Civil War- good description
HEAVILY financed by Big Money interests
I believe we can teach both what happened in the past and how far we have come. We need to do these things as one. Opposition to this comes from a part of the public that wants to erase the past so that part can maintain its grip on cultural power.
We have come a long way in my lifetime. This is cause for celebration. This is evidenced by certain linguistic taboos that did not exist when I grew up and economic opportunity for various groups previously shut out. But there is a long way to go, and our youth cannot wait, even though waiting is what history always requires. If we do not understand where we were, we will never go anywhere.
Well said, Like most countries there is a disparity between our ideals and our reality. I taught mostly black and brown foreign students that had no problem discussing racism. Most teachers do not sit down to design a lesson plan about the impact of racism. However, if a teacher going to have an authentic history lesson in this country, racism is hard to ignore.
In Montgomery, AL, there is a lynching memorial. At first I thought the idea was shocking and macabre. When I thought more about it, I came to the conclusion that it is needed in the same way The Holocaust Museum is needed. They bear witness to the horror. Both lynching memorial and Holocaust Museum remind us of the horrors of the past to caution us from repeating these same mistakes.
Note that over 90% of the respondents do not think that schools shouldn’t be teaching “the history of slavery and racism in the United States.”
The resistance to “CRT” (or whatever you want to call it) is not a resistance to teaching “honest history.”
What parents — actual parents, not a small cabal of Koch-funded right-wingers — object to is teaching K-12 students (in some cases in the early elementary years) about institutional racism, systemic racism, white privilege, etc.
That’s where the debate is. We should give up the absurd talking point that the CRT debates are about “honest history.” (Although I do concede that the 10% figure is disturbing, but I’m glad it’s as low as it is.)
One of the major accomplishments of the GOP in the past three decades has been the ability to frame racist ideologies in ways that don’t mention race. Bravx.
Sorry, I don’t follow your comment.
Greg-
And, “to frame” conservative religious politicking that denies equality “in ways that don’t mention” religion e.g. “culture wars”.
Exactly, the GOP has brilliant spin doctors. School choice has been framed by “saving children from failing schools,” and “opportunity should not be limited by zip code.” It all sounds terrific until it is implemented with the deliberate intention, but never stated, to provide separate and unequal schools for poor black and brown students. They also never mention that the public schools get dismantled in the process of all this so-called choice.
well-stated, retired teacher
Thank you GregB, Linda and retired teacher
The GOP has managed to promote both “Don’t Say Gay” and “Don’t Say Racism.”
And, to divorce anti-gay attacks from conservative right wing religion
Here’s a sobering one:
“The survey also found that 90 percent of Americans think that schools should teach scientific evolution—but 44 percent think that schools should also teach biblical perspectives about creation alongside evolution.”
So we better start teaching biblical perspectives if so many parents want it, right?
And note that it’s 44% BEFORE Christopher Rufo and company decide to do to science what they did to history. Invent some “damaging” part of science that white students are learning that is so dangerous to their psyches and advocate replacing that dangerous and damagine science with the Biblical learning that will make those snowflake students (and their parents) feel better.
That hasn’t happened yet, but I certainly won’t be surprised when it does.
And when it does, I look forward to you “helpfully” posting links to that anti-science, pro-Bible propaganda here, as you so helpfully did with the anti-CRT propaganda so many times.
Once the right wing propaganda effort gets started, it will surely be 75% of parents who demand schools teach biblical perspectives.
I’m less concerned about hurting students’ feelings than I am about teaching things as fact that are not supported by evidence. I also have a problem with blatant violations of the constitution, but increasingly it seems I’m old-fashioned that way.
It’s hard to argue that systemic racism is not fact.
Systemic racism is something to be debated — what the term means, how we might measure it, etc. It’s not a “fact” the way that historical events are “facts.” I realize I’m probably the only person on this blog who thinks this (or who will say it).
For example, I could imagine a very lively high school class focused on “systemic racism” that encouraged debate and argument. I would hate to see a class where the teacher’s approach was, “In this class we’re going to learn how systemic racism is real, and the ways in which it must be combated.” I couldn’t be in a class like that without being a constant thorn in the teacher’s side, and I suspect my grade might suffer for it.
One of the reason racism is hard to prove is that de jure segregation was eliminated by changing laws, but de facto segregation continues. Lots of isolated white folks believe segregation is not a problem because the laws have outlawed it. Also, some white people fail to accept racism because they themselves have not personally experienced it.
I can’t imagine an African American parent who has made enormous efforts to teach their children – especially their sons – what they believe includes every possible way the police might decide that something you do is dangerous only to find that it didn’t matter – being lectured to about the non-existence of systemic racism by a white person whose kids never worry that something they do will look “dangerous” to a cop.
“Hands up” – person has hands up. “Show me your license. Oh you put your hands down to reach for your license, bang you are dead.” Justified because the policeman thought he was reaching for a gun.
I watched a middle age man with a long and admirable military career stopped by police for “driving while black” demonstrate the concentration and restraint it takes to deal with that racism.
Hands up in the air. When the policeman told him he wanted to see his license and registration, the man did not move. Instead he said calmly to the cop, something like “I am going to reach into my pocket now and pull out my wallet as you asked for and I want to make sure you are okay with that”. The cop was pissed off and the man still wouldn’t do it until he had verbal permission from the cop to actually stop holding both his arms over his head and bring one down to reach into his pocket for his wallet.
If it had been a teen who did that, the cop would have probably thrown him to the ground and cuffed him for “not obeying a command” and “talking back”. Of course if it was a teen and he had obeyed the cop’s order to reach for his wallet, the cop would probably have shot him dead. And the system would have found the cop innocent because he felt he was in danger from the teen reaching into his pocket since he might have had a gun.
NYCPP, I don’t think I’m lecturing anybody here. But if I were, I certainly wouldn’t be lecturing anybody but other white people, since that’s almost exclusively who comments here.
Anyone else noticing how insulting to us this statement by flerp is?
“I also have a problem with blatant violations of the constitution, but increasingly it seems I’m old-fashioned that way.”
Blatant violations of the constitution? The suggestion that the rest of are fine with that, but this “old fashioned” model citizen has a problem?
I don’t see a lot of outrage when laws are passed that are targeted to disenfranchise non-white voters. I don’t see a lot of outrage expressed at the January 6 insurrectionists and the folks who supported them.
On the contrary, the outrage seems to be against the 1619 Project, the fake “danger” of CRT, and trans students who get the “wrong” counseling when the only therapy those kids need is therapy that teaches them there is no such thing as being trans and they have a mental illness that therapy might cure.
And outrage at the idea that there might be systemic racism in our country. Apparently it is unconstitutional to say so?
Flerp @2/23 12:55pm– No, I agree with what you say here, I expect many do as a general statement, it just needs some nuance. We can provide actual examples of systemic racism from recent history (e.g., redlining). With a little research we can probably come up with current examples too. [Perhaps we can even come up with examples of some sort of de facto redlining that works around existing laws!] What we can’t do is come up with evidence supporting broad statements, e.g., how prevalent systemic racism is in our society. But the specific examples help define what it is. That can springboard the kind of lively discussion you envision.
FLERP!,
As usual, you don’t engage with the content of the post.
I never said that you “lectured” to anyone here. You apparently read my post and thought of yourself.
If you don’t want to engage in the content of my post, which is an example of the racism that many of us were blind to for so many years (often blaming the victim for not doing something right), then just don’t reply.
NYCPP, my reference to the constitution related to the teaching of creationism. No need to get so upset.
bethree5,
If students get textbooks where they never read about any of that, and it is the job of a teacher to “find” some example to supplement to those textbook, then that is a problem in and of itself.
Making all of that “supplementary” is the problem. I remember flerp!’s posts expressing outrage at including the 1619 Project in the curriculum.
I think what some people are trying to do is not present history as teaching the history that white people approve of as the important history and maybe the teacher will find some other examples of racism that can be discussed. But only if there is time away from the “important” history that white people approve of.
I also think that’s part of systemic racism. That perception of what is important for students to learn and what is “opinion”.
And if the approved white curriculum is “systemic racism may or may not be real in this country, let’s debate that, as flerp! suggested”, then that is part of the problem. The folks who purvey right wing propaganda are very good at manufacturing consent.
(Another example is seeing a teacher cheering on anti-trans “therapy” because they don’t understand that there is a difference between therapy for kids questioning their gender identity and anti-trans therapy.)
So much bending over backward to please the folks that are not really interested in teaching about racism unless it is done on their (usually white-centric) terms.
nycpsp– “If students get textbooks where they never read about any of that, and it is the job of a teacher to ‘find’ some example to supplement to those textbook, then that is a problem in and of itself.”
It’s unrealistic to expect ordinary textbooks to contain everything you need. Subject teachers—guided by subject dept heads & collaboration with other dept teachers– bring their knowledge of the field, which they regularly update, into the classroom, finding supplementary materials and tailoring lessons/ pedagogy to support it. That’s how my history teachers did it 50 yrs ago, and my sons’ 10-15yrs ago.
I think one of the reasons teachers are so over-mgd by govt these days is that the general public imagines teaching as just guiding students through an ideal textbook which is perfectly aligned to a crisp and definitive set of state standards, all somehow approved by elected representatives. There are no such textbooks & standards, and never were. Then—whoops! voters with an ax to grind (or whipped up by pols with an agenda) get a clue that teaching is not so foolproof, teachers are professionals who have a brain and use it, and put on the brakes.
p.s., nycpsp, I don’t read flerp’s comment on how one might discuss systemic racism in the classroom as ‘let’s debate whether it exists or not’. Here’s what he said: “Systemic racism is something to be debated — what the term means, how we might measure it, etc. It’s not a “fact” the way that historical events are “facts.” ”
This is not controversial in the least, IMHO. There are events that occurred, laws & regs that were/ are implemented etc— [like redlining] that we teach as historical facts. Then we summarize, using categories/ theories/ hypotheses to describe the events [like systemic racism]. This helps us organize disparate information, and follow its development forward in history. A good history teacher will be helping the class to define/ understand/ test these categories/ theories/ hypotheses for validity. Historians redefine and refine these summarizing perspectives on a regular basis, and thrash out their differences of opinion.
bethree5,
I am not even going to argue with you if you want to legitimize the opinions of flerp! I am sure he is just as concerned with teaching students about racism as the people whose twitter accounts he is constantly linking to here are. Ignore flerp’s attacks on the 1619 Project because “good” non-racist people can have the opinion that the 1619 Project is worthless trash and has no place being taught with the vaunted and perfect history textbooks you teachers embrace as the primary source. You really can’t compare the perfection of the average history textbook with worthless trash like the 1619 Project which is so dangerous for students to learn.
(I suspect if you actually went back and perused your son’s history textbooks you would find the same kind of problematic sentences that Joy Hakim’s A History of US had. It’s just that white-approved textbooks never have to meet the standard of perfection that something like the 1619 Project does. The 1619 Project gets excluded as not good enough by the same folks who have no problem using history textbooks that are even more flawed, but have flaws that just don’t bother white people so they are not important.)
And sure, let’s not teach about antisemitism in Nazi Germany anymore. Instead, let’s debate HOW TO MEASURE the anti-Semitism in Nazi society. And instead of teaching students about racism, that talk must be tabled in favor of what really matters — how to measure the racism in American society. This is how the far right takes over democracy. With teachers who normalize those who insist that discussing “how to measure racism” is better than actually discussing racism. All the while somehow believing that it is productive to discuss how to measure something that can’t be measured rather than inform students of the reality that racism exists.
Whatever.
I see what you mean NYPSP. I gotta say, Ginny’s comment agreeing with the Idiot 2.0 that systemic racism not a “fact” and “is not controversial in the least” has removed any vestige of respect I still had for her. Are you kidding me? Have you ever read a book or a newspaper article or spoken to any random Black person on the street? This comment demonstrates that white privilege is alive and well and driven by venal cluelessness. May I suggest a reading list that is more enlightening that the view you get looking into your own rear end:
Teaching Black History to White People by Leonard Moore
Battle Cry of Freedom and The Negro’s Civil War by James McPherson
The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas
Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan’s Edge by Taylor Branch
American Slavery 1619-1877 by Peter Kolchin
Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans by John Hope Franklin
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Lawd Today, Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son by Richard Wright
The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge
Been in the Storm So Long by Leon Litwack
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights
The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy and When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor by William Julius Wilson
Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music That Developed From It
The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement, Stomping the Blues, and The Hero and the Blue by Albert Murray
The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage by John Harris
Duke Ellington’s American by Harvey G. Cohen
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte
That would be a good start. If you can find a copy of Harry Belafonte’s collection of the history of American Music, The Long Road to Freedom, it’s essential. (It had the misfortune of being released on Sept. 11, 2001.)
It would help many come out of their cocoons of ignorant entitlement. This comments section has become a real shit show, hasn’t it?
GregB,
I’m glad you see the problem here, too.
There is something that feels so condescending – and implicitly racist – reading comments denigrating attempts at making the curriculum more inclusive. Sort of like “don’t worry your little heads about whether the history textbooks are good enough because we white teachers will supplement with whatever materials we decide are needed” and then feeling very good about themselves because they spent a day or a week having a discussion about whether it is possible to measure racism in society and how to do it.
Sure there is some problematic DEI, but it is not even close to being as problematic as the history textbooks that are apparently perfectly acceptable – and sometimes highly respected – that white teachers use as the MAIN source. But again, we should trust white teachers to know what other “supplementary” material to include because they get very insulted that anyone would challenge their ability to decide what is important.
I used to be that defensive. Instead of listening to what people who weren’t privileged and white were saying, I got very defensive. Finally what was being said broke through my defensiveness. Once that happens, it’s impossible to be the same. I can see here when folks who think they aren’t racist at all haven’t experienced that. And I can see those like you and Diane Ravitch and others who get it.
Nothing is perfect. But when textbooks approved by white folks are imperfect, they are still acceptable and even admired for what is good in them. When material isn’t approved by white folks, they are perused for any tiny imperfection and those imperfections justify excluding them. That is what happened with the 1619 Project when supposedly “liberal” historians found the same kind of “flaws” in the 1619 Project that one could find in all of their own works. (In fact, in one case those white historians attacked the 1619 Project because it included the very same perspective found in Harvard historian Jill Lepore’s book that those historians never attacked as a piece of crap because Lepore is still one of them. It’s okay for Jill Lepore to say that, but if Nikole Hannah-Jones says it then that justifies sweeping attacks on her scholarship and a banning of the 1619 Project from all classrooms.)
It’s the same kind of double standard that happens in policing. White folks can always come up with a reason that the police were “justified” in treating an African American in the way they did, because they live in their privileged cocoon where they are allowed to act in the exact same way without being thrown on the ground and held in painful holds, or just shot to death.
Maybe a teacher loves To Kill A Mockingbird. There are some good things about it. It is an excellent novel written about how white people experience the south. Unfortunately, it is far too often presented as if it is simply a good book about the south, instead of a good about how white people experience the south. I suspect if teachers actually internalized that “I have this good book that teaches ONLY how white people view the south” they would probably have a very different concept about how to present the book and how to supplement it. Instead of spending a day or 2 reading a supplementary essay, they would give equal time to an entire novel about how non-white people experience the south. And hold that novel up as being as important as reading a novel about how white people experience the south. When the entire curriculum is “this is the history that white people have” or “this is a novel about what white people feel” — and that is held up as the “main” curriculum with everything else just a “supplement”, that is implicitly racist.
NYC-
There has been a significant change from the time of the Scopes trial. Intellectual Catholics supported evolution curriculum during the court case. Today, whatever drives students from public schools achieves the Catholic bishops’ goal. The alliance between evangelicals and conservative Catholics creates the influence of Rufo and Girdusky (Pat Buchanan).
NYCPP — you do realize that the first author listed by our wise-but-sadly-departed commenter Greg—the famed historian James McPherson—is one of the “white historians” (shudder!) who took issue with the central premise of the lead essay in the 1619 Project, right? Like you, Nikole Hannah-Jones dismissed his criticism on Twitter on the basis of his whiteness.
You said that some DEI is “problematic.” That’s the first time I’ve heard you admit that. What DEI do you find problematic, and why?
If it helps, FLERP, I thought the opening essay by Nicole Hannah-Jones in The 1619 Project was brilliant. Provocative. Engaging. A wonderful teaching tool to juxtapose to the typical US history textbook.
It was certainly provocative, but the central thesis that the main reason (or even one of the main reasons, as the essay was later revised to say) the American Revolution was fought was to preserve the institution of slavery does not appear to be true. I suppose that’s what students all over the country are learning now, though.
First, NHJ’s argument that the American Revolution was motivated in large part by a desire to protect slavery is worth debating. I think she modified it in the hardcover book to say that “some” of the Founders wanted to preserve slavery. We know that many were slaveholders. It doesn’t seem impossible that they sought independence to preserve a very comfortable status quo. It’s certainly worth debating. The fun of history is the questioning, the debate, the uncertainty. NHJ was neither “right” nor “wrong.” She argued a point she believes in. She presented evidence. Others disagreed. A wonderful topic for research and discussion.
I agree with the spirit of what you say. But I’m not sure that it’s being taught as a prompt for debate about history, as opposed to history.
Many states have completely banned The 1619 Project and any teaching that questions the patriotic narrative—slavery and racism were a sad aberration and they are finished, over,in the distant past. In about half the nation, students are taught lies, not history. There’s more truth in The 1619Project than in what is taught in a very large number of classrooms.
FLERP, I don’t understand the contrast you make :
“I’m not sure that it’s being taught as a prompt for debate about history, as opposed to history.”
History is not simply a string of facts. It’s an ongoing debate about interpretations of what happened and why.
“I’m not sure that it’s being taught as a prompt for debate about history, as opposed to history.”
That seems like a weak attack. James McPherson’s books are also being taught as history, not as “a prompt for debate about history”.
Holding a book by an African-American author to a higher standard of perfection than one holds a white Harvard historian (Jill Lepore) whose own book informed the 1619 Project is implicitly racist.
But since I’m an honest actor — something you see very little of by the critics of the 1619 Project — I can have “quibbles” with the weight that McPherson might give to various historical facts without trying to undermine all of James McPherson’s works and say they shouldn’t be taught as history.
Just like James McPherson can have quibbles with something Jill Lepore presents as very influential without denigrating her book as something that should only be “taught as a prompt for debate about history, as opposed to history”. But somehow he is unable to read the same idea written by an African American woman without getting all hot and bothered and undermining the entire work.
Why is that? Implicit racism. And I think if you took some time to try to understand the ideas behind the stages of white racial identity, you might actually see some value in it – even if it also has flaws just like one can often find flaws in continuing legal education programs about women’s issues or disability issues or a myriad of issues. I can see flaws without erasing all the good. When one is implicitly racist, they can only see the flaws in works that challenge the ideas they hold dear, and they are blind to any value that work has. While those very same people can read a white-approved history textbook and never see the flaws. Or if they notice the flaws, they minimize them as “quibbles” and praise the rest of the book. We all have implicit biases — it’s impossible not to. But it makes a difference if you accept you have implicit biases and start noticing them so they don’t unduly influence how you perceive the world.
The 1619 Project is excellent. The fact that some white historians and certain white commenters have magnified minor quibbles into major flaws is implicitly racist. Maybe if James McPherson had his own work held up to the standard he holds the 1619 Project, he might get woke.
My recollection is that there was at least one “quibble” (error) in the letter those historians wrote to attack the 1619 Project! A good example of implicit racism is that those historians did not view their own mistake as anything other than a fixable error. When it came to Hannah-Jones, they were simply outraged that she could make even a minor error.
Implicit racism — becoming fixated on errors by non-white people as completely discrediting an entire piece of work or an entire DEI presentation, while the errors by white people (or folks whose work confirms what white people already believe is true) go unnoticed or are considered “quibbles” that don’t affect the great esteem accorded the work.
For readers other than flerp
“Sundown towns” prevented Black people from owning property, an asset that enables economic progress for a family that builds over generations. A search of Celina, History and Social Justice (justice.Tougaloo.edu) describes a recollection about the city of Celina, Ohio and the attempts of former slaves to gain farmland offered to them by former slaveowners. The farmland was located in the German belt, an area along the Ohio -Indiana border from Cincinnati to Van Wert County.
The former slaves traveled north via canal to claim the property but, were met by German immigrants with guns enforcing the sundown law and demanding the people’s return to Cincinnati. I have some familiarity with an inherited 200 acre farm in the area that was originally purchased at about the same time the Black people were denied ownership of similar property. In 2022, the acreage continues to be farmed by a local and the remote owner receives yearly revenue. The land’s collateral enabled the purchase of other revenue-generating property that benefitted the intermediate generations. Some assets were sold, proceeds were invested with the accompanying dividends and interest which continued to be paid in 2022 and, will be inherited by the next generation.
Some men gained access to the middle class by way of the GI Bill after WWII. Their economic class enabled the next generations to have a leg up. Many of the colleges admitting White GI’s had racist enrollment policies and, the military and companies had racist employment policies.
Well said, Linda. I worked with poor black and brown ELLs for more that three decades. I heard their stories of being treated differently, their stories of “driving while black,” their stories of white business owners with exploitative practices and their stories of problems with banks. Unfortunately, the powerful often take advantage of the weak, and lots of the those that have less agency are people of color, particularly newly arrived immigrants.
Thanks for this, Linda. The wiki article alone on sundown towns is informative, and good pickings for a lesson on systemic racism. I immediately recognized patterns that exist sub rosa to an extent in my own town—and more frequently, on the main interchange just outside of town. It’s not overly pronounced in town: we have a small black population that’s been here going back all the way to freed slaves that settled in the area, so cops have to be a bit careful. But DWB is alive, especially on the central N-S drags that are used to transit from mostly-white towns to mostly-black towns. The profiling extends as well to young white men driving– my sons did not stop getting challenged until they were well into their 20’s—but that was always ‘after sundown.’ The profiling of DWB can occur at any time of day.
Looks to me like the proliferation of sundown towns/ suburbs from 19th to late-mid-20thC is an intrinsic part of the mechanics that created the stark residential segregation in NJ. Once you’ve got everyone divided up like that, DWB/ profiling is baked in.
Jim Jordan’s district includes Celina. The largest churches in the entire surrounding area are Catholic.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Education Week supportive of and controlled by the greedy, child abusing, bullying charter school industry and the movement to destroy not only public schools but the public sector including labor unions and stripping the federal government of its Constitutional powers that are essentially the last line of defense against autocratic narcistic, sociopathic or psychopathic multi-millionaires, and billionaires that worship at the ruthless alter of the greed god?
One poll from an allegedly biased media outlet that allegedly asks loaded question with a targeted goal does not measure what Americans think.
It was not a poll conducted by EdWeek. It was reported by EdWeek
Clearly, organizations across our nation need to open private museums that tell the story of racism in America’s historical past and current times — museums what people can go free of charge to see what is being hidden from them…and then question why of parents and politicians.
Has any teacher here ever “taught about systemic racism” in a class? If so, can you explain what the lesson consisted of?
How about the 1619 Project?
I was asking teachers.
Flerp-
Not in answer to your question but, extrapolating on your point- the question raised is WHO LEARNS from the Artery and Floyd murders, from the Tulsa massacre and the history of sundown towns, who draws logical conclusions from objective statistics about race in America over time?
You and I can likely agree on the following conclusion. People (including students) who don’t want to learn, won’t, regardless of a lesson’s content.
It’s called teaching history.
Can you explain what the lesson consisted of when you were teaching about systemic racism by “teaching history”?
How about providing a few test items that you would use to assess your students grasp of the topic?
I have. The way to teach it is to have the students lead the discussion and I just provide facts along the way without taking sides. But I certainly wouldn’t call it teaching about systemic racism. It’s more like teaching literature or history, and allowing the books we read to open ideas for discussion of relevance. It’s the analysis level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, my classes just read The Gettysburg Address and the I Have a Dream speech, and discussed the progression of he idea “all men are created equal” from 1776 to 1863 to 1963 to present.
Thanks.
LCT: Great examples. Anyone teaching US history accurately will confront the issue of race, even when trying to be impartial.
They probably consider that to be like religious instruction and sexual education, to be left to the families, which then don’t do anything at all.
“don’t do anything all”? hmmm, is that your demographic speaking?
Religions that overtly discriminate against women, do damage.
Religions that preach being gay is wrong, do damage
I was just thinking, what about the students? What about their right to know? What about them? Has anyone surveyed them?
Good point!
Questions and interpretation are a mishmash.
• Do parents think the racism is an ongoing problem? (What explain differences of perspective beyond surface level demographics? For example does life experience across differences or race and socioeconomic status have an influence? How about media and peer identification?
• If so, whose responsibility is it, if anyone, to do something about it.
• If so, should be involve school children in learning about it?
• If so, at what age?
A similar set of question applies to making sense of parents perspective on education related to gender, gender roles, and sexual orientation.
Unless we can make sense of all this, we can’t hope to influence it.
Great set of questions, Arthur Camins. I note that FL’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill advancing through their House reads “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” Obvious weasel wording for upper grades—they claim they will make specifics clear in state standards [hah]. But the main concern seems to be K-3, which says the ‘at what age?’ Q is paramount in parents’—or at least pols’—minds.
IMHO as a longtime teacher of the young [age 2.5-6], I would prefer curriculum not focus in this way at least until age 10 [or, after primary school]. It makes more sense to me to shape curriculum, class activities, class ‘atmosphere’ around golden rule/ empathy/ inclusiveness/ anti-bullying. Caring about each other, all members of the class, regardless of differences [which frankly are rather extreme among youngest students] covers all this stuff without any direct instruction other than how we treat each other. Children long remember these warm relations they forged among classmates who differed from themselves in ways they didn’t even pigeonhole at the time, but may later realize were differences in skin color, degree of poverty, culture, 2 moms or dads, and even gender identity.
That doesn’t mean I agree with FL’s absurd law. To me, what I’ve outlined above is obvious and should always be how we socialize young children.
What happens when a 5 year old has 2 dads and another kid asks about it? The teacher shuts her mouth and just refuses to answer?
Why is it unacceptable — or illegal — to say in a Kindergarten class that two men or two women might love each other and get married. Is it a fear it might turn 5 year olds gay?
I must be missing something because I don’t care if my kid learns that there are families with 2 moms and dads. But I won’t argue with the teachers who are certain that even mentioning that gay families exist to 5 year olds would be very harmful. To the children that matter. Or at least to their very important parents.
I believe it is implicit bias if a preschool teacher has no understanding of why it is wrong to ONLY present depictions of heterosexual families because it would be “illegal” to mention that other kinds of families exist. How does that make kids who have gay parents feel? When people don’t think it is a big deal when gay families aren’t allowed to be represented or mentioned — at least until the kids are 9 and can “handle it” — it is because of implicit bias.
Now someone will probably say that this isn’t about Kindergarten teachers requiring all children with gay parents to be banned from talking about their parents in any way that reveals their gender. It is really about silencing all of the Kindergarten and first grade teachers who supposedly give regular lessons to their students on how to be gay or trans.
I am so tired of people legitimizing this narrative of something that doesn’t exist. They invoke this non-existent problem to scare people into accepting their new and very harmful laws and make them “acceptable” and “normal”.
In Texas they are trying to pass laws to make sure that the only therapy trans kids can legally have is anti-trans therapy that teaches them they are mentally ill because there is no such thing as being trans. (That’s the kind of therapy our resident anti-trans poster thinks is being “compassionate” towards those kids).
But of course they invoke the non-existent problem of needing to protect all those trans children from getting the gender reassignment surgeries that they have never been able to get. And they get good people to spend their time legitimizing them as good people just concerned with stopping forcible gender reassignment surgery for kids — something that doesn’t exist — and not anti-trans activists who want trans kids to be taught they are mentally ill.
Sigh.
“I believe it is implicit bias if a preschool teacher has no understanding of why it is wrong to ONLY present depictions of heterosexual families because it would be “illegal” to mention that other kinds of families exist.”
I certainly agree with this, nycpsp. That’s an important point especially for PreK & K, where lessons in Fall often start with stories about ‘me,’ then ‘my family,’ leading to ‘my nbhd/ community’ etc.
My time with that age group only goes back to the ‘90’s [my own kids], then the next 2 decades as a visiting teacher to many different types of PreK/K’s. No question there were many insensitive materials on the market (especially workbook-style) around ‘the family’ in the early days, with all kinds of depictions of white mom/dad/2 kids plus baby!
Meanwhile the classes I visited had every color kid, multiple religions/ ethnics. There were probably very few kids being raised by gay couples [I met none], but plenty being raised by single parents, grandparent(s), shuffled back & forth between divorced parents & stepfamilies, plus a few foster kids. Teachers had to be careful about materials/ depictions, and I’m happy to say on the whole they were. Usually the only depictions of families I saw were occasional bulletin board displays showing each kid’s family (with all their differences). During the 20 yrs I taught, there became a multitude of picture books available showing all different races. Family groups (when not animal families 😉) were generally large and complicated, if not specific about who belonged to whom.
The saving grace was that PreK/K’s in my area are privately-run (tho often with state tuition subsidies), with small classes, and most teachers are sensitive, and protective of their students’ feelings. That means that if there’s a student with gay parents, they’ll know about it, and be thinking about how to answer Q’s kids might come up with. I worry about what ‘universal PreK’ [when/if it happens] will do to this picture.
Didn’t know whether to put this on this or previous post: “Petition Seeks Removal of D86 Chief: Opponent: Prentiss has ‘Shown Bad Judgment’ During Equity Consultant Controversy,” Chicago Tribune, P.2, We’d., 2/23/22. Hinsdale High School has “a petition w/over 1,000 signatures calling for her removal.” This after she was attempting to read ain an equity consultant to provide equity training for the FACULTY (not even to students!). If a Chicago/IL or other reader is able to provide a link to this article, please do.
It’s worth reading.
Can’t access Chicago Trib. Always behind a paywall. I see Hinsdale is a western suburb of Chicago. Seems absolutely over the top to seek removal of a district superintendent merely for attempting to bring in an equity consultant for faculty– what?! OTOH I haven’t heard anything good about equity consultants for K12 staff. Of course I could be wrong and this is some wonderful program. But so far the ones whose details I’ve been able to access are warmed-over ‘80’s HR programs designed for corp/ non-profit mgt staff that are horrible crap.
I would be more interested in a poll that asked whether schools should teach current events than whether schools should teach about current racism. The poll that was given had bias baked in the question. If we teach current events, racism just comes up. Do half of those polled really want schools to ignore everything current? I doubt it. Should we teach current events? That, along with to be or not to be, is the question.
good call. sadly I suspect the same rwsnowflakes would especially not want any discussion of current events…
The questionnaire as reported at APM (linked from the Will synopsis) had one question about religion, “are you a born again Christian, yes or no”.
The 74 which reported on the poll evidently has a lot of interest in correlations to that one question. Not surprising, Gates’ Bellwether advised self-appointed ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals.
State Catholic Conferences are already on board with taxpayer- funded religion. They’re the 3rd largest U.S. employer as a result of taxes.
I wonder when our treatment of American Indians will ever make the news as much as slavery does.
When big profit is involved. Everything is about money.
How much “wokeness”‘ is welcome in the White populations of states like South Dakota?
90% of South Dakota’s pop. is NOT Native American. Roughly 60% of Miss. and Louisiana’s populations are NOT Black. Percentages and absolute numbers have impact on the demand for redress and they have impact on political interest in gaining voting enfranchisement.
Btw- Based on history and current GOP support for governors like Noem and Presidents like Trump, should people anticipate the conservative religious, German ancestry pop. of South Dakota to be receptive to the idea of showing compassion for a segment of people they may view as “others”?
Montana teacher, I recall from other comments you’ve made, you expect generalized respect for the White demographic in the west.
I hate the politics of this turn of events. The manipulations are disgusting.
When someone says, “I don’t want my child to see pictures of lynchings” or anything of that nature (print, video, photos, etc); I get it. I really do. Why subject a very young mind to imagery of that sort?
But we’re not talking about children, here. The children have no and will continue to have no exposure to these images. They’re not part of the primary school curriculum.
We’re talking about young adults who have left that time of innocence and exploration. Young adults need the facts in order to build on society’s successes and failures as they integrate into roles of leadership. The repetition of these failures is much more likely without a full and accurate accounting of history.
Racists don’t want photos of injustice to gain visibility, irrespective of the viewers’ ages.
As example, the current fringe attacks against Jews would, more easily, become mainstream if photos and reporting about the German atrocities committed against Jews had been hidden.
And that is the sinister face of the agenda
If I was a strategist for a political party that sought to increase voters, I’d be interested in research that provided insight. One article I might earmark would be, “Societal religiosity and the gender gap in political interest … “, by Damon Mayri. An excerpt from the abstract follows, “…Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken-for-grantedness of this order, subjecting it to debate. Men then become especially interested in politics to try to reassert their traditional gender dominance or to compensate for their increasingly uncertain social status….”
Mayri and Gary J. Adler co-authored an article with Eric Plutzer, whose research is the subject of Diane’s post heading. As a strategist, the Mayri-Plutzer-Adler-… article would also interest me. “Religion-state interaction: Key Findings from a survey of religion and local elected officials.” From the article’s summary, “Minority religious affiliation, Democratic political affiliation and urban context predict opposition to religious state engagement …We describe how local elected officials may produce local regimes of religion-state interaction that vary by geographic locations and suggest pathways for future research.”
Gary J Adler’s books, may not be as directly helpful in the context of specific strategist research but might be of interest to the political arm of the bishops, the state Catholic Conferences. “American Parishes: Secularism, Catholicism and the future of public life”, “Remaking Local Catholicism …”
Click on Medeline Will’s link to the national survey posted at APM Research Lab and draw your own conclusion. Why was the only religion question, “Are you a born again Christian, yes or no?”
The 74 article about the poll wrote at length summarizing conclusions about “born again Christians and evangelicals”.
State Catholic Conferences politick heavily for school choice and 63% of White Catholics who attend church regularly voted for Trump in 2020.
Linda, can you guess what religion I was raised in?
Don’t care. I am curious, in terms of a broad sample, if you and men you know feel an “increasing uncertain social status” as a result of reduced societal religiosity and if it drives your interest in politics? I want to correlate the answers to political party.
My sample so far is men voting Democratic who answer no.
Catholic, of course! Although I’m not religious.
I would say no to your question. But that may be because I’ve never felt a connection between my social status and the religiosity of society.
For obvious reasons, I haven’t either.