The well-organized Pastors for Texas Children is engaged in rhetorical battles with the well-funded privatizers. Whether by Tweet, in the media, or on the lecture platform, Pastor Charles Foster Johnson and his colleagues lead the battle on behalf of public schools, taking on the rich and powerful and their political lackeys.
After Congressman Chip Roy attacked Pastors for Texas children and classroom teachers on Twitter, Pastor Johnson responded forcefully:
On Twitter, the group responded to Congressman Roy: “Congressman @chiproytx, your repeated lies about our [public school] teachers & the pastors who support them, are shameful, embarrassing, and shockingly immoral. You may mock them and us with your political lies against these servants. But you cannot mock God.”
Pastors For Texas Children, a Fort Worth-based organization, says it is an independent organization that advocates for public schools…
Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused “left-wing educators” of showing children “explicit pornography” in schools.
Cruz would not cite specific examples, according to Business Insider, “but instead pointed to books that have made parents angry at school board meetings in general.”
“Take a look at some of the portions from books that parents are going to school boards and reading out loud; this is what my child is being taught,'” the senator told the on-line publication.
Rev. Johnson said it’s all a political smokescreen to create chaos.
“If CRT (critical race theory) is a problem, if pornography is a problem, you guys have been in charge in Texas for 27-years,” Johnson said. “Are you just now discovering it? Are you producing it? What if we were to go all over the state and say that you were pornographers? You’re more responsible than our public school teachers. Obviously, we’re not going to do that, but you get the point.”
“We’re in this program of sheer destructive chaos,” he added. “That’s their only agenda. The only agenda. And that is wrong.”
Teachers are an easy target, Johnson continued, because the far-right knows that educators are too busy in the classroom to push back. Many school districts also drew the ire of Texas Republican leaders during COVID-19 when some – even in conservative areas – refused to ban masks like the governor ordered.
In an op-ed last week for Baptist News Global, publisher Mark Wingfield argued that “it’s time to stop the insanity that is killing public education.”
“It is disgusting, dismaying and disheartening to see the continued attack on public education from conservative evangelical Christians and people who pretend to be evangelical Christians but couldn’t find John 3:16 in the Bible if you asked them,” Wingfield wrote. “It is time to stop being shocked at this behavior and stand up against it.”
You see why I admire, respect and love Pastors for Texas Children? They are fearless, wise, and animated by a sense of mission.
The battles to save the public schools will never end. Greed does not take a vacation or retire, and those that are greedy don’t know what compassion and truth means.
Greed may be the most dangerous infection on the planet. more dangerous than COVID or any other toxic virus. No one can hide from the ravages of the greedy. If you are unwilling to resist and fight back, the greedy will rejoice and dance on their corpses if that makes them richer..
It’s all a political smokescreen
to create chaos,
the same as it ever was…
“To obtain control over public opinion,
it is first necessary to confuse it by
the expression from various sides of so
many conflicting opinions.
Increasing and intensifying the
shortcomings of the people in their
habits, passions and mode of living,
so that no one will be able to collect
himself in the chaos, and, consequently,
people will lose all their mutual
understanding…”
Looky here, looky there…
“A society that sacrifices fairness
and integrity for profit and power
or wages, betrays its insensitivity
to human needs. The proliferation
of material things becomes the
measure of progress in living,
and man is pitted against woman,
worker against employer,
individual against community.
When wealth occupies a higher position
than wisdom, when notoriety is admired
more than dignity, when success is more
important than self-respect, the culture
itself overvalues ‘image’ and is
nothing more than narcissistic.”
Show me your papers, your degree,
your “proper” accreditation,
your party affiliation…
Part of the privatizers’ plan is to paint the teacher unions as some kind of radical boogeyman. In many states, not just Texas, teacher unions do not have the authority to call for a strike. Unions are limited what they can do by state laws. Many years ago my district went on strike in New York. The union did not call for the strike, and it would have been illegal for the union to do so. The decision to strike came from a vote from the membership. It was a democratic decision. At that point, the union had the authority to provide legal advice and other support to help the membership with the strike.
Dr Johnson is right that teachers have no time to fight back. They are incredibly busy and overwhelmed by the many demands of teaching. Covid and the under funding of public education have taken the demands on teachers to a new level of exhaustion.
Many thanks to Pastor C. F. Johnson for his willingness to tangle with some of Texas’ unreasonable legislators that deal in lies and hyperbole including the notorious Ted Cruz, one of the biggest opportunists in politics. The right wing will say and do anything to spread fear and loathing among their base. Lies are simply a component of their political toolbox.
The official scapegoat and punching bag of Texas…..public school teachers. Those horrible teachers are teaching kids how to read, how dare they. The kids might end up reading Jean-Paul Sartre, Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science or Where the Wild Things Are.
yes, such a big difference between public school and bible school
2018-
“Parental Choice Continues to be a top priority of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops…more than 100,000 low-income students (receive scholarships) to attend private schools. Even more students are enrolled in the state’s 650 charter schools…”
The preceding is the “public policy voice” of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Texas.
Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education and commented:
I’ve sent them some cash for them to continue their gneiss work.
Excellent! They are the best supporters of public schools in Texas.