When an education story is featured by a major media outlet like CNN, you can bet it’s captured mainstream attention.
Many educators have worried about the pernicious agenda of “Moms for Liberty,” which arrived on the scene in 2021 with a sizable war chest.
What is that agenda? Defaming public schools and their teachers. Accusing them of being “woke “ and indoctrinating students to accept left wing ideas about race and gender. Banning books they don’t like. Talking about “parental rights,” but only for straight white parents who share their values.
M4L got started in Florida, as do many wacky and bigoted rightwing campaigns, but it has been shamed recently by the sex scandal involving one of its co-founders, Brigitte Ziegler. The two other co-founders dropped her name from their website, but the stain persists.
CNN reports that this rightwing group is encountering stiff opposition from parents who don’t share their agenda and who don’t approve of book banning.
The story begins:
Viera, FloridaCNN —
In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” – should be banned from schools.
A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her.
Nearly 20 speakers voiced opposition to removing the novels from school libraries. One compared the book-banning effort to Nazi Germany. Another accused Moms for Liberty of waging war on teachers. No one spoke in favor of the ban. About three hours into the meeting, the board voted quickly to keep the two books on the shelves of high schools.
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“Why are we banning books?” asked Mindy McKenzie, a mom and nurse who is a member of Stop Moms for Liberty, which was formed to counter what it calls a far-right extremist group “pushing for book banning and destroying public education.”
“Why are we letting Moms for Liberty infiltrate our school system?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For anyone who ever read the ICE-UFT blog (I haven’t read it in many years but I used to read it occasionally), James Eterno died.
https://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/in-loving-memory-of-james-eterno.html?m=1
FLERP, thank you for letting us know. Or me. I never met James but I remember that he was a brave and forthright teacher who spoke out against the abuses of mayoral control.
Here is an example of why groups like Moms For Liberty exist. Does Diane Ravitch support this type of blatant indoctrination? My guess is Yes.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/woke-kindergarten-glassbrook-hayward-18635504.php
I don’t support any kind of indoctrination. That’s why I oppose Moms for Liberty. They censor anyone who disagrees with them.Thats ok on a personal blog but not in the public square. They are all in favor of religious indoctrination. They think themselves morally superior to anyone who disagrees with them. My prediction: in the near future, they will be gone.
CA doesn’t “test” kindergarten students. They have assessments for placement and growth but there is no state test for Kinder Kids. And there shouldn’t be! This is ridiculous.
This article says kindergarten scores fell. Kids in K typically have not yet learned to read. This is nonsense.
Any school with large numbers of ELLs will have low test scores. If we were to be tested in a language we didn’t know, our scores would likewise be low. The good news is that with appropriate instruction and outreach to families these young people will improve their skills and scores. There is nothing “woke” about poverty or not knowing the language of access. It takes time and effort to overcome these obstacles.
Moms For Liberty exists as another front in the drive to privatize public education for profit, period. Taking their orders from anti-CRTer Christopher Rufo, himself holding dubious credentials in addition to his rabid anti-Americanism, this drive to dollarize every aspect of life is cloaked in the oft-thrown around “values” which, as demonstrated by the Zieglers, have absolutely nothing to do with it at all. It’s about doing whatever possible to attain power–even destroying the lives of desperate and confused children who are struggling with their identity. I’m so glad the SPLC has declared them a hate group, they earn every bit of it.
Agree that it is about power. An important associated text is theocracy. The founder of the 1776 PAC is Ryan Girdusky. His interview with Pat Buchanan is posted on-line.
M4L are useful idiots (some well paid) to keep the nation right wing religious. Nations where religion is prominent have unequal genders i.e. women in 2nd class citizenship. It explains the axis of anti-abortion and free rein capitalist interests. Wealthy men like Koch and religious sects (USCCB, Southern Baptist Conference, etc.) aligned as Jefferson warned.
The SPLC calls every person and group who isn’t left-wing a hater/hate group. Informed people know that the SPLC is a corrupt fundraising organization.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/deis-attack-dog
Jason: HAAAAA!!!! ROFL. Tell us another one!!!! Just as goofy.
Yeah, City Journal.
No thanks.
City Journal is published by the rightwing Manhattan Institute. It is not an authoritative source.
by the EXTREMELY Reichwing Manhattan Institute
It’s hardly unbiased.
The City Journal?!?! Why don’t we just talk directly to the master con artist himself, Chris Rufo.
The Ku Klux Karens, aka The Minivan Taliban, are a bunch of superstitious and breathtakingly provincial and backward kooks who have put a lot of schools through the ringer and caused serious disruption, as well as decimation of classroom and school and municipal libraries. These Podunk Princesses think that the things they don’t like are due to indoctrination in school. They are too stupid to recognize that school has almost nothing to do with it. We are witnessing widespread general cultural change that they don’t like. Too bad, so sad. The Moms for Liberty to Interfere with Others’ Liberties are being left behind–way, way, way behind by a culture that they cannot fathom or understand. Hello 21st century. Goodbye, Moron Moms.
It’s so ironic that people who want to outlaw anything they don’t like call themselves supporters of liberty. My liberty to take away your liberty. ROFL. Another example from today: DeSantis wants to outlaw Lab Grown meat, which has been approved by the FDA and declared safe. Why? I guess that he wants to insist that all meat consumed involves cruelty to animals, which he supports because he is a fan of cruelty in general. Bizarre.
But there you are, another fresh helping of Liberty from the wacko Reichwing.
I went to the link Jill posted. I got no further than the headline. Conservatives telegraph what they are about to say with specific buzz words. “Woke” in the headline tells me all the article has to say. Like someone who uses “libs” or similar loaded phrases, the authors of these pieces always teach into a bag of half-truths, urban myth, and outright lies to discredit whatever they desire. I don’t read or listen to such offal.
These people are perpetually pissed off. They always want to go backward.
Which you can’t do.
It’s the eternal conservative fantasy – time travel to the past. When things actually sucked.
Exactly, groups like Mom’s for Our Liberty to Take Away Yours are all about getting Back to the Future–I mean way, way, way, way, way backward.
Backward people do that.
I was in a production of Macbeth in college. We were in rehearsal one day, and we were doing a scene we had worked on the day before. Afterward, the director (a theatre professor and a very wise man) asked me what I was trying to accomplish. A bit nonplussed, I said I was trying to do the scene as I had the day before, because I though it had gone well then.
The director said “You can’t do that. You can’t go back. That moment is gone, done. You should only move forward.”
This was one of the wisest lessons I’ve ever learned. Time, life, us – we have to move forward. We don’t grow backward. We grow forward. Otherwise we never learn and we never advance. As each moment passes, it’s done, time to keep living by moving forward. We’ll only be disappointed if we don’t realize that.
He was a very wise man.
Beautifully said, JSR! And I bet that that theatre experience served you very well in the rest of your life!
Earth to Roy,
That article is in the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the most partisan left-wing newspapers in America. How do you not know that fact? I get it: you only read headlines, not daring to expose yourself to anything you don’t already agree with.
How many people use this curriculum?
Well, there are about 99,000 public schools in the United States. I suspect that this curriculum is used in three of them.
Conservatives always do this. Two twenty-year-old idiots in Portland who like to dress up like Neo from the Matrix and break stuff become this mass Antifa movement. One bullet point on One PowerPoint slide at One teacher training session at One school that reads “Critical Race Theory” becomes a mass movement to indoctrinate kids in CRT.
Even fifth graders understand the fallacy of overgeneralization. But Trumpanzees don’t care about reasoning. They are all about the propaganda value. And so they blow mole hills into whole mountain ranges that they can rage across. ROFL.
Fair warning: I’m stealing “Trumpanzee”.
I wish that that were original with me. But I stole it from some wag here.
However, I have over the years created a great many terms for referring to
Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than Does the Sun, he of the troll-doll yellow hair and the Cuckoo Coup, the Man with No Plan and the Tan in the Can, IQ45, Trumpty Dumpty, Teflon Don: the Sequel, Vlad’s Agent Orange, Moscow’s Agent Governing America (MAGA), Jabba the Trump, Don Cheeto “Little Fingers” Trumpbalone, the Posterboy for Malignant Pathological Narcissism, Dog-Whistle Don, Bigly Little Man, the Bloated Bloviator, Childman in the Promised Land, etc. A commenter named Greg B wisely hit on referring to him simply as The Idiot. I like that. Amusingly, people know just from that to whom one is referring. He’s that much of a buffoon.
I have been pleased to see many of my coinages gain wide usage. But many of these are probably examples of convergent evolution, are obvious enough to have been hit upon independently. But certainly in our time, the memosphere operates quickly to spread these things.
But each of these falls short. O, for a Muse of Fire, that would be equal to the task of describing this devil! My mother, when texting about him, has hit upon an elegant solution to this vexing problem. She just uses a pile of doo emoji in place of the name.
And then there’s this:
That’s because they have no compunction about lying their asses off. That’s because Trump has lied his ass off his whole life.
It’s a feature, not a bug, with these guys.
The provider in this case uses the term, Roy. Conservatives scour the entire landscape and find some small, fringe thing and use it to paint progressives IN GENERAL. I don’t see anything particular egregious here, but remember how they found ONE powerpoint in ONE presentation at ONE teacher training session that mentioned CRT and used this ad nauseam to pretend that K-12 schools across America were teaching CRT curricula?
Totally bogus bullshit.
Bob– I believe I passed “IQ45” to the blog. Please add this one I just came across: “Covfefe-19.”
Ah, thank you, Ginny!
cx: Moscow’s Asset Governing America (MAGA)
M4L – women manipulated by men and, too stupid to know it? M4L targets the public schools where gender equality is expected (and, fought for). M4L targets the profession that lifted the most women into financial independence.
M4L Bridget Ziegler – I’m guessing her husband wants her to keep the school board job so that they have income. She faces the public ridicule while, he enjoys high fives from men who may want women humiliated and who may admire him for the outcome he got- rape charges dismissed? The public would have been kept in the dark about the Ziegler’s hypocrisy, except for his actions.
MTG and Lauren Boebart, spectacles for laughter at their incompetence and poor judgement -same playbook.
Boebert’s carpetbagging now on the eastern plains. She may not be back in Congress.
Jill: I explained to you that I quit at the headline. I explained why. You surely know that time is of the essence. I do not have time to read reconstituted arguments, and if certain words tip me off as to the bias of an article, I am on my way. Sorry if this makes you think I am beneath your standards.
Why indeed?
When your credit ratings are based on
hubris, rather than RESULTS,
the book banning bubble, continues
to lend undue prominence to signaling,
compared to meaningful change.
What books ended not-sees?
What books ended racism?
What books ended rule by money?
What books ended prejudice?
Ban shredded cheese, to
make ‘merica grate again…
That’s not how it works. Which I suspect you well know.
Not sure what you are saying. Are you claiming that books don’t change anything? Think Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Civil War. Think Karl Marx and Kapital. Think the Bible and all of Western History since the fourth century. Think the Quran and the Middle East. And so on.
Bob,
If it matters, I have never understood anything No Brick posted here.
I think I understand most of this gnomic stuff. In general, her schtick is that people make a lot of noise that doesn’t change anything. She particularly castigates people like me who satirize. Trumpanzees and others, pointing out that satirizing folks is not way to win them over. But it is not my purpose to win them over. Social sanction, both positive AND negative, is a powerful force for social change.
If I may be bold enough to interpret: Trump’s credit rating is based on reputation, so he depends on stirring up crap to get power. Books that end thoughtless prejudice are generally the target.
How did I do?
Echoes of M4L
South Dakota financially settled this week with an LGBTQ firm.
Kristi Noem, the well known jerk, “family values”, married, GOP Governor of South Dakota (alleged affair with Lewandowski) may have been behind the cancellation of the contract that required the recent legal redress. (Dakota Free Press, 12-20-2022).
An article from Hechinger report and in Vanity Fair. How to fight back against people trying to take over schools like Moms for Liberty.
https://hechingerreport.org/one-school-districts-playbook-for-undoing-far-right-education-policies/?utm_source=The+Hechinger+Report&utm_campaign=3e45198fb9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_06_04_45&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3e45198fb9-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Pennridge school district in Pennsylvania. Very interesting.
Thanks for the link. Ms. Joyce’s reporting is superb. IMO, one significant point that requires clarification is the labeling of Hillsdale as Christian. IMO, it may be the first of its kind, a hybrid of right wing Christian and Catholic influence.
Catholics ARE Christians, Linda. The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church are both Christian Churches. For millennia, they were pretty much THE ONLY Christian churches. I don’t know why you insist on pretending that Catholic churches are not Christian. They worship Christ, for Christ’s sake.
Is trying to distinguish between Catholics and Christians another bizarre attempt at othering Catholicism? Inquiring minds want to know.
Catholic is a subset of Christian.
This is the first I’ve ever heard about Hillsdale being “Catholic”.
Hillsdale is a nondenominational Christian college. It’s not a Catholic school. About a quarter of its student body is Catholic. It is 60 percent Protestant.
I’m surprised there are any Catholics at all.
cx: for a little over a millennium
Notre Dame Christian University
Villa Nova Christian University
Gonzaga Christian University
University of the Incarnate- Christian
Marquette Christian University.
Notre Dame, Villa Nova, Gonzaga, The University of the Incarnate, and Marquette (and many others, like Boston College) are private, Catholic universities. As such, they are indeed Christian, but they are referred to as Catholic schools because they were founded and are administered by the Catholic Church, though they have student bodies and faculty of mixed religious background. Hillsdale is a nondenominational Christian university. It is not a Catholic university. It was not founded by Catholics. It is not administered by Catholics.
And Charles Koch is not Catholic. In fact, he says he is not any sort of Christian.
The breakdown of Catholic faculty and administrators at Hillsdale?
Hillsdale wasn’t founded as a Christian college.
If Liberty, Oral Roberts and Bob Jones are Christian colleges, are they Christian-Christian colleges? Are Georgetown , Seton Hall, Loyola, etc. Christian Catholic schools? That’s the point you made when you wrote Catholic colleges are Christian.
Is Hillsdale Christian Christian or Christian Catholic?
Btw- do an internet search of Christian Colleges and see if any Catholic colleges come up in the results.
“The breakdown of Catholic faculty and administrators at Hillsdale?”
Hillsdale College does not publish the religious affiliations of its faculty. Hillsdale is a NONDENOMINATIONAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE with a mix of Protestant and Catholic Students.
“Hillsdale wasn’t founded as a Christian college.”
Hillsdale was founded by Freewill Baptists as a Christian college. Freewill Baptists, like Catholics, are Christians.
“If Liberty, Oral Roberts and Bob Jones are Christian colleges, are they Christian-Christian colleges? Are Georgetown , Seton Hall, Loyola, etc. Christian Catholic schools? That’s the point you made when you wrote Catholic colleges are Christian.”
The term Christian-Christian College is redundant. So is the term Christian Catholic College because Christians are Catholics. If you have said that some institution is Catholic, you have already said that it is Christian. Catholicism is a subset of and variety of Christianity. For centuries, Roman Catholicism was almost the only Christian practice in Europe. Non-Catholic Christians were few in number.
“Is Hillsdale Christian Christian or Christian Catholic?”
It is Christian, period. Christian Christian and Christian Catholic are redundant terms and the only reason to use them, ever, it to try to get people who for some utterly BIZARRE REASON insist otherwise to understand that Catholicism is a variety of Christianity. Christian Chrisitan and Chrisitan Catholic are BOTH violations of standard usage because they are REDUNDANT.
“Btw- do an internet search of Christian Colleges and see if any Catholic colleges come up in the results.”
I would not hold up the search algorithms of the major search engines as models of rationality.
Admit it, you try to distinguish between Catholic and Christian as though these were separate groups rather than the former being a subset of the latter because you wish to “other” Catholicism as part of your totally weird ongoing crusade against Catholics and Catholicism as though these were the Summa et Radix Malorum. The Catholic Church has a lot to apologize for over the years, but really, Linda, your Crusade is way over into bizarroland.
How breathtakingly ignorant a person would have to be not to know what Catholics are Christians. They would have to be ignorant of the entire history of Europe for 2,000 years, during most of which Christianity and Catholicism were practically synonymous and of the Protestant Reformation, which divided the Christian Church into two major factions. And, of course, they would have to be ignorant of the theological differences between Protestants and Catholics. regarding matters like salvation by Grace, the sacraments, church hierarchy and authority, etc. But I guess that there are such people to the depths of darkest Indiana and West Virigina and yes, Flor-uh-duh who don’t know any of this. This is one of the consequences of leaving instruction on religious history out of our curricula for fear that some idiot parent will object.
For the sake of clarification, let’s assume the K-12 curriculum associated with Hillsdale was written, half by Hillsdale Catholic faculty and half by Hillsdale protestant faculty, would the public have a misunderstanding if they thought the output was Christian in origin?
The public understands Christian as protestant as in the designation that everyone, but you, accepts as the distinction e.g. Christian v. Catholic schools.
If my school district selected Hillsdale curriculum under the preceding scenario,
I think it is deception by omission to pretend that Hillsdale’s is, at most, minimally influenced by a small, unidentified, Catholic presence in faculty and administration. The curriculum as described in the above scenario has equal political, cultural, economic, historical and religious views that are both Catholic and Christian-Christian (protestant).
I do understand that the Catholic Church would prefer to avoid the political heat and negative PR that accompanies Hillsdale’s political, right wing conservatism.
Musing, what would be required for a private college , not founded by a religious sect, to be viewed as equal parts Catholic and Christian?
.
cx: because Catholics are Christians
ofc
What “public” understands “Christian” as exclusively “Protestant”? This would be an EXTREMELY IGNORANT PUBLIC. But then, 60 percent of Americans cannot find Texas on a map, and 40 percent think that Donald Trump is their savior, so I suppose that there are breathtakingly ignorant people who do not know that Catholics are Christians.
Bob,
Blog readers can decide if the public knows that Catholics are Christian and still operate on the general understanding that the terms Catholic and Christian are used by all legitimate sources who gather and report information to distinguish Catholic schools from protestant schools which are designated as Christian.
The reason a person would not rely on the single source like, Hillsdale, for the history of the college should be obvious. At the Hillsdale Historical Society site, there are two histories, “The birth of Hillsdale College,” which mentions no early affiliation with Freewill Baptists nor a another religious sect. In the second history, “Hillsdale College, the frontier years,” there is a singular quote from an individual who called it a Christian college.
By your reasoning, Christian would not preclude the school from being a Catholic school.
ALEC’s history omits the early years, I speculate because one of the initial founders, a US congressman from Ohio was embroiled in a scandal (white hood. young bi-racial woman). Again, the example makes the point about single sourcing.
It is a nondenominational Christian school, Linda. How many times do I have to explain that to you? That means that it welcomes both Protestants and Catholics. So, no. It is not a Catholic school. A Catholic school is Catholic, not nondenominational.
And once again, Catholics worship Christ. Always have. They are therefore Christian. In fact, almost all other Christian churches extant today derived from the Catholic church at one point. There are a few small sects that do not derive from the Catholic Church, such as the Mandaeans. Unfortunately, the Mandeans have almost all been forcibly converted to Islam.
And YET AGAIN, Catholics are a subset of Christians. Therefore, a Christian school is not necessarily Catholic for the same reason that a dinosaur is not necessarily a Triceratops. It is not BY MY REASONING that a Catholic school is a Christian school. It’s a matter of definition. Every Catholic school is by definition Christian because Catholics are Christians. Duh.
Try this, Linda. Call up your local diocese and ask the person who answers the phone, “Hey, I was just calling to check. You Catholics are not Christians, right?” And after the long pause in which the person tries to figure out whether this is some kind of weirdo prank call, he or she will then explain, because such people are polite, that yes, Catholics are Christians. They worship Christ. Always have.
This was thorough & well-reported– & a nice spirit-booster for the day! I knew the area well at one time. The events are not to be written off as ‘oh well, Bucks County, wealthy and liberal. The area that district covers is solid middle-class, & leans Republican.
The resounding rejection of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign should give the Moms for Reducing Liberty pause. The country is not interested in having these knuckledraggers determine policy. They need to go back to the 1940s hills and hollers where they belong.
I am part of a group which is trying to recall a MFL-aligned School Board member. This individual advocates for forced outing of LGBTQ students (it’s called “Parental Notification” & “Parental Rights”), removal of school library books (called “culling the library books”) and the history of white, Christians in America.
Schools should have a social curriculum. We are preparing our students for their adult lives. In school, students should learn to respect each other, work together, and value individual differences: essential skills they will need in the adult world. It is our duty to both protect our children from the harm of prejudice and bigotry, and also, teach them the skills they need to observe it, identify it, and confront it in an manner that is effective and seeks to maintain the relationship whenever possible. Our country’s history is both great and terrible, not unlike each of our individual histories: some good things, some not-so-good. But to rob our children of the knowledge of that history is to rob them of our country, and of the truth. Ultimately, it will damage the relationship we adults have with the next generation.
As one of them said, “If you don’t tell us the truth about our history, how can we trust anything you say?”
Amen. And, smart kid.
Krbayne,
Good luck in ousting the bigot on your local board. Do you mind telling us what district this is? Please be sure to report back on the election results.
We owe young people the truth. Whitewashed history is Balkanized history.