Steve Bailey, an opinion writer for the Charleston Post and Courier, wrote recently about the new charter school that will open in an affluent neighborhood in Charleston. It will use the Hillsdale College curriculum. The Moms predict it will be the highest performing school in the area. With the freedom to choose its students and to oust the ones who are problematic, it’s sure to get high gest scores.
He writes:
The leaders of Moms for Liberty, who have made a fine mess of the Charleston County School District, have a new project: starting a “classical” — read conservative — kindergarten through 12th grade charter school, preferably in Mount Pleasant. And the Moms’ kids will be at the front of the line for seats in their new school.
Ashley River Classical Academy has partnered with Hillsdale College, a tiny Michigan school that has become the go-to provider for conservatives like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis looking to overhaul curriculums to counter “leftist academies.” The Christian college has helped open 23 charter schools in 14 states — and many more are on the way. Ashley River would be its first in South Carolina.
Hillsdale, with about 1,570 students, has expanded its influence by providing and helping implement a free, off-the-shelf product for conservatives. Its 1776 Curriculum focuses on Western civilization and American exceptionalism, phonics, Latin, classic literature and traditional teaching methods, not “shiny and new” technology and instruction. It emphasizes “moral character and civic virtue,” Ashley River said in its charter school application.
“ARA is poised to become one of the highest achieving schools in South Carolina,” it predicts.
The school started accepting pre-enrollment applications this month and is scheduled to begin kindergarten through fifth grade classes in August. The six-member board of directors includes Tara Wood, the chair of the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter; Janine Nagrodsky, the treasurer; and Nicole McCarthy, who heads the Moms’ education committee. The all-white board has hired an African American principal, Alexandria Spry, who previously ran a Hillsdale school in Jacksonville, Fla.
The student body “will be diverse in every way,” the charter application promises. “We want all kids to come to the school,” says Spry.
Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, are often promoted as offering parents an alternative to low-performing schools in urban areas. That hardly describes this school’s preferred home: affluent Mount Pleasant, where the town’s explosive growth has been fueled in part by some of the best public schools in the region. The $104 million Lucy Beckham High School opened there three years ago.
But that is where the founders would like to open Ashley River Classical Academy. Coincidentally or not, Mount Pleasant is also ground zero of the Charleston chapter of Moms for Liberty. Half the school’s board lives there. Their kids, and those of school employees, will get preference in admissions, according to the school website.
“The school is not a political project,” Spry tells me. “We are just trying to provide the best education we can.”
Finding a site has been a struggle. Ashley River Classical is looking for a 10-acre campus to build a 50,000-square-foot school that eventually could accommodate 690 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. The school originally looked at five sites in Mount Pleasant, none of which panned out. It’s now looking at a temporary site in North Charleston, near Daniel Island, with plans to eventually build in Mount Pleasant, according to the school’s website.
A location is expected to be announced this month, Spry said. But both she and Tom Drummond, the board chairman, declined to comment further on a site.
Ashley River is one of more than two dozen South Carolina charters sponsored by Erskine College, a small Christian school in Due West. Nashville-based American Classical Education Foundation has committed to help finance the school’s start-up costs.
It was just a year ago that Moms-backed candidates won a majority on the Charleston County School Board, kicking off a chaotic year that included the hiring and departure of a superintendent in a matter of months. Now the Moms and their like-minded supporters will have a chance to implement their own ideas in their own school for their own kids. Tuition-free, thanks to taxpayers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It would be a lovely thing indeed if this actually were an academy focused on providing an education based on classical precedents. Some Latin, some Greek, some rhetoric. But I have read the 1776 curriculum, and it is breathtakingly skewed Reich-wing indoctrination.
Yeah, I really like the idea of a real classics-centric curriculum, with Latin and Greek, but without the “American exceptionalism.”
Me, too.
Hillsdale popped up on my Facebook once. I had not heard of the place at all, and their intro sounded like one of those Great Books curriculum places I would hear about in the early 70s.
You can call a fiddle tune the 9th symphony if no one is there to tell you otherwise.
LOL. Yes. They are like any cult. The Scientologists, for example, don’t start by telling new recruits that they believe that Xenu the Galactic Emperor tried to solve the overpolulation problem on Earth by putting people in a trance and piling up their bodies around volcanos that they then nuked with hydrogen bombs dropped from WWI-era bombers. Instead, they reel people in with some pseudo-psychology about “engrams” that keep you from “realizing your full potential.” It’s only after you are far, far in that they spring the truly crazy stuff on you. ALL cults, and Hillsdale is a cult, work in this way.
Adler’s Great Books was a bizarre idea. I’m sorry, but no one today is going to want to have to learn his or her Geometry by reading Euclid’s Elements or Analytic/Algebraic Geometry by reading Descartes’s La Géométrie. Idiotic. I did like Adler’s suggestion that you should read a great book at least twice. The first time through, he says, read it with sympathy for the author’s position, assuming it’s true, with a suspension of disbelief. Then, read it again critically. This makes sense.
I’m for never ever letting Moms 4 Liberty off the hook for the founder’s three-way, even though it was presumably all consenting adults. I say remind them in every single mention — Three-Way Moms 4 Liberty. (In fact, so many loudmouth homophobes have eventually come out as LGBTQ that I also advocate publicly assuming that every loudmouth homophobe is gay and sympathetically urging them to come out proudly and fearlessly.)
(Or Moms 4 Liberty and Group Sex, something like that)
The Minivan Taliban. The Ku Klux Karens.
Oh yeah but they embrace that! But the co-founder’s group sex genuinely embarrasses them.
true that
Meanwhile, a whole lot of the richest and most powerful people in the United States today, in politics, in business, in academia, are sweating out the beginning of the year, wondering how much will be revealed about their use of Jeffrey Epstein’s services by the coming document dump.
Caroline,
Moms4L no longer identify Bridget as a co-founder on their website.
That’s why it’s a good thing to hammer in a reminder whenever their operation is mentioned! Plus it’s reasonable to assume that all their other leaders, if not members, are also engaging in practices that they publicly profess to deplore.
Love how you think, Caroline!
CarolineSF,
So you think that Moms4L might be Moms for Libertine Behavior?
🤣
Sign me up!
Yeah, when I hear a loud-mouthed Repugnican blowing off about homosexuals, my mind immediately goes to the congressman in the men’s bathroom stall and the Jesus camp operator with his escort/companion from Rentaboy dot com.
For context, I’m a San Franciscan, a straight ally with many LGBTQ friends (and relatives). So I’m not coming from a viewpoint of shaming those loudmouths, exactly, but that assumption would certainly discourage them from trumpeting homophobia.
I’d ordinarily oppose a charter school opening anywhere, but if the handful of hateful people left their public schools and concentrated in one charter, life would be more peaceful and teachers more effective in the public sector.
After reading Tara Wood’s quote last year provided at the National Catholic Register (see below), your point deserves consideration.
I would never have viewed the public schools with which I am familiar as a situation of bears attacking children. On the other hand, I well might view libertarians like Charles Koch in that way.
There is reference to a few people in Bailey’s posted article, Tara Wood of M4L is one. Approximately a year before Bailey’s article, Tara Wood was quoted in Tim Busch’s National Catholic Register (11-18-2022). “If you mess with a mama bear’s cubs, what does she do? She rips your head off…” The Register article describes, “the platform of parents rights as a movement associated more with Republicans than Democrats.”
Also quoted by National Catholic Register in the same article, (“Parents Rights Candidates Find Success…, “) is a DeSantis appointee to the Florida State Board of Education (btw- DeSantis attended Catholic schools until high school) who is identified as, “a Catholic mother of 5.” The Register summarized Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie’s interview, “…as a board member she has heard complaints about CRT… (Christie praised) a Catholic social teaching called subsidiarity (and, she quoted from) the Vatican’s Charter of the Rights of the Family.”
Janine Gradosky is also in Bailey’s article which Diane posted. The website, Cause IQ, identifies the George and Janine Nagrodsky Family Foundation of Charleston, S.C. as making 3 charitable donations last year amounting to about $1,050,000. The recipients were the Diocese of Sioux Falls…, Diocese of Charleston and Church of the Nativity “under the parent exemption of the USCCB.”
Very few people are aware of the great Brunette Right-wing Conspiracy to end Democracy in the United States, and discussion of this conspiracy is suppressed in the mainstream media, but if you examine photographs of any of the major convocations of right-wing extremists, you will find many brunettes in their numbers. And, is it a coincidence that Hitler himself was a brunette? I think not! Chris Rufo, btw, is a brunette. The list of contributions to right-wing organizations by brunette billionaires is truly staggering.
DeSantis? Brunette
Bob
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your point.
For clarity-
Is the criteria for concern about right wing political spending/promotion (1) based upon the variable – type of entity? For example, a conservative church, a for-profit corporation, or a libertarian billionaire?
(2) Does the amount of spending make the difference? For example, are there dollar amounts and impact of influence that trigger concern? An amount below $2,000,000 for state level legislative issues, a maximum number of paid lobbyists and, the entity type that spends the money is irrelevant?
(3) Does the ratio of the spending to organization’s assets factor in?
For example, would the amount spent by one, trigger concern, but the same amount spent by another, not?
(4) Is the trigger of concern set by what the issue is? For example, spending for right wing agendas related to democracy, school privatization, women and gay rights would be ignored but, other issues, not?
(5) Does the likelihood of success in achieving the desired outcome factor in? Possibly, they are judged to be wasting their money. (Although Roe v Wade is a cautionary tale.) As a corollary, who would make that assessment?
(5) Is a factor, the level in the hierarchy where the decision is made, e.g. the higher, the less consequential? If the Business Roundtable has a lot of stakeholders who disagree with their spending (with no impact), the political spending and the amount, are immaterial to a concern because it’s made at the top?
Linda, as you know, I share with you a distaste for much of what the Catholic Church and devout Catholics believe. I think that notions about the Virgin Birth, hell, Satan, demons, the Resurrection, the transubstantiation of the wafer and the wine, and so on, are absurd. I also find the sexism of the Church (not ordaining women) extremely abhorrent and its behavior toward our LGBTQX brothers and sisters condescending and ridiculous. I am not a fan of religious superstition generally. And I make no secret of any of this. I also share with you your antipathy for people like Alito and Leo who attempt to foist their superstitions and cultural backwardness on everyone else. However, I know lots of progressive Catholics and have lots of these in my own family, and your constant, constant, constant posts about how bad Catholics and Catholicism are seem to me over the top. I have tried in my satirical responses to point up an error in this way of thinking–smearing an entire group, overgeneralization. Yes, there are very conservative Catholic Christians who are quite powerful. There are also very conservative Lutheran Christians who are quite powerful. And Methodist Christians. And Baptist Christians. and so on. Evangelical Christianity is at least as potent a negative force in our politics as is right-wing Catholicism (I would argue that it is even more potent), but you don’t turn every post Diane makes into an occasion to talk about the evils of Evangelicalism or or New Dominionism or whatever.
I too find it truly shocking that adults in the 21st century, even educated adults, still believe utter fairytales.
But I also know that most adults, especially most educated ones, don’t believe the fairytale parts anymore. They cling to their religious traditions, but they try not to think about the actual beliefs, which do seem to them quite silly, when it comes down to it. As the Pew studies of Religion in America have shown unequivocally, most Americans now practice a religion that I call Vaguism. They sort of believe in something sort of. LOL. There is even a whole new phenomenon called Churches of Nones just for such people (and Unitarianism in its contemporary form tends in that direction). The Churches of Nones require no particular beliefs whatsoever, but their services look like traditional ones and they talk about being good people and so on.
I hasten to add that I think Vaguism an altogether appropriate position to take at this point in the development of our understanding of the universe. Lucretian/LaPlacian materialism fails on many fronts. It does not and cannot explain the fundamental fact of our existence–that we have minds, which is a different think in kind, not just in quality, from having brains. Our science has retreated further and further and further from the billiard ball universe of LaPlace. Virtual particles. Spooky action at profound distance. Field theory. We must face squarely that while the ancient superstitions are just that, superstitions, we are not much further along. We don’t even know what most of the universe is made up, much less how to account for consciousness. What Daniel Dennett denounces as people’s “default dualism” is the default for good reasons. LOL. What bothers me about religions (and about the blithering dull scientism of people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and the reason why I withdrew from our local Humanist Society meetings) is that they presuppose the answers (inadequate answers) to extremely interesting and important OPEN QUESTIONS. My suspicion is that materialists have it precisely wrong and that something else that gives rise to mind is fundamental. I have complex reasons for this. If you are interested, you can start exploring those reasons here:
One of the problems that I have with religions (and with simple-minded Dennett and Dawkins and Harris-style Scientism) is that ultimate questions–the questions with which metaphysics and philosophy of mind deal, for example–are interesting and important, and one gets nowhere by presupposing simplistic answers to them. Those belief systems “stick to the eye,” as Wallace Stevens so aptly put it. Daniel Dennett derides Vaguists (like people who speak of qualia) as “msyterians.” Well, the proper response to a mystery is to say, “Gee, that’s a mystery.” Isn’t it?
Linda,
I’m sorry you have to experience what it’s like when the “cool kids” don’t like you. They are far too cool and popular to bother to write a reasonable reply where they point out where they believe that you are making wrong conclusions or disagree with your facts.
Instead, snark substitutes for actual thinking. It’s hypocritical for them to ask why so many Trump supporters act this way. It is because they can. Privilege.
Linda, I have never seen you reply to any of your nastiest critics with the disrespect and derision that I see so frequently launched at you.
There have been times where we disagree, and times that I challenge something you say or suggest you re-frame the important information you write about because it comes off as sounding like a slur about all Catholics. But I hope I do that without the extreme incivility and rudeness that the cool kids here use.
Linda, the first time I ever heard of Leonard Leo was in one of your posts years and years before anyone but a few people knew of him. And the warnings you gave about him were prescient.
I have found myself participating here far less, so tired of trying to write thoughtful posts and instead of getting a thoughtful reply back, getting responses typical of this,or just accusations of “word salad”. It is possible to engage with someone AND disagree. Our country is far worse because the Republican party no longer is interested in discussing issues when people seem to like them more when they just hurl insults at those they don’t like. It makes them more popular in the warped society that America is becoming. Likewise at this blog.
Linda, I respect your fortitude. Even when I disagree with you, I notice you are always willing to listen and consider.
“cool kids”? “popular”?
NYC, this isn’t seventh grade.
They are far too cool and popular to bother to write a reasonable reply where they point out where they believe that you are making wrong conclusions or disagree with your facts
This statement is particularly rich because any time one points out where you have your facts wrong, the response is post after post after post of paragraph after paragraph after paragraph equivocating about what you clearly said. Example: You claimed that Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird was a “white savior.” I pointed out where I believed you had made a wrong conclusion and where I disagreed with you because, in fact, Atticus saves no one. He is unable to save Tom. But this quite reasonable critique of your position was met with dozens of multi-paragraph responses that made zero sense.
So, I showed that you had drawn a false conclusion (that people should stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird) as a result of getting your facts wrong (that Atticus is a “white savior”). In other words, I did precisely what you say here I do not do. And I did not do precisely what you say that I did do (say that I “don’t like” Linda). LOL. None of this is surprising.
I’ve noticed that since you’ve reduced the amount of time you comment here, the number of petty, near-interminable squabbles between commenters have fallen commensurately.
NYC-
I appreciate that you recognize and have called out gaslighting and worse in the comment threads. My preference would be for Bob to stop commenting about what I write. I have expressed that and there’s minimal else I can do.
I like to read your comments because the points are laid out cogently in precise order. And, of course, politically, we are on the same page. So, I hope you will continue to post.
Personally, I particularly appreciate the mention of your awareness point for Leonard Leo’s activities. Thank you.
It’s easy for me to be dispassionate with commenters who disagree about the enemy of public education because I firmly know the evidence backs me up.
There is no doubt in my mind that the right wing political spending and influence of the Catholic Church in the US has been disastrous for the nation and that it does not show any signs of stopping.
Like you, I exert more and more of my efforts away from the blog and to the sources Diane posts, with the hope to influence them.
Currently, I’d like the narrative that Hillsdale is Christian to change. IMO, Hillsdale may be the first of its kind, a hybrid of right wing Catholic and protestant evangelical influence.
I disagree with Flerp’s characterization about you and Bob’s comments, as well.
Linda,
Thank you. The comments of flerp! and Bob speak for themselves. I used the term cool kids because so often the personal insults and insulting language they use is juvenile. It is an accepted truism, as flerp! expresses, that I am not worthy of commenting here. This blog is better without me.
I do believe I deserve some credit for the fact that Bob did not continue to reply to you in the rude manner in which he was so proud of himself that he not only wrote a snarky reply, but followed up his own reply with another snarky line about deSantis. I called that out, and suddenly he responds to you with some courtesy.
I am sure that is not a coincidence, just like I am sure Bob will deny that it is anything but a coincidence that his replies AFTER I called out his nastiness were more appropriate respectful disagreement.
Bob’s long repetitive attacks in which he mischaracterized why I was defending those who acknowledged the flaws in how TKAM taught about racism (because our own understanding of what “racism” really means has moved on since the 1960s) also speak for themselves. I have posted multiple time to explain that Bob’s constant reference to “white savior” is a red herring that substitutes for a nuanced discussion of the problems of the book and how Atticus is portrayed. It doesn’t matter how many times I try to elaborate and explain that my critique is about more than just Atticus as a “white savior” and I try to talk about the complexities in how people use that term and what it means, but Bob just attacks my writing style for being repetitive. Fine, guilty as charged. I am a failure as a writer, according to Bob. But I am not rude and dismissive and nasty and snarky like some people who justify their own rude, snarky and juvenile behavior by writing multiple posts with the same theme — that I deserve only contempt.
Linda, thank you for being brave enough to say that just because the “popular” kids here both posted that it is a given that I am not wanted here and my posts are simply unacceptable, YOU don’t think so. It’s not easy to disagree with the cool kids here.
I know my calling out Bob won’t stop him from continuing to insult me, but my hope is that maybe he will start replying to you without all the nasty snark. It certainly seems to have a made a difference today.
BOB [sighs deeply, palm slaps forehead]: Hopeless.
Everyone is in complete control of their own behavior.
Reputations are built over years and years.
NYC
I thought you might appreciate this quote attributed to Einstein, “Weak people get revenge, strong people forgive and intelligent people ignore.”
A bit of a digression- momentarily, I’ll react and say I hope that Bob’s claim today (that I agree with him about the stuff he wrote) won’t be believed. It’s a bit disconcerting to have someone demand something is true that isn’t. Bob, adamantly, believes something stormy happened between Catholic religionists and me. You can give me my measure and former commenter, Greg, can. But, I think I’ll pass on Bob’s. Give some thought to the same for yourself?
What Diane posts is interesting to me. I like to read your comments. Your arguments about not buying into GOP narratives are particularly strong and should be published for a wider audience.
The blog host’s opinion about me stung for a little bit. If you’ve been stung too, I would have wished otherwise for you.
I’m in my lane at the blog. I have and plan to jump over to your lane to read what you write. I’m sure others do as well. They and I are better for it.
I haven’t the slightest idea what any of this means:
“A bit of a digression- momentarily, I’ll react and say I hope that Bob’s claim today (that I agree with him about the stuff he wrote) won’t be believed. It’s a bit disconcerting to have someone demand something is true that isn’t. Bob, adamantly, believes something stormy happened between Catholic religionists and me. You can give me my measure and former commenter, Greg, can. But, I think I’ll pass on Bob’s. Give some thought to the same for yourself?”
If you mean that I have insisted that the Catholic Church did something bad to you, I have not done that. Never, not once, have I done that. I have simply wondered aloud on this blog whether that was the case because of the intensity and frequency, the obsessiveness, of your attacks on Catholics and Catholicism. Whenever one sees this kind of thing, one wonders about its etiology, and extreme antipathy is often born of particular personal experience. It’s natural enough to wonder about that. I suspect that lots of readers of this blog have wondered about the same thing. What’s her beef against Catholics, and where did that come from? It is possible, of course, that you simply decided for other reasons that Catholics are close to being the radix omnium malorum. I suppose that that is possible. Fine.
Note above, Linda. As you said, it’s gaslighting when instead of simply apologizing for the snark and rudeness, those folks just go on and on and on implying their rudeness is always justified.
If posting many long-winded repetitive posts, or earning a nasty reputation because one bashes schools for not being in person during covid somehow justifies it being open season to be uncivil, then I suggest our resident cool kids chorus (and always a chorus, lol) look in the mirror.
Please don’t reply once again, you guys. Just. Stop. Already. You can always launch your nasty snark at me the next time I bother to comment on this blog. Maybe you will get your wish and it will be a very long wait.
I posted here for Linda, and the tone of the replies changed. Thank you. We are done.
Linda,
I just read your last comment “I hope that Bob’s claim today (that I agree with him about the stuff he wrote) won’t be believed.”
I wanted to reassure you that in no way did I buy into Bob’s mischaracterization of your view, having read many of your comments over the years. Your concern isn’t the with the spiritual beliefs and worship practices of the Catholic faith and Satan and Demons and the rest. You are concerned about Leonard Leo and the enormously well-funded political movement that affects our democracy.
But it doesn’t surprise me, as Bob has similarly mischaracterized my comments about TKAM and other issues where we disagree, and then insults me when I try to explain more elaborately about why his characterization is not correct.
To add insult to injury, he accuses me of putting words in other people’s mouths. But apparently his mischaracterization of your posts and your personal beliefs is acceptable in the cool kid crowd.
NYC PSP and Linda,
I value your presence on the blog.
I don’t always I agree with you, but I don’t expect others to always agree with me. You are entitled to your views.
LOL, never change NYCPSP! You posted in this thread because you have been stewing about how fewer and fewer people are willing to put up with your shenanigans, and you saw an (weak) opportunity to insult Bob and me out of the blue.
That’s why you wrote: “They are far too cool and popular to bother to write a reasonable reply where they point out where they believe that you are making wrong conclusions or disagree with your facts.”
And “snark substitutes for actual thinking. It’s hypocritical for them to ask why so many Trump supporters act this way. It is because they can. Privilege.”
And “the extreme incivility and rudeness that the cool kids here use.”
When you are unable to get along with Bob Shepherd, who is pretty much the nicest guy I have ever encountered on the Internet, you should consider whether the problem might be you. This requires some self-awareness, though.
Also, Linda, you know I think you’re a bit monomaniacal, but I’ve always liked you in the 12 years or so I’ve interacted with you here. I hope that comes across!
“Can’t we all just get along?”
—Rodney King
Diane,
I hope you can see the difference between civil disagreement (both Linda and I are perfectly happy to defend our comments from criticism) and the snarky replies and nasty personal insults that Bob and flerp! seem to have decided that some people “deserve”.
Diane, please read flerp!’s disparaging post above. It’s unclear why he even inserted himself here, but he saw a chance to insult me and ran with it.
Diane, I am not here for “shenanigans” yet flerp! reduces my comments – which I post because I care about these issues — as just that.
Like Linda, I post because I am concerned about something. I spend a lot of time writing too-long posts because I’m not here to get applause for good snark. I post because I think something needs to be said. And I am happy to defend why I think it is important or try to address people’s issues.
I hope you aren’t going to “both sides” this issue. I don’t care if Bob and flerp! call me a “cool kid”. That isn’t what they do. They are nasty and demeaning.
But if it pleases flerp!, I am happy to apologize for calling it “cool kids” behavior. I should have simply called it juvenile, mean girl behavior that is unworthy of this blog.
And calling it out should not be just as bad as doing it. After I called it out, Bob stopped it.
Lol, you don’t get to show up in a comment thread and post several paragraphs about how horrid certain unnamed commenters and then expect nobody to comment on it. And then when they do comment—or as you would put it, when they “call you out” (I hate that cliched phrase) for it—, you go crying to the principal.
Really weak and weaselly stuff, albeit perfectly in character.
FLERP!,
I clearly touched a nerve when I didn’t let you get away with your “reputations are built over years” innuendo.
You were one of the nastiest posters of all when you all but accused many teachers of using covid as an excuse to stay home because they didn’t care enough about what that was doing to the kids. You all but accused schools of intentionally harming children by closing schools during covid, despite there being so many unknowns with health care systems overwhelmed. You posted nasty links from right wing twitter feeds of young, hapless teachers – tweets designed to cast those teachers in the worst possible light and make people hate them and that very likely endangered them – and you saw nothing wrong with that and attacked me personally for calling it out.
I see that I hit a nerve. It does surprise me that anyone believes you are a friend to public education. Are you? I always thought you were a defender of
Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy because you always jumped in to attack me personally whenever I posted anything critical about her. Then you would profess that you just don’t know enough about Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy to be able to say anything critical about her, but you did know enough to be able to attack her critics.
I clearly hit a nerve. But with “friends” like you, I don’t think public education is going to survive. At least, your “reputation” suggests that.
Whatever it was I supposedly “stopped,” I hope that I didn’t. ROFL.
And now it’s culminated in what you always wanted to write! You should be thanking me, not running to the principal’s office.
I write what I believe and sometimes that gets people angry. I won’t apologize for that. And if someone wants to challenge something I write, and they do it in a non-insulting way, I will always respond on the merits. I try to use humor to get along with people. I put a lot of myself personally into my comments—probably too much, considering that one commenter has vowed to track me down and assault me. I’ve written about very personal, private struggles I’ve gone through. I think people who’ve read my comments here over the past ten years have a pretty good sense of who I am, both politically and personally. This is who I am.
You, on the other hand, are a complete cipher. Nobody knows what neighborhood you live in, how many kids you have, what you studied in school, whether you’re married or single, or what your interests or hobbies or talents are. You’ve told zero anecdotes about things that have happened to you or things you have done. Your comments have no social function or value. They are purely political and strategic. You engage not to persuade, but to discredit. You have never made a joke or indicated you are capable of getting one. And your politics, although they line up with many of mine in the polling booth, are ultimately either repugnant or ridiculous. I recall you in total seriousness noting that you were terrified that Nikole Malliotakis, who was something like a 40 percentage point underdog on the eve of election, would defeat Bill De Blasio. You once argued, to justify the inclusion of trans women in women’s high school and college sports, that there is no evidence that men are more athletically competitive than women. You defended without hesitation a Hamline University’s decision to fire an adjunct professor for showing an image of Muhammad in an art history class. Based solely on your comments here, the only likable thing about you is that you’re not a right-wing zealot. But neither is my cat.
On the positive side, your m.o. invariably is to accuse a commenter of being something bad, and then haranguing that commenter nonstop in the hopes of driving him or her off the blog. That’s what you do well.
You want respect from me, you want to get along, try acting like an actual human being for a few months. Try making comments that aren’t accusatory in nature. For bonus points, make a frivolous, light-hearted comment now and then just for the fun of it. If at all possible, try writing something funny once a year maybe. Be real.
Why do you “hope” you didn’t, Bob? Is it because I referred to it as something that would be nicer for Linda than snark, and you wouldn’t want that?
You replied to Linda at 1:07pm and followed up 1:19pm because apparently what you said in 1:07 wasn’t enough of a dig, so it needed that extra 1:19 dig.
I made my first comment to Linda at 1:50pm because I thought those 2 replies were such a mean spirited response to Linda’s posting that specific information.
The tone of your replies changed after that. You misrepresented where her views were coming from (suggesting they were like yours), BUT you were engaging with her without gratuitous snark. And had that been your first reply, I would not have commented at all. Even though I disagreed with your POV. I am trying to stay away from you, as you have made your extreme dislike for me very clear. The feeling isn’t mutual, but it’s getting hard to retain my previous respect. No doubt you and flerp! can come up with some insulting comment about that.
Things Linda has said in the past led me to think that she shares my disdain for the central precepts of Catholic belief. I was looking for common ground. And my looking for that had precisely NOTHING to do with anything you had to say, NYC. My general point was that even though I personal do not agree with Catholics and detest a lot of stuff that the Catholic Church does, I do not spend every post I make, just about, lambasting Catholics and Catholicism.
If I was wrong that Linda finds these beliefs as silly as I do, if she, rather, in fact shares these beliefs with Catholics–if she believes in the Virgin Birth, Satan, hell, the Resurrection, and transubstantiation–then I apologize for misrepresenting her. But does she? I haven’t a clue now.
NYC, you and I started engaging because I have spent my lifetime working in curriculum development and I know To Kill a Mockingbird extremely well and am very familiar with what a central role it has played over the decades in teaching antiracism to millions of kids. I know the book and its associated pedagogy well enough to understand why the book is uniquely appropriate for this task. So, when you started calling for its removal from the curriculum, for its being replaced by other books, and justified this on such ridiculous grounds as Atticus being a “white savior,” I rose to the defense of the book and of the pedagogical practice of MILLIONS, literally millions, of teachers. In contrast, you went on and on and on about a book YOU HAD NOT EVEN READ. And then when it was clear that you were wrong, YOU MISREPRESENTED YOUR PREVIOUS STANCE and pretended that you had not called for people to stop teaching the book and replace it and had not said that this was because it was a racist book by a racist author that presents a white savior, ALL OF WHICH YOU HAD DONE. So, you changed your position, and then you denied that you had done so and engaged in insane amounts of equivocation simply because you would not admit that you were wrong. And I can’t believe that this is STILL GOING ON. Enough. I don’t give a good ____damn about what you think of me or of To Kill a Mockingbird or anything else. You pontificate about stuff you know nothing about.
I don’t like people on the left or the right calling for removing books from the curriculum, especially important books like TKAM. I would defend this against the Minivan Taliban as I defended it against your calls for its removal from the curriculum. And please do not falsely claim, yet again, that that is not precisely what you did.
FLERP!,
I don’t even understand half the references you are making. I usually see both sides of an issue and I tend to get repulsed by comments you seem to make where you attack the powerless. Things are complicated. You use snark instead of discussing the complexities.
But I rest my case. You were a NYC public school parent, too. You were just some random name on a blog until I noticed that you were frequently trying to cut me down if I ever criticized Eva Moskowitz. I assumed you had some (however far away) connection to her or to the charter school administration or someone in it via your work or personal life. Later I changed my mind – I figured that your attacks on me whenever I criticized charters and especially Success Academy were because you just supported some charter schools and you saw me as some critic. Frankly, I have no idea why you were so determined NOT to say anything negative about Eva Moskowitz or Success Academy — I just thought it was weird. The way I think it is weird that dienne77 won’t say anything negative about Putin. Your reasons will remain a mystery.
For all your claims to be open, your opinions about the most obvious public school issues remain a state secret.
FLERP and NYC PSP,
Please stop. No one cares about your interactions. The world is in flames. Drop it.
Well said and too true. Sorry I lost my control.
Bob,
We have a difference of opinion on TKAM.
You keep bringing it up. Ever since then, you have despised me for not agreeing with you.
For the 100th time, you keep invoking “white savior”, but that term came up because YOU linked to an article, and I did you the courtesy of reading it! And I quoted from someone in the article who also had criticisms of TKAM. I don’t believe my views have changed; I kept trying to clarify and looking back, I should have just said yes, you are right Bob, my views are now different in this new post. What does it matter? Why can’t I believe that TKAM has many instances of implicit racism because the author’s 1960s view and the way the characters are written and presented is a view that some people can recognize as implicitly racist in 2022 or 2024. It’s a white person’s view of racism in 1950 or 1960, not the more complex view of racism that I understand today.
I doubt any of us were free of implicit bias back then, or even 20 years ago – I know I wasn’t. So I understand why some people might be critical. I think much of their criticisms are valid. But it is a lot more complicated than saying Atticus isn’t presented as a white savior because he couldn’t save Tom. That is not even close to what I am saying. You got it wrong, just like you got Linda’s views wrong.
And I don’t want to talk about TKAM ever again with you. YOU invoked it here, not me. Can we just agree to disagree?
No. That term came up because you wrote that the book was about a white savior.
And then there was the whole other interaction before that where you were insisting that all white people were racist because they were white. Another utterly indefensible position. Want to pretend you never took that position as well, or sticking with it?
Once again, here is what TKAM has proven in the crucible of actual classroom experience, hundreds of thousands of times over, to be a uniquely valuable text for teaching antiracism:
The book contains two parallel stories–that of the horror of the town and the strong arm of the law directed against Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape and that of the fear on the part of children and other townspeople of Boo Radley, a recluse believed by the town to be mentally challenged. The main plot, dealing with the ultimately failed defense of Tom and the subplot, dealing with fear of Boo Radley on the part of a bunch of children, including the first-person narrator and protagonist, Scout, have this in common: both are about how stereotyping works, about how it originates in FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN OTHER and is amplified by storytelling having no connection to fact.
Now, here is THE GENIUS OF THE NOVEL: in the course of it, the central character, Scout, becomes more and more fearful of Boo (he of the comically fraught symbolic name), and importantly, SO DOES THE YOUNG ADOLESCENT READER. In other words, THE READER FALLS WITH SCOUT into the trap of stereotyping based on fear.
And then Scout AND THE READER learn that this was a terrible mistake, that Boo is one of the good guys. And the same thing that was true of the fear of Boo is also true of the fear of Tom. It was completely based in ignorance.
So, the book HAS TO BE FROM THE POV OF THE WHITE PROTAGONIST because it demonstrates, FROM THE INSIDE, how insidious and bad stereotyping of THE OTHER is. The GENIUS of the book is that the reader falls with the main character AND THEN LEARNS WHAT AN AWFUL MISTAKE THAT WAS. So, in effect, THE READER LEARNS BY VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE.
And for this reason, it works in the classroom and has worked literally millions and millions of times over to create nonracists.
And one reason it is so effective at this, in addition to its structure, which uses reader identification with the protagonist to teach its central lesson, is that it is at a very low reading level (Flesh-Kincaid 4.6, Lexile 800-899) but is extremely gripping, so almost every child can read it and get it.
Btw, this technique of having the reader fall with a character was also employed by Milton in Paradise Lost, as Stanley Fish argued in his book Surprised by Sin.
It is because this book is gripping to kids and works like no other to teach antiracism and is also great for teaching all kinds of fiction techniques that it is indispensable in our curricula and should not be removed on the basis of critiques leveled by clueless people who haven’t any idea what they are talking about.
Actual classroom experience matters. This is why people need to listen to actual teachers and librarians instead of to random morons who show up at school board meetings.
Bob,
I was like you for a long time. I got woke.
Most of us have implicit biases and race is one of them. In fact, when I served jury duty this year, we watched a video about them.
I am suspicious of white people who claim they could never ever ever have any implicit biases related to race. We all do. It’s not about becoming the perfect non-racist or anti-racist person. It is about thinking about how your biases might affect the way you perceive things (even literature), which helps you become less biased. I am not describing it well, but I find that people who dismiss all anti-racist ideas as “all white people are racist” are not interested in discussing it anyway. You have to agree that they aren’t racist at all and nothing they believe is at all influenced by any biases they have because that would simply be impossible. Since they aren’t racist.
“Bob,
I was like you for a long time.”
Oh, you mean that you devoted decades of your life to fighting racism by developing multicultural instructional materials, researching African-American history and culture and literature and preparing historical anthologies for students of African-American literature, music, and art? You mean that you have spent a large portion of your life fighting racism because this really, really matters to you?
Glad to hear it.
Did it ever occur to you, NYC, that it was because of a small handful of people like me that conservatives are wetting their Depends about all the multicultural literature in school libraries and textbooks? LOL. And how many anthologies of African-American literature, music, and art have you conceived of, fought to get produced, researched and edited and designed and written? I’ve produced four of them. I have put my shoulder to this wheel harder than you could ever imagine over most of a lifetime.
Literally millions of kids have heard of or read Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Nat Turner, William Wells Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois, Arthur Schomburg, Gwendolyn Bennet, Helene Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Johnson, Robert Hayden, Amiri Baraka, Derek Walcott, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Thelonius Monk, Edmonia Lewis, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Romare Bearden, Kathryn Dunham, and hundreds of other great black American artists and thinkers because of work that I have done, real labor, over years, to ensure that this would happen.
Bob,
Given that TKAM has been taught for so many decades, and given that Republicans seem to think TKAM is a very fine book (except for language), isn’t it surprising that the anti-racist teaching all those older Republicans got from TKAM didn’t lead them away from the Republican Party?
In some places it was taught to this end. In some it wasn’t. All depends on whether the teachers in those places themselves were racists. Deep South, much of the Midwest. No. That’s your argument, NYC? ROFL. SOOOOOO LAME. We have seen over the decades from the 1950s on, a vast liberalization of views about race in America. I think that a LOT of this had to do with the fact that in hundreds of thousands of classrooms, kids got a healthy dose of antiracism in their unit on TKAM. But please, inform those of us who actually have work with the curriculum about this book THAT YOU HAVEN’T EVEN READ.
Bob, to clarify,
You have done many admirable things to fight racism. You have done many admirable thing as a teacher. I was never anything like you in terms of the very good work you have dedicated your whole life to. On a scale of 1-10 you are a 10 and I am a 1. I am sorry that my vague writing left the impression that I came close to being the good person you are in your life.
I meant I was like you in that I dismissed anyone who suggested that some belief or attitude I had could ever be influenced by unconscious biases about race. If that’s not what you are doing, then my apologies because I thought is what you meant when you accused me of thinking all white people are racist.
Racism in 2024 is not the same as racism in 1960. Nor is it the same as racism in the 1850s. Why can’t we agree to disagree about whether a book that was the ideal anti-racist book in the past is still the ideal anti-racist book 60+ years later? Why is it so awful that some people might believe it is no longer as relevant? And that the so-called “anti-racist” message may not be as perfectly anti-racist as it appears? People should be able to disagree.
The mechanism that causes racism in 2024 is the same that caused it in CE 24: Fear of the unknown other. Universals, NYC. This is one reason why literature is important. Because of universal messages that apply to people across the ages.
If you don’t grok why it is so awful for people who know nothing of curricula to be telling teachers what they need to do, and especially to be telling them on the basis of ZERO KNOWLEDGE that they should throw out materials that have been tried and proven true in the crucible of experience in literally hundreds of thousands of classrooms, I cannot explain this to you.
Diamond is hard.
Why do you insist on diamond being hard? It’s 2024. Maybe there are other, harder materials.
There are other, harder materials, but they aren’t impractical. Diamonds are hard.
How do you know they are impractical?
This is a pointless conversation. If you want to cut something hard, use a diamond cutter. If you want to teach antiracism, a tried and true, great resource for doing that is To Kill a Mockingbird. Many hundreds of thousands of teachers have used it successfully for this purpose with millions of kids. Literally hundreds of thousands. Literally millions.
Practical classroom experience matters. It matters a lot.
But please tell us teachers how wrong we are and organize your book banning group to come to the next school board meeting to protest TKAM.
cx: but they aren’t practical.
Bob,
“If you want to teach antiracism, a tried and true, great resource for doing that is To Kill a Mockingbird. Many hundreds of thousands of teachers have used it successfully for this purpose with millions of kids. Literally hundreds of thousands. Literally millions.”
Got it. TKAM is the perfect antiracist novel. It may not be debated, period. Even Trump supporting Republicans can get behind that one!
That might well be the most bizarre statement from among the hundreds of bizarre statements you have made on this subject. You really should stop commenting about topics you know nothing about. That would save others a lot of time and trouble. However, if someone reads these posts and learns something about how the pedagogy for TKAM works, that would make it somewhat worthwhile.
There is a general principle involved here that is extremely important and that goes to the heart of why Education Deform hasn’t worked:
Over time, teachers discover materials (curricula) and techniques (pedagogy) that work, and these become a sort of default canon. Then along come a couple complete idiots like Bill Gates and David Coleman, and they think they know better than generation after generation of English teachers who have found and refined in the actual crucible of classroom experience what works.
So, for example, the breathtakingly vain David Coleman decided that teachers needed to start teaching “substantive literary works,” including “foundational documents of American history and Shakespeare” in complete ignorance of the fact that every English classroom in America, just about, was using at least one big, hardbound literature anthology full of substantive literary works–what people loosely refer to as “classic” works–works that were part of the canon and found by generations of teachers to work at particular grade levels. So, every 9th-grade literature anthology contained Romeo and Juliet. Every 10th-grade one contained Julius Caesar. And so on. But Coleman was so CLUELESS that he did not even know this. AND he was so certain that he knew what had to be done that HE DIDN’T BOTHER TO GO LOOK, just as a certain commenter here is certain that there are all kinds of better books to teach about racism than TKAM DESPITE THE EXPERIENCES OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ENGLISH TEACHERS.
And the practical result in the classroom of Coleman’s hubris was that teachers were told to forget about coherent instruction in stuff like literature and to concentrate instead on test prep exercises modeled on the state tests and based on the puerile Gates/Coleman standards bullet list. And there was, as a result of those same standards and tests, a great devolution of literature textbooks. My advice to teachers: throw out the current lit texts and find a program from the 1980s. Far, far more substantive and coherent.
What has proven to work in the classroom matters. It matters a lot.
I’m not David Coleman.
I’m not an experienced teacher who uses terms like “proven to work”.
I’m just an ignorant parent whose hackles rise when I hear David Coleman or an experienced teacher lecturing me about how some piece of literature or some new approach to learning math has “proven to work” in the past so it must be never be criticized or changed.
I don’t get why TKAM’s exalted place as the ideal antiracist novel may never be criticized or even discussed. Racism today doesn’t look like racism when the book was written. It’s why nothing about the book scares Republicans. In the opinion of one ignorant parent.
It’s why nothing about the book scares Republicans.
Where did you get this weird idea? This is one of the most banned books. LOL.
And you use this extremist, hyperbolic language “the perfect book”
There is no such thing as a perfect book, and I never made such a claim. I did say that this book is uniquely appropriate for teaching antiracism because of its structure, because of its readability, and because of its universal message about how racism works that transcends time. You keep misrepresenting what I say. You are wasting my valuable time. Please stop commenting about matters that you know nothing whatsoever about. You might as well be trying to comment about quantum electrodynamics. You haven’t a clue what you are talking about. Republicans love the book. I’m claiming it is perfect. These are moronic statements. I’m sorry. Please STOP
OK. I have tried to engage. It’s clearly an utter waste of time. I will not respond to anything else that you say about anything. I’m done. Please do not address me again on any matter whatsoever. Thank you.
Bob, as I pointed out before, I have tried to stay away from engaging with you. You are the one who brought up the subject of TKAM and you did the same thing to me that you did to Linda — you misrepresented what I said.
I have no idea if we even agree that taking a book out of the required reading list is not the same as “banning” it.
But the book is “banned” (in your words) because of language and more adult references like rape. To me, that’s very different than Republicans viewing the depiction of race relations in TKAM in a negative way. I am not an expert. My opinion is just that. But I have read some other people’s view of the book, and it astonishes me that discussion of that is verboten. It feels to me that you tell me what you know what my criticism is, tell me the criticism is totally invalid, tell me that I am an ignorant person who doesn’t understand what teachers know, and then tell me to shut up. I can see that discussion of why some thoughtful people have started to re-think TKAM as an ideal anti-racist novel for THIS time isn’t ever going to happen here.
By the way, the evidence is right here for everyone to see. I responded to Linda after you wrote not one, but two gratuitously derisive posts in a row to respond to her.
And I made a point of starting a new thread and not replying to you. But still, you wrote not one, not two, but three replies to ME. You didn’t even try to defend the nasty tone you took with Linda. Nor did you have the grace to apologize to Linda for it. You simply attacked me and brought up TKAM. Then your friend flerp! made it 4 replies to me.
You do have some chutzpah forbidding me to reply in my own thread.
I have not engaged with you for quite a while, but after reading your two in a row gratuitously snarky replies to Linda, I did comment so Linda knew she had some support here. If you didn’t like it, you shouldn’t have replied to her as you did.
Be kind. I wrote quite a few nice things about you here, even when we disagreed. I have no interest in engaging with you, but if I want to support Linda, I will. This is a thread I started in response to Linda, not you. And I started it to support her because your first (and only) 2 replies to Linda at that time were gratuitously discourteous. It’s ironic to have you invoke censorship and “banning” when you are banning me from my own thread.
NYC PSP,
Please consider this subject closed. Finished. No more.
Academies for the intolerant paid for by public dollars is more welfare for the well-to-do. Nobody is saving anyone from failing schools through this misuse of public funds. This is how the right wing can build their propaganda academies and transfer funds from the working class to do it while they drain funds from the public schools that most students attend. Right wing extremists are parasites that use charters and vouchers to defund public education while they build private propaganda academies with the money.
That is precisely what they are doing. They think (incorrectly) that the reason why they are losing young people is because of indoctrination by liberal schoolteachers. That’s absurd, ofc. They are losing young people because of general changes in the culture as a whole, and if they paid any attention and had any critical thinking skills, that would be clear to them.
Perhaps the best approach to charter schools would be like the method Boston used to tamp down porn back in the day: They placed it in one place so that it would be easily recognizable and rare. I don’t know how that would work for charter schools, but it is worth considering.
Interestingly, Emerson College (the writing school) has bought up a lot of the old Combat Zone. Lots of stories for folks to write about there, if they can get the ghosts of the place to stand still for interviews.
It’s complicated with charter schools. Because they’re completely free to pick and choose their students despite the endless loud lies proclaiming otherwise, they DO at times have higher achievement metrics. And the parents and sometimes teachers in those schools often like them specifically because of the picked-and-chosen student population. They can look really great from the outside. Very often, the parents and teachers don’t know about the endless loud lies and just believe that’s the way charter schools openly operate.
I started doing research on KIPP schools in the mid-‘00s after a parent posted proudly on our local schools listserve that his daughter had “tested into” KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy. When I asked about testing into a school that supposedly admits by impartial lottery (hahaha a big joke in the case of KIPP schools), the response was radio silence, as apparently that particular parent was either told to STFU or grasped the situation.
After that, I applied to that same KIPP school for my then-seventh-grader, as a test. KIPP did indeed contact us to schedule her application test. You get the picture. Of course, KIPP schools are a miracle run by saints and would never lie. 🙄
he response was radio silence
HAAAA! YUP!!!
Throw a stick at a strip mall in Tampa and there is a good chance you will hit a “charter school.” There are tons of these in extremely low-rent districts. It would be interesting to do a study of these and see what they are offering in the way of curricula (I bet that it is online stuff done on terminals). It would also be fascinating to learn who owns them and what these folks earn from them. I wonder if they serve the same purpose as is the primary purpose of virtual schools here–credit recovery to enable graduation. Here’s the rub: if they are charter schools, then the kids still have to pass the state high-stakes tests. Private schools, as opposed to charters, can basically serve as diploma mills because kids can do their credit recovery and are exempt from the state tests.
Wyoming has a lot of room for MAGA RINOs to move so they’ll be with others that think like them, all in one state. Don’t tell them to move to Russia or North Korea. Just recommend to all MAGA RINOs to move to Wyoming.
Traitor Trump won Wyoming with 69.9% of the vote (193,559 votes). I think that’s the traitor’s highest ratio win among the red states that voted for IT.
When I got to the end of the last sentence, I started to write “him” and stopped. For a moment, I was at a loss. For some reason calling Traitor Trump “him” was admitting he was human, an insult to everyone not a MAGA RINO.
So, I went with the word “IT”. Are malignant narcissists human or an ET species of some kind that has infiltrated our species and planet?
At the same time, I’m feeling compassion for the 73,491 Wyoming citizens who voted for Biden. How can they stand it living in a MAGA paradise of hate?
Still, with a total population of less than 600,000, there is a lot of room in Wyoming. Maybe most rational thinking Biden voters don’t live all that close to MAGARINOs, who live to hate.
…”With the freedom to choose its students and to oust the ones who are problematic” That says it all. Parents everywhere simply want to keep THEIR kids away from problematic (undisciplined, disruptive, violent, etc.) students. You know, just the way you did.
So you have an issue with parents “destroying” your public schools but when they decide to just open their own, you have an issue with that too??? Is there anything a mom can do that you are ok with, other than her just letting pedophiles have their way with her children?
Ooooh are you one of those wild and wacky Moms 4 Liberty? You all are way too licentious for us old fogeys with your three-way orgies! I guess it all comes from the nonstop obsession with sex.
It’s so bizarre. These backward prudes from the hinterlands and their imaginary pedophilias. These are sick people. The fact is that they cannot deal with the fact that most people in America today do not share their bigotry about LGBTQX people and know that almost all pedophiles are straight folks. Their confusions on these matters are legion. And yes, they are absolutely obsessed with sex.
Somehow we all grew up just fine even though, horror of horrors, copies of Madam Bovary were in the library, stocked there by groomers (ROFL. These charges are just idiotic. I don’t think these people have ever been inside a school. Perhaps the closest they came was Pappy in the backwoods somewhere teaching them to count on their fingers.)
Ang,
I assume you are okay with any group of people opening schools that please them: Satanists, drug-dealers, Snake-worshippers, any whacko political cult can open its own school? Why should they get public money?
Looking at the current state of govt run education systems in SC and the garbage that leftists are pushing calling it education someone needs to do something different. The liberal education system is pushing the alphabet agenda, trying to coddle kids who need serious mental health counseling and doing everything except giving kids a basic education. The 3 Rs. This basic education is what was given to those who put men on the moon, developed computer technology and have built modern marvels. The failure is in what is being pushed and those pushing it…..
What on earth is the “alphabet agenda.”
Also, please share a few examples of “garbage leftists are pushing calling it education.” From actual classrooms. And if you cannot do this, admit that you are just speaking out of your ass.
Jim,
Please share your knowledge of the nation’s classrooms. What is happening in the public schools of SC that you call “garbage”?
In SC…. when parents try and read softcore porn books, from a school library, at a school board meeting and those duly elected members don’t want to hear it, silence the parents and take away their first amendment right to address grievances to govt, we have a problem. And I am aware it has happened in Charleston and Lexington counties. Those books serve no purpose in a school library. When you have a couple “educators” pushing their communist/socialist beliefs in a classroom we have a problem. Also in Berkley county. Just teach. That is all parents are asking. But of course I really do not expect liberals such as yourselves to see it that way. Leave your agendas, your political ideologies at home.
Jim,
I never knew that South Carolina was such a left wing state, or that there are so many Communists among the teaching staff. Evidently, they are no good at indoctrination since SC keeps sending radical rightwingers to DC and the governor’s office.
But I grant you that some of your elected officials are sexually promiscuous, even deviant, though I doubt that they learned that in your public schools. Didn’t you have a governor who went to South America with his mistress? He didn’t learn to behave that way in school or the library. Don’t parents teach values?
Good rebuttal. Points made. Point you don’t get. It is up to parents to teach their kids morality or lack thereof, Not you, the failing edu system or loony leftwing nuts like you have on your blog. Teaching them the 3Rs is fail safe. They will learn a good basic education. Good enough for those capable of higher ed to move on to or those wishing to pursue a trade to do so. Any thing else just doesn’t belong there.
Jim,
I assume that you don’t want the schools to teach self-discipline, honesty, respect for others, the importance of doing your work on time, and other such values. Just the 3Rs. No history, science, geography. SC should lead the way—maybe it already is.
Like talking to a sack of rocks. Are you a parent? Have you raised kids? Of course history, science,geography, civics. Don’t be assassin. Yet again, morality, self control, honesty respect are all parental responsibilities. not yours, not educations or public schools. You can help reinforce but again not your job. Keep up the good work. You guys are turning out a fine crop of educated youth…..later
Got it. You don’t want teachers to teach about the values of honesty, hard work, respect for others, etc because that’s the parents’ job, not the school’s.
When I went to the Houston public schools, we got two sets of grades. On one side of the report card were academic grades. On the other were grades for behavior, which encompass all the values I cited. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I assure you my teachers were not Communists or Socialists.
As a parent and grandparent, I expect teachers to work with parents to reinforce good character.
If that’s not the case in SC, that explains a lot about your state.
My concern here is with the SC neoliberal Dems who dominate this party in SC becuase they still support things like the Empower Charter School Grifters to Grift Act. They still think Cory Booker and Michael Bennett have the right ideas for public education. They still put more weight into what a billionaire debt collector says over experienced educators. As Jennifer Berkshire says, these Neoliberal Dems built this airport and now MFL are landing their planes–one after the other. In Charleston, these same neoliberals and their TFA trained allies are lining up to save the day. How can they save us from the mess they created? I hope folks are paying attention an connecting the dots. See more here: https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2023/10/29/tell-the-whole-story-about-the-broken-school-board/
A wide-ranging discussion here with no mention of the fact that Mt. Pleasant is nowhere near the Ashley River.
Think of it like Van Halen demanding a bowl of green M&M’s at every venue. If they aren’t getting the little things right, how can we trust them with the big things?