Archives for category: Academic Freedom
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

I Am Woke. You Should Be Too.

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2022 //
216

I am tired of rightwing politicians distorting our language to suit their bigoted ideology.

They have the nerve, for example, to quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he spoke at the March on Washington in 1963 and said he hoped for the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Dr. King was projecting a vision of a world without racism, when people would see each other as friends, neighbors, and fellow human beings.

But rightwing politicians twist his words to insist that we should ignore racism right now, stop teaching about it, and pretend it does not exist. They use his words to justify prohibitions on teaching about or discussing the racism in the here and now. They use his appeal for an unrealized future to blind us to a cruel present.

I propose that we make a conscientious effort to reclaim the plain meaning of words.

One of the hot-button words that has been appropriated by rightwing politicians is “woke.” They are trying to turn it into a shameful word. I looked up the definition of WOKE. It means being aware of injustice and inequality, specifically when referring to racism. I strive to be aware of injustice and inequality and racial discrimination and to do whatever I can to change things for the better. Shouldn’t we all do that?

My acronym for WOKE is “Wide Open to Knowledge and Enlightenment.”

What would you say about someone who is not WOKE? They are “asleep,” “unconscious,” “indifferent.” They are “Mind Closed, Mouth Open.”

Yes, I am WOKE. I want Dr. King’s dream someday to be true. It is not true now.

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida believes it is terrible to be woke. He demeans those he says are woke. He claims that the woke are politically correct and are intimidated by organized efforts to reduce racism in schools and the workplace. He thinks that being woke is so dreadful that it must be made illegal.

He urged the Florida legislature to pass “anti-woke” legislation in March. And they did. The so-called STOP WOKE” Act means “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act.”

This legislation is intended specifically to silence discussions and study of racism. It bans the teaching of critical race theory in schools and colleges and bans diversity training in the workplace.

Governor DeSantis doesn’t want people to be opposed to injustice and inequality. He doesn’t want them to be opposed to racism. Such awareness makes some people feel uncomfortable, he says. We should teach nothing that makes anyone uncomfortable.

Who is uncomfortable when racism is discussed? In my experience, the people who don’t want any discussion of racism are either racist or are embarrassed by their acts of racism in the past.

To protect the tender sensibilities of white people, we must avoid any discussion that makes them or their children uncomfortable. We must not take the risk that they or their children might feel uncomfortable for terrible things that happened long ago. So don’t talk about them. Don’t read books that discuss slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, or segregation. Don’t mention the distant past or the wrongs of the present. Don’t dare to talk about discrimination against black people, or the passage of laws that impair their right to vote, or the persistence of racially segregated schools.

Not only is it wrong to be woke, in the eyes of those who prefer to stifle all recognition of racial discrimination, it is absolutely forbidden for teachers or professors to examine the causes of racism and its persistence today in our laws and policies. Making a conscientious effort to understand the causes of racism and to seek remedies is called “critical race theory” (CRT).

The attacks on critical race theory are intended to intimidate teachers and to prevent students from learning about racism, past or present.

In states that have banned the teaching of critical race theory, the legislators can’t define CRT, so they make it illegal to teach “divisive concepts” or anything that makes some students “uncomfortable.”

When a white supremacist massacred ten Black people in Buffalo, New York, teachers in anti-CRT states were not sure if they were allowed to teach about what happened. Would they lose their jobs if they taught the truth?

The states that prohibit the teaching of critical race theory are banning the teaching of honest history, for fear that someone might be uncomfortable when they learn the facts about what was done to Black people in our history. Some states have explicitly banned Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “The 1619 Project,” because it might make some white people uncomfortable. I may be wrong, but I can’t recall a state that ever passed a law censoring a single book. This book is obviously very powerful and very frightening to those who feel the need to ban it. It cannot be refuted by the DeSantis faction so it must be banned.

The same states that want to ban honest teaching about racism are also banning books about gender identity and sexuality. The legislatures in Republican states think that the schools are filled with pedophiles. The rightwing zealots claim that teachers are “grooming” their students to become gay or transgender. They pass laws like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans teaching about gender identity and sexuality in grades K-3 (where gender identity and sexuality are not taught) and tolerate only “age-appropriate” discussion of gender identity and sexuality in other grades.

Like the STOP WOKE law, the “Don’t Say Gay” law is vague, which makes teachers fearful of teaching anything related to gender or sexuality. If schools can’t teach about gender identity, then they cannot teach about married couples of any gender. If you take them literally, you should not refer to Moms and Dads, men and women. Dare we teach young children about heterosexuality? Apparently not, if you follow the letter of the law.

The groups that are behind these attacks are familiar to us. They are Moms for Liberty, Moms for America, Parents Defending Freedom, and a bevy of other groups funded by rightwing billionaires.

Not coincidentally, these are the same groups that are fighting to pass funding for charter schools and vouchers.

What is their motive? They want to destroy not only freedom of thought but public schools.

Recently, I watched the far-right provocateur Chris Rufo give a speech at Hillsdale College. He called on his audience to act in a speech titled “Laying Siege to the Institutions.” (Please watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Hh0GqoJcE). Rufo claims credit for making CRT a national issue. He boasts that a few years ago, CRT had virtually no public recognition. Thanks to his lies and distortions, most people have heard of it and some think it is a radical, Marxist plot to destroy America by turning race against race. Because he says so.

This is absurd.

For the past four decades, CRT was known as a law school study of the origins of systemic racism and the extent to which it is embedded in our laws and institutions. Its founder was Derrick Bell of Harvard Law School. He was a friend of mine. He was not a Marxist or a radical. He was a great American who wanted America to live up to its promises. Unlike Rufo, he didn’t believe in gag orders and bans. He believed in study, scholarship, debate and discussion.

Chris Rufo offers one solution to all the problems he sees: school choice.

To him, the public school is the most dangerous of all institutions, because it teaches equality, justice, and critical thinking. It teaches students to respect others. It teaches them to abhor racism and other forms of bigotry. It teaches students about American history without censoring the unpleasant and horrifying parts. The laws passed to ban CRT and to gag teachers have one purpose: Teach lies, not honest history.

Here is what I suggest.

Fight censorship.

Fight privatization of our public assets.

Read without fear.

Read “The 1619 Project,” which will open your minds. Read critiques of “The 1619 Project” by reputable scholars, not by rightwing ideologues.

Think about it. Discuss and debate the issues.

Say gay.

Stand up to the craven politicians who attack your freedoms.

Vote against them when you have the chance.

Fearlessly defend the freedom to read, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to learn.

Work towards the day when we treat each other with respect.

Wake up.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, History, Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Parent Groups, Privatization, Racism, School Choice

Sweden: Teachers Speak Out Against “Marketization” of Schools

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2022 //
23

I received the following statement by hundreds of Swedish teachers, protesting against the odious effects of privatization in education. They signed this post.

We teachers do not want to have it like this anymore

Published 28 Apr 2022 at 06.00

Filippa Mannerheim, high school teacher, Stockholm.

HP Tran, primary school teacher, Gothenburg.

Sara Persson, primary school teacher, Västervik.Photo: Sara Winsnes

Marcus Erhagen, high school teacher, Örebro.

Per Edberg, preschool teacher, Umeå.

We teachers demand a change. We demand that you politicians make sure to fix the institutionalized, corruption-promoting defects you yourself have built into the school system so that we teachers can focus on teaching Sweden’s children, 285 teachers write in a call against the marketized school.

This is a debate article. It is the writer who stands for the opinions in the text.

DEBATE. We who write this article do so even though we do not really have the time or energy. We write it even though it is not our job. We write it even though it should not have been needed and had not been needed in any other country than Sweden.

But as things stand now, we feel we have no choice.

We in Sweden today have large, commercial school groups that expand at the expense of the municipal school and make a profit through lower teacher density, fewer qualified teachers, fewer costly students and lower teacher salaries than municipal schools. Group schools receive permission from the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to start in municipalities even though the municipalities themselves say no and there is no need.

We do not want it like this.

Today, through the free right of establishment and the unregulated offer, a school can be opened anywhere and look any way. A teaching position can be anything for anyone. Nothing on the school grounds is regulated. Nothing is planned based on society’s needs.

We do not want it this way.

In the past, independent schools had lower school fees because the municipality must ensure that all students can go to a school close to home. The municipality can not choose the organization that is cheapest, it can independent schools. The municipality can not put students in line, it can independent schools. The municipality can not profile its schools so that some students feel that the school is not suitable for them, independent schools can. The municipality’s assignments are larger and more expensive, but the tuition fees are just as large. A majority of the Riksdag’s parties refuse to change this.

We do not want it this way.

The revolving doors between politicians and independent school companies are freshly blown and the close ties that exist between politicians, lobbyists and the business community are becoming increasingly tighter when former politicians take seats in school management or continue their careers as lobbyists.

It’s time to listen to the voters. It’s time to listen to us teachers. It is time to climb out of the school market swamp and act as elected politicians again.

Public opinion in Sweden is clearly against the private gains made in welfare and school. Nevertheless, this is not reflected in the Riksdag decisions that are made.

We do not want it this way.

School companies and large real estate companies today buy school properties so that the companies can make money at school even if politicians decide on a profit ban. They want to be able to move money from profits in school to profits in real estate companies. Instead of hiring teachers, the school fees are used for the real estate companies’ return requirements.

We do not want it this way.

We have politicians who drum up “freedom of choice” as a mantra as soon as criticism is directed at the system, but the free choice they defend is in fact the school groups, which through targeted marketing to parents with high-performing children, have the choice to only give school to the “cheapest The students. Everything is as it should be in the best of worlds, the majority of our parliamentary parties believe.

But we do not want it this way.

The Swedish school once made class trips possible. The school was good at getting the majority of students to succeed – even children without a study background. Today, Sweden has the most unequal school of all the Nordic countries. Swedish school torn apart.

Instead of a cohesive compensatory school, we now have listed company schools, groups with fake coats of arms, schools that call themselves international and that have teaching in a language other than Swedish. We have religious schools with dubious values.

We teachers do not want it like this anymore. We demand a change. We demand that you politicians make sure to remedy the institutionalized, corruption-promoting defects you yourself have built into the school system so that we teachers can focus on teaching Sweden’s children. And avoid writing articles like this in the future.

It’s time to listen to the voters. It’s time to listen to us teachers. It is time to climb out of the school market swamp and act as elected politicians again.

We teachers do not want it like this anymore.

Rolf Wallander, subject teacher years 4-6, Haninge 

Miranda Chang, F-6 teacher, Gislaved 

HP Tran, primary school teacher, Gothenburg 

Helena Tarras-Wahlberg, teacher, Ängelholm

Anna Bränström, high school teacher, Sundbyberg municipality

Maria Karlsson, high school teacher, Knivsta 

Jonas Linderoth, Professor of Pedagogy University of Gothenburg 

Pia Ennemuist, elementary school teacher, leisure educator, Värmdö 

Therese Wikström, high school teacher, Ale 

Erik Winerö, high school teacher / doctoral student educational science, Lerum

Alexander Nilsson, high school teacher, Trelleborg

Marie Pettersson, special educator, Skövde

Therese Andersson, elementary school teacher, Örebro 

teacher , Stockholm

Magnus Svensson, university lecturer, teacher educator, Eskilstuna. 

Ann-Christine Norman, upper secondary school teacher, Boden

Daniel Runhage, primary school teacher, Malmö 

Per Edberg, preschool teacher, Umeå

Filippa Mannerheim, upper secondary school teacher, Stockholm 

Anton Ek, primary school teacher. Falun

Felix Björk, music teacher student, Stockholm

Aron Ihse Trägårdh, elementary teacher student, Malmö 

Anthon Brunzell, subject teacher student, Lund

Björn Dahlman, teacher, Ekerö

Terese Crona Lindström, teacher in after-school center, Ängelholm 

Simon Kvassman, subject teacher and teacher student, Örebro

Birch Petter 

MagnusBäcklund, teacher Hörby

Jenny Winberg, teacher, Västerås

Edvin Jensen, high school teacher, Linköping 

Maria Olsson, retired high school teacher, Ale

Martin Ahlstedt, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Pernilla Wallgren, elementary school teacher, Stockholm 

Lena Karlsson Saranpää, elementary school teacher, Motala

Maja Anselius, Special educator 

, , primary school teacher, Stockholm 

Erika Tidblom, teacher, Norrköping

Magnus Dahlström, high school teacher, Malmö

Tilde Jansson, high school teacher, Stockholm 

Lena Danelius, high school teacher, Lund

Daniel Lund, high school teacher, Norrköping

Rasmus Hardeström, teacher, Linköping

Maria Hals, high school teacher, Danderyd

Joel Larsson, High school, Danderyd

Maria Jarlsdotte r former principal, Ängelholm 

Per Johansson, high school teacher, Ängelholm

Karl Engqvist, primary school teacher, Arvika. 

Olof Persson, High school teacher, Strömsund

Lotta Lindvall, preschool teacher in preschool class, Motala

Birgitta Hultkrantz, Municipal adult teacher Stockholm

Jonas Hemström, deputy principal, Stockholm

Andreas Olofsson, high school teacher, Ljungby 

Petter Cronberg, teacher, Nyhamnsläge

, elementary school teacher, elementary school

NyborgDanderyd

Kristina Lundin, high school teacher, Köping

Ulla Åkerström, leg. teachers who left school, Gothenburg

Johanna Verme, high school teacher student, Lerum

Jesper Berglund, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Lisa Göland, high school teacher, Linköping

Petra Särnhammar, school librarian and high school teacher, Linköping

Linda Odén, high school teacher, Gråbo

Lars Ljunggren, high school teacher, Falun

Åsa Tadell, high school teacher

Maria Gustavson, teacher, Västerås 

Fredrik Sandström, teacher, Arboga

Tom Bergström, vocational teacher, Sala 

Petra Lindström, teacher, Gnesta

Pontus Bierich, Teacher, Kungälv

Linnea Argårds, teacher, Örebro

Martin Viklund, teacher, Hudiksvall

Gunnar Wike, primary school teacher, Västerås

Anders Törnlund , teacher, Huddinge

Jan Kjellin, preschool teacher, Falun

Fredrik Björkman, high school teacher, Malmö

Elisabeth Ahrent, teacher Simrishamn

Johan Carlsson, high school teacher, Upplands Väsby 

Fredrik Törnqvist, high school teacher, Stockholm

Magnus Almström, high school teacher, Borås

Helena Edvardsson, elementary school teacher, Gothenburg

Christoffer Eriksson, high school teacher , Uppsala

Kari Nilsson, teacher, Malmö 

Elin Persson, after-school center teacher, Danderyd

Anna Östman, primary school teacher, Huddinge

Rickard Himre, upper secondary school teacher, Stockholm  

Fredrik Clausson, upper secondary school teacher, Lund

Nils Rickdorff Lahrin, upper secondary school teacher, Uppsala 

Björn Johannesson, primary school teacher, Gothenburg

Maryna Grip, primary school teacher, Söderhamn

Jan Magnusson,

Lotta Gedik-Cederberg, primary school teacher, Malmö

Jenny Vide, primary school teacher, Uppsala

Mathias Israelsson, primary school teacher, Gothenburg

Lilian Birath, high school teacher, Svedala 

Anna Heimer, preschool teacher, Partille

Patrik Unné, special educator 

Margareta Melin, primary school teacher, Kungälv

Jonas Fried, Gothenburg primary school

teacher , elementary school teacher, Ryd

Sara Persson, elementary school teacher, Västervik 

Maria Himre, high school teacher, Stockholm

Marie Karlsson, elementary school teacher, Svedala

Olof Loklint, elementary school teacher, Västerås 

Niclas Djupström, high school teacher, Skövde

Gunnel Alm, high school teacher, Norrköping

Bodil Ejwertz, teacher, Tylyl

, teacher , Sundbyberg

Helen a Svanängen, university lecturer, Jönköping

Isabella Åkerlund, teacher, Karlstad

Maria Hilber, preschool teacher, Huddinge

Isabella Verner, high school teacher, Stockholm

Malin Ahlgren, high school teacher, Stockholm

Elinor Löfstaf, teacher, Västerås 

Peter Sjöde IDH teacher Jönköping

Svensson Gothenburg

MånsPettersson, high school teacher, Stockholm 

Anders Lindborg, high school teacher Varberg

Karin Berg, high school teacher, Gothenburg 

Peter Alm, high school teacher, Uppsala 

Marina Nordin, teacher, Stockholm 

Calle Andén, primary school teacher, Gotland

Niclas Ländin, deputy principal, Sollentuna 

Hedvig Bolmgren, special teacher / special educator,

Östhammar Rosenberg, primary school teacher, Klippan 

Fredrik Hornegård, teacher, Stockholm 

EwaLiz Larsson, primary school teacher, Karlskrona 

Tobias Nilsson, special teacher, Lund 

Anna Nylander, high school teacher, Lysekil. 

Marika Lindholm, teacher, former. principal, Stockholm

Emma Sjödin, high school teacher, Stockholm 

Shpetim Ademi, high school teacher, Kristianstad. 

Johanna Andersson, high school teacher, Malmö

Bernt Andersson, leg. teacher of music and English, SiS in Lidköping

Magnus Karlberg Teacher / leisure educator Stockholm

Ellinor Brantås, elementary school teacher, Järfälla 

Johanna Ramstedt, elementary school teacher, Stockholm

Linda Bäckström, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Niklas Aronsson, high school teacher Gothenburg

Hjalmar Holgersson, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Pelle Flemark, high school 

Eva Söderberg, certified teacher of handicrafts / Swedish, Gothenburg

Kedikova, high school teacher, Norrköping

Anna Lundin, music teacher, Västerås 

Helene Johansson, elementary / high school teacher, Uddevalla 

Jakob Winnberg, high school teacher, Växjö

Solveig Ivarsson, elementary school teacher, Svenljunga

Jan Gustavsson, Norrman Lotman,

Zumi, elementary school teacher, Ulricehamn 

Anna Klingström, high school teacher, Sala

Fredrik Månsson, high school teacher, Norrköping

Christina W. Källström, high school teacher, Katrineholm

Emma Solum Holst, high school teacher, Borlänge 

Alexandra Georgieva, elementary school teacher, Gothenburg

Carina Lindström, music teacher in elementary school, 

Södertarje high school Lina teacher, Stockholm

Helena Wessel, school secretary former high school teacher, Stockholm

Katarina Hjärpe, school librarian, Malmö 

Mattias Forsberg, high school teacher, Arvika

Henrik Estvik, high school teacher, Stockholm

Maria Ruukel, elementary school teacher, Valdemarsvik 

Åsa Andersson, elementary school teacher, Västerås

Jonathan Wikström, elementary school teacher,

L primary school teacher, Stockholm

Staffan Lindström, music teacher in primary school, Södertälje

Carin Hammarström, teacher, Malmö

Hans-Uno Karlsson, retired primary school teacher, Hajom

Jennie Gudmundsson, leg. teacher ma / bi 7–9, Ängelholm

Ragnar Suneson retired language teacher 7–9, Tranås

Cecilia Ekdahl Schewenius, subject teacher / assistant professor, Kungshamn 

Jan Wärmegård, primary school teacher, Stockholm

Cecilia F. Kroon, teacher, Staffanstorp 

Gunilla Martinsson, teacher Falkenberg

Maria Henriksson, language teacher Mora 

Anna Liljekvist, teacher, Nacka

Cecilia Svensson, teacher F-3, Sundsvall 

Inga-Lill Lagerlöf, retired teacher, Tierp

Hanna Wallinder, teacher, Malmö 

Helén Enqvist, language teacher years 6–9, Botkyrka 

Annette Säterberg, high school teacher, Kungsbacka

Ingemar Abrahamsson, handicraft teacher, Gothenburg

Lotta Carlson, subject teacher Ma / No, Kungsbacka 

Carola Svensson, adult teacher, Norrköping

Marie Wislander, teacher, Tjörn

Maria Jansson, special teacher, Stockholm

Jonny Wester, music teacher, Hylte 

Miriam Järlebark, teacher SFI, Örebro

Film Katja 

Roselli Åsell, teacher, Hofors

Jan Gustavsson, Municipal adult teacher, Norrköping

Helen Egardt, high school teacher, Lidingö

Thomas Bergström, high school teacher Ludvika

Mikael Winblad, teacher e, Strängnäs

Ann-Sofie Johansson, high school teacher, Västerås 

Pia Brodersen, special educator, Stockholm

Ulla Sunden, teacher, Gothenburg

Mirjam Cameron Sedwall, teacher, Stockholm

Linda Söderberg, teacher, Timrå 

Robert Warrebäck, teacher, Stockholm

Jenny Vad-Schütt, teacher, Täby 

Johan Thorssell, high school teacher, Gothenburg 

Cecilia Rosenqvist, subject teacher, Simrishamn

Rebecka Beijer, high school teacher, Eskilstuna

Jaana Vilén, special teacher, Karlskoga

Carola Sjöstrand, teacher, Jönköping

Elisabeth Broman, former elementary school teacher, Österåker

Sabina Granstrand, teacher Frida, Samstad

4-6 Gothenburg

Louise Halldin, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Birgitta Jensen, deputy principal, Emmaboda

Pia Thomasson, 7 – 9 teachers, Ängelholm

Sanna Dabolins, high school teacher, Gothenburg 

Linda Gunnarsson, teacher, Härryda 

Bengt Johansson, teacher, Nacka 

Malin Hökby, high school teacher, Nacka 

Anna Näslund War, primary school teacher 4–6, Karlskrona

Ingela Bursjöö, teacher, Gothenburg

Hasse Annerbo, primary school teacher 1–7 Falun 

Åsa Hartzell, upper secondary school teacher, Stockholm

Jessica Andersson Sjöstrand, upper secondary school teacher, Växjö 

Marie Rehnström, middle school teacher, Härryda

Johanna Stigmark, SFI teacher, Södertälje

Maria Knutsson-Torvaldsen, primary school teacher, Ockelbo 

Frida Lotfi, upper secondary school teacher, Danderyd

Kenneth Pilström, retired teacher, Kil

Anders teacher, Norrköping

Cecilia Rehnqvist, teacher, Malmö 

Petter Träff, high school teacher, Malmö

Maria Trulsson, teacher, Gothenburg

Kristina Broberg, elementary school teacher, Uddevalla

Nilla Wikberg, special educator, Uppsala

Elin Jonasson, teacher student, Mönsterås

Robert Alexandersson, middle school teacher, Kristinehamn

high school teacher Micke Hjalmarsson Motala

David Reljanovic, high school teacher, Borås

Edith Marelli, high school teacher, Malmö

Sophia Ivanovic, teacher Nässjö

Robert Svensson, teacher Trollhättan

Sara Berggren, teacher, Sundsvall 

Nicklas Ivarsson, teacher, Trelleborg

Per Olov Nordin, philosophy Master, retired, Söderhamn

Susanne Lindgren, speci Luleå

Anna Svensson, high school e-teacher, Skara

Magdalena Gyllenlood, high school teacher, Nacka

Marie Sandström, high school teacher, Vara

Maria Sköld, teacher, Haninge

Amanda Terlevic, high school teacher, Gothenburg

Kerstin Meurling, teacher, Kulturskolan, Sundsvall

Maria L. Persson, teacher, Varberg

Susanne Lärkeryd, teacher,

Skellefte Utter, upper secondary school teacher, Gothenburg

Elin Bergström, leisure teacher, Sundsvall 

Nicolas Micic, teacher, Huddinge

Jennie Frisk, primary school teacher, Uppsala 

Åsa Fondin, special teacher, Landskrona

Stina Carlsson, primary school teacher ma / NO 1-7, Dalsed

Johanna Leinås, teacher, Täby 

Christer Hällkvist, high school teacher, Linköping 

Susan Persson-Payne, teacher, Eskilstuna

Jenny Svensson, high school teacher, Halmstad

Johan Fransson, high school teacher, Linköping

Staffan Melin, primary school teacher, Gothenburg

Karin Wilsson, principal, Mark municipality

Majlis Seppänen, teacher, Boden

Niclas Skott, teacher, Gothenburg

Anton Svensson , teacher, Växjö

Klas Holmgren, teacher, Borlänge

My Landberg, teacher, Järfälla

Joakim Lindström, teacher, Huddinge

Josefine Forsberg, primary school teacher, Umeå

Kerstin Rödén, special educator, Östersund

Helena Eidenson, primary school teacher, Sigtuna

Rolf Back, mathematics teacher, Falun

Lars Persson, technology teacher, Sölvesborg

Ola Lindholm, teacher, Karlstad

Marcus Erhagen, high school teacher, Örebro

Göteborg Hjertén, teacher 

Finnhigh school teacher, Uppsala

Jenny Dahlin, high school teacher, Mark municipality

Eva Almestad, preschool teacher, Sundsvall

Olof Dahl, fil. dr, high school teacher, Mölndal

Åsa Marmebro, teacher, Kungälv

Ulrihca Malmberg, high school teacher, Stockholm

Sara Fransson, high school teacher, Huddinge 

Debora Påhlsson, teacher, Båstad 

Birgitta Olsson, teacher, Karlskrona

Karin Linderyd, high school teacher, Motala 

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Creativity, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Teaching

Iowa: High School Students Are Smarter Than Legislators

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
16

High school students in several districts in Iowa have staged walkouts to protest legislation that affects their education. Students want their teachers to have the freedom to teach, and they want the freedom to learn. Iowa legislators don’t want either.

In light of recent education bills at the Iowa Legislature, whether it’s promoting vouchers for private schools or restricting what teachers are allowed to mention in class, many Iowa students are getting fed up. And they’re standing up.

Friday afternoon in Johnston, a group of close to 100 students walked out of class and stood on school grounds to talk about those bills, explain how they’re impacting Iowa students and teachers, and encourage their peers to register to vote and to elect different legislators.

“I think the biggest thing now is putting people in positions of power that actually will do the work and will care and represent the student voices that are speaking out about this,” said Waverly Zhao, a junior at Johnston High School who helped lead the walkout.

The walkout was organized by students and two student organizations, Johnston Community of Racial Equity (CORE) Club and Iowa WTF.

And Johnston was only one of several with recent walkouts. Thursday, students walked out at Ankeny and other events have been planned for public and private high schools in Ames, West Des Moines, Des Moines, and possibly Waukee. All are organized by student groups, and generally around the same issue of not having their voices heard about their educations. Students have also held walkouts in recent months in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.

Specifically, students are calling out House File 2577, the bill that requires teachers to post every single piece of classroom material online, and Senate File 2369, the bill which allows vouchers for private schools and includes a parents’ bill of rights. Both have only passed in their chambers.

Students are also calling out House File 802, the law that prohibits so-called “divisive concepts” being taught in school, which passed last year…

HF 802 prohibited teachers from teaching “divisive concepts” and targets ideas such as systemic or institutionalized racism and sexism, and how those have shaped the way the country was built and how it functions now. Students say they’ve already seen it cause a chilling effect in their classrooms.

“As a student of color, it’s been hard enough in the district, and with the recent legislation, it’s harder to discuss racism and harder for us to combat that in schools,” said Anita Danakar, a Johnston high schooler.

For example, she said her history teacher made sure to tell students they weren’t trying to make student feel guilty when they talked about redlining in class.

Zhao said in her history and social studies classes teachers are talking less about racism and sexism so they don’t cross any lines. A history lesson she had about the 3/5ths compromise in the Constitution left most of the class confused, Zhao said, because the teacher was never quite able to explain why it existed….

Overall, the students said they want to learn about these topics in school, from a trusted source and in an environment where they can ask questions.

“This entire attitude that [says] these students are not mature enough to learn and have mature conversations in the classroom about race, gender, sexuality, to say we can’t even talk about that in an educational environment is disgusting,” said Nicholas Arick, a 17-year-old student who plans to vote in the next presidential election. “It’s saying these students don’t deserve to learn about these things, and eventually when they get out of high school, they’re be ignorant and they won’t know what they’re voting for.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Education Industry, Freedom, Ignorance, Injustice, Iowa, Lies, Privatization, Racism, Students

Oklahoma: A State with a Severe Case of Schizophrenia

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2022 //
27

The Oklahoma legislature just passed a bill guaranteeing the free speech rights of professors and students in Oklahoma higher education. It has been sent to Governor Kevin Stitt for his signature.

The sponsor of HB 3543, Rep. Chad Caldwell, (R)-Enid, said the goal is to protect students who may not have the same viewpoints as their classmates and professors.

“We shouldn’t have a professor worried about getting fired if they say this or that,” Rep. Caldwell said. “We shouldn’t have a student that has to worry about, if I don’t take a Republican view or a liberal view that I’m going to get an ‘F’ on a paper. That shouldn’t be something that’s going on at any of our colleges or universities.”

The legislature apparently forgot that they banned the teaching of “critical race theory” in 2021 and discouraged teaching the facts about the horrific Tulsa Massacre. Kathryn Schumaker, the Edith Kinney Gaylord presidential professor in the department of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, wrote at the time that the law banning discussion of racism would make it impossible to teach history honestly on campus.

She wrote in The Washington Post:

The law is aimed at eradicating the supposed scourge of critical race theory (CRT) from state classrooms and campuses, a cause that has become a right-wing talking point over the course of the past few months. Oklahoma educators and academics have denounced the law, noting that it will deter teachers from discussing Oklahoma’s fraught racial past of Native American dispossession, lynching and racial terror.

For example, as we mark the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre in late May, state political leaders are making it clear that they would like Oklahomans to leave the past behind. In 2001, a state commission report called for reparations and public recognition of the legacy of the massacre. But this new law undermines efforts to reckon with our collective past, and it will chill classroom discussions of this history. H.B. 1775 instructs educators to emphasize that although the perpetrators of the Tulsa Race Massacre did bad things, their actions do not shape the world we live in — even though White rioters murdered scores of Black Tulsans and destroyed more than 1,200 buildings in the Black Greenwood neighborhood, annihilating decades of accumulated Black wealth.

Meanwhile, a seventh-grade science teacher at Jenks Middle School was fired for refusing to remove a rainbow-colored flag from a display of flags in his classroom.

Oklahoma suffers from a severe case of schizophrhrenia or hypocrisy.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the free speech law is used to defend teaching critical race theory in higher education.

Thanks to John Thompson of Oklahoma for the updates from his state.

Categories Academic Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Lies, Oklahoma, Race

Frank Breslin: Children Deserve the Truth, Not Fairy Tales about the Past

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2022 //
51

Frank Breslin is a retired teacher in New Jersey. This article originally appeared in the NJEA monthly publication.

What if your race had known only tragedy
throughout America’s history? What if your people had been enslaved, murdered, persecuted and denied their civil rights?

And what if, instead of owning up to having inflicted such outrages, showing remorse, asking forgiveness, and making amends, those responsible, their descendants and
sympathizers denied that those actions had ever
occurred or, if they had, they had best be forgotten?

But what if the history of those deeds could
never be taught in our schools, but covered in
silence because it would only be “divisive” or
“racist” against those whites who had committed
them? Rather, let bygones be bygones! We should
forget the past and simply move on!

This is the white supremacist gospel being
preached by some in our country today, especially
by protestors at school board meetings. It is the
New Jim Crowism that would leave no public
record in the classroom of the centuries-old infamy that was inflicted on the Black race.

Moreover, these protestors add insult to injury
by denying the victims of this racism the chance to finally have their story told to America’s children as our schools have done for the Holocaust. Children deserve the truth, not fairy tales, even when the truth makes racists uncomfortable.

Anyone with an ounce of humanity could not
help but be moved when learning about the brutal treatment of Blacks over the centuries. Students would learn that the justification of slavery was preached even from church pulpits. They would learn about the KKK, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, fire bombings of Black churches, racial segregation of our schools today—decorously disguised as “school choice,” the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the killing of George Floyd, and the freedom march in Birmingham, Alabama when Commissioner “Bull” Conner turned his fire hoses, attack dogs, and police truncheons on peaceful Black marchers demanding their civil rights, as Americans watched aghast at their TV
screens as it unfolded.

It would be a national catharsis to know that
America was finally coming to terms with the dark
chapters in its history and not-so-distant past. For
this is what great nations do that are big enough,
humble enough, contrite and courageous enough
to admit their failings and vow to do better. The
beginning of healing is the admission of wrong!

Great nations also reverence the sacrosanct
nature of the mind. They do not insult those who
have dedicated their lives to the noble profession of
teaching the young. They do not force teachers to
indoctrinate their students with a sanitized history
that omits the entire truth about their nation’s past.

However, teaching the truth is terrifying to these
protestors who view truth as dangerous, especially
for their children, for it would mean losing control
over their minds. Schools that teach what actually
happened should be shut down because truth
leads to social unrest, and it is better to have peace
based on lies.

In a word, we are dealing with an
educational philosophy that teaches: Thou shalt
not think! Thou shalt not question! Thou shalt
only conform!

These protestors abhor teaching about what
happened to Black people since this would mean
the end of their white supremacist world. Their
protests are an assault on the mind itself, the
importance of truth, and the nature of education.

An education in its ultimate sense is not an
initiation rite into the myths of one’s tribe, but
a personal struggle to free oneself from those
myths. It is escaping from Groupthink. An
education is not about fear of the truth or a blind
acceptance of White supremacist doctrine.

Teachers resist such indoctrination of their
students. They want to teach, not suppress, the
truth of what happened, but these protesters know
what happened and want to suppress it lest it be
taught not only to their children, but to everyone’s
children, as well, a.k.a. censorship.

Teachers refuse to aid and abet this fantasy
of a dying white Supremacy whose days are
numbered as anyone knows who has checked
the demographics, for what we are hearing today
is but its death knell!

A classroom is a sacred place, a temple of
reason, not a recruiting station for a white
supremacist doctrine that would ban the teaching
of Black history because it dismisses Black people
themselves as unimportant in their kind of
supremacist democracy that is not a democracy
at all, but an ethnocentric, xenophobic, wouldbe fascist dictatorship, and not the American
democracy most of us know, cherish, and want
to preserve.

Teachers refuse to violate their consciences by
lying to children and shattering their trust in them,
and when they are forbidden to tell the whole
truth lest it embarrass white racists, they refuse
to betray both children and truth

Frank Breslin is an NJREA member and a retired
English, Latin, German, and social studies
teacher. An educator for over 40 years, he retired
from the Delaware Valley Regional High School.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Freedom, Racism, Resistance

Texas: How Stupid Is Lt. Governor Dan Patrick?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2022 //
17

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick of Texas explains in this video why he wants to eliminate tenure in the colleges and universities of Texas. He believes in “academic freedom,” he says, but he thinks the legislature should govern what is taught in universities. He lashed out at professors who want to teach “critical race theory.” He believes that there is no academic freedom for those who want to teach the Constitution (!), but only for those who teach controversial topics.

Apparently he thinks that academic freedom and tenure should protect only those who share his views.

Just how dangerous is Dan Patrick’s proposal?

Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, understands that Patrick threatens one of our nation’s greatest treasures: its public institutions of higher education.

He writes, at NBC’s website:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced last month a plan to phase out all tenure in Texas’ public colleges and universities, and to revoke tenure for those who teach critical race theory. These changes would have dramatic effects on public education in Texas and, ultimately, across the United States, undermining academic freedom and compromising a higher education system that is the envy of the world.

If you were to make a list of the United States’ most significant contributions to the world, our public university systems would have to be somewhere near the top. According to U.S. News’ rankings, of the top 20 universities around the world, 15 are American, and five of those are public. Thanks to these and other universities, the U.S. dominates Nobel Prizes and other scholarly achievements, while it educates tens of millions of students annually. Typically, about a million students per year come from other countries to attend American colleges and universities. Those on student visas largely return to their home countries, spreading the knowledge and values they learn here.

Rather remarkably, this is not widely celebrated. Worse, America’s public universities are currently being attacked from multiple sources, threatening both our educational integrity and global reputation, to say nothing of the way such attacks could impact student opportunities.

The first of these attacks stems from a rather long-term historical force — declining state budgets. States are simply subsidizing public education far less than they used to do. Outside just a handful of states, per-student funding from state governments dropped substantially over the past few decades. Students and their families increasingly have to make up that difference.

But there’s a more immediate threat going on, of which Patrick is only the latest instigator. Patrick is hardly the first state leader to go after tenure for university professors. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker worked to weaken tenure protections at his state’s university system. A current bill in South Carolina would end tenure in that state. Georgia made it easier last year for administrators in public universities to fire tenured professors. Tenure has long been a target of Republican state officials seeking to reduce the status of the professors they see as elitist liberals.

Tenure, of course, is complicated, involving complicated and school-specific standards. Some schools have suspiciously biased tenure patterns. But at its best, tenure serves two important purposes. First, it protects researchers from reprisals. Academics may produce findings that make state leaders uncomfortable or defensive — tenure helps assure that findings are not suppressed and altered. Think, for example, of recent academic debates over whether voter ID and other voting restrictions disproportionately affect people of color and actually reduce turnout. This is an important discussion that quite legitimately makes people on all sides of it uncomfortable. But researchers must be able to pursue the truth without fear of losing their jobs…

Second, tenure is a valuable perk for professors who could typically make more money in another line of work. In both these senses, tenure helps keep top scholarly talent at universities producing important and occasionally critical and politically unpopular research.

But Patrick’s second announcement, that he is seeking to revoke tenure protections for professors who teach critical race theory, is even more sinister. It’s important to note first that very few professors outside of law school actually teach critical race theory. Rather, the term “critical race theory” for public officials like Patrick has come to mean any lessons involving race, identity and/or history that conservatives do not like. For some, critical race theory now just means any history lesson that might make white students feel bad. It’s not hard to guess who will be blamed for teaching these sorts of lessons, and who will more readily be fired or silenced as a result…

Great public university systems with top scholars educating millions of students at (relatively) low cost are legitimately one of the U.S.’ greatest accomplishments. We are watching that accomplishment being dismantled before our eyes

Categories Academic Freedom, Funding, Higher Education, Ignorance, Stupid, Texas

Wyoming: GOP Legislators Want to Defund Gender Studies in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2022 //
8

Now that Republican state legislatures have had their way imposing their personal views on what may or may not be taught in the public schools, they are taking aim at what may be taught in state universities. In Wyoming, the legislature wants to defund gender studies.

Legislation to defund gender and women’s studies at the University of Wyoming has stoked faculty fears about how far lawmakers will go to stop public colleges from teaching courses they don’t like.

The Wyoming Senate voted on Friday to pass a budget amendment that would prevent the university from using state money for its gender and women’s studies program and courses, a move that would effectively eliminate them. While a version of the amendment died in the state’s House and its future is unclear, the mere possibility of its passage has left some Wyoming professors shaken by what they see as an infringement on their academic freedom.

This is censorship, plain and simple. Will they next come after science professors who teach about evolution? Or legal scholars who study critical race theory?

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Wyoming

Texas: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Wants to Ban “Critical Race Theory” in Universities

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2022 //
65

This is when 21st century McCarthyism gets serious.

Dan Patrick, the talk-show host who is now Lieutenant Governor of Texas, wants to ban the teaching of “critical race theory” in higher education. Critical race theory, the study of systemic and institutionalized racism, has been taught and debated in law schools and colleges since the mid-1980s.

Patrick wants to quash academic freedom in higher education. He thinks he can prevent professors who have devoted their academic careers to the study of racism from talking about it. Maybe, he believes, if they don’t talk about and study racism, no one will know it exists. Or maybe it will just go away.

Erica Grieder wrote in the Houston Chronicle about Patrick’s plans to restrict academic freedom and to have the state spend $6 million on a “think tank” called the “Liberty Institute” to prevent errant professors from exercising their freedom to teach and speak. Last year, the state passed a law to ban CRT in K-12 schools, where (he thinks) children are being stuffed with left wing propaganda and with the claim that racism is real.

“I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with critical race theory,” he announced in a tweet.

“We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed,” he continued, adding: “That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”

This was in response to a report, in the Austin American-Statesman, that the Faculty Council of the University of Texas at Austin had passed a resolution defending academic freedom.

In other words, Patrick, hearing of an innocuous nonbinding resolution in support of freedom, responded by threatening to pursue even more aggressive restrictions on freedom, while also wrapping himself in the banner of “liberty.” Naturally. This is from the lieutenant governor, arguably the state’s most powerful elected official.

Patrick, a rabid supporter of vouchers, as well as limits on free speech, is a public nuisance who menaces the freedom of students, teachers, and professors in Texas.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Racism, Stupid, Texas

Stephen Sawchuk: How the CRT Debate Is Shaping State History Standards

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2022 //
17

Stephen Sawchuk wrote in Education Week about the ways that public controversy about “critical race theory” is affecting the drafting and revision of state history standards. He looks closely at three states that revised their history standards in 2021: Louisiana, New Mexico, and South Dakota.

For months, GOP officials and FOX news kept up a steady and alarming drumbeat, falsely claiming that public schools were indoctrinating white students to hate America and to be ashamed of their race. This weird notion was suddenly discovered in the last year of the Trump regime, when beating up on public schools became a cultural wedge issue. The governor’s race in Virginia showed that the campaign against CRT was effective in rousing people’s fears.

As Sawchuk shows, the effort to twist U.S. history to leave out anything bad that happened in the past is working its way into state standards. Message from the GOP, FOX News, and Chris Rufo: Teach lies about U.S. history!

He writes:

Spiked drafts. Allegations of political interference. Confusing terminology. And thousands of angry comments: The volatile debate over how to teach about America’s racist past is wreaking havoc on states’ processes for deciding what students will learn about history and social studies.

In state after state, commentators and politicians contended that proposed expectations for social studies embedded “critical race theory”—even as the educators sitting on the panels writing the new standards defended them for providing an honest, if sometimes challenging, view of America.

Education Week reviewed hundreds of standards and thousands of pages of public comment relating to the standards-writing processes in South Dakota, Louisiana, and New Mexico, all of which took up revisions in 2021, and interviewed writers, educators, and state officials. Across the three states, we found:

  • None of the three states’ drafts mentioned the term critical race theory, but in written comments, people attacked dozens of standards in Louisiana’s and New Mexico’s drafts for purportedly embedding it.
  • In South Dakota, state officials removed about 20 references to Native Americans from the draft submitted by the standards-writing panel—then scotched the draft altogether.
  • The critiques about CRT in Louisiana led the writers to recast some standards and to delete others. And public comment protocols in Louisiana were changed out of fear for the writers’ physical safety.
  • The teaching method of having students take civic action to address classroom and local problems—an approach some conservatives contend is indoctrination—was mysteriously cut from both Louisiana’s and South Dakota’s drafts.
  • About 1 in 10 of some 2,900 pages of comments on the New Mexico standards referenced CRT, often citing language in the draft about “social justice,” “group identity,” and “critical consciousness.” Those terms also attracted confusion from district leaders wondering how those tenets should be taught.

The findings illustrate how the fallout from the confusing and often misleading debate about CRT stands to alter history education in U.S. schools through subtle—but material—changes to day-to-day teaching expectations.

“Standards provide teachers with cover to teach hard things—controversial things,” noted Lynn Walters-Rauenhorst, an instructor and student-teaching supervisor at the University of New Orleans, who was among the writers of Louisiana’s draft. “If we don’t have standards that support deep inquiry about things that may not be the easy topics to cover, then teachers aren’t going to do it.”

And the discord stands as another testament to how the country’s polarization has affected K-12 policymaking at large.

“The uncivil discourse centering around these issues is detrimental not only to the process, but really, it’s also detrimental to these embedded ideas in our constitutional democracy of compromise, of listening to each other, not always agreeing,” said Tammy Waller, the director for K-12 social studies at the Arizona education department.

Arizonans, she noted, faced some controversies over topics like civil rights and the LGBTQ movement when completing the state’s 2018 social studies revisions, but ultimately officials were able to complete a set everyone could live with. That is getting harder.

“In the past I feel like we could have disagreements, and even really intense disagreements, but in the end, it wasn’t a zero-sum game,” Waller said. “We felt like we had something bigger that we were responsible for.”

Critical race theory—originally an academic tool for analyzing how racism manifests in public policy—has morphed into a catch-all term wielded by critics of districts’ efforts to rid schools of systemic racism.

Since the topic exploded in the national discourse last year, a media frenzy has focused on sensational incidents, like reductive diversity trainings for administrators on “white supremacy culture”; a handful of fired teachers and principals who led controversial lessons about racism; and, most recently, on the removal of books written by Black authors from school libraries dealing with themes of racism.

Those are important stories. But states’ revisions to history standards have attracted far less attention, even though they stand to affect millions more students.

Unlike education expectations in reading, science, or math, history standards serve a unique civic function. They are the starting point for textbooks—the narratives that make up most students’ first, and often only, introduction to the American story. In theory, the discipline also gives students an introduction to the tools historians use to interrogate, question, and revise those narratives.

Crafting these K-12 standards is by definition a normative process. It demands that states reach consensus about what students should know. And implicitly, the standards either help tee up—or elide—the difficult and subjective question about the extent to which our country’s practices have matched its ideals.

That question is especially relevant for K-12 students, who are now 54 percent Asian, Black, Latino, and Native American. Where—and how—are these students reflected in this complex story? What does their inclusion or erasure mean for their understanding of who they are as Americans? To what extent should K-12 teaching reflect academic scholarship, which has produced increasingly rich insights over the past three decades about cultural history, especially the experiences of women, Black Americans, and immigrants?

States update teaching standards—the key guide for the content and skills that teachers must cover—about once every seven years. Teachers are legally and professionally obligated to cover these standards, which are usually drafted by panels of teachers, content experts, and lay people. The public also offers feedback before final versions are adopted by state boards of education. …Read more

To illustrate these complex issues, take one representative standard currently under debate in Louisiana in grade 7. The standard, a broad one, directs teachers to explain events and ideas in U.S. history between 1789 and 1877, “including, but not limited to, the Whiskey Rebellion, Indian Removal Act, Fugitive Slavery [sic] Act, Reconstruction amendments.”

As currently written, the standard highlights uneven progress towards true participation in the American democratic experiment. But several commentators in the state suggested replacing those examples with touchstones emphasizing expansion and enfranchisement, though mainly of white Americans: “Jacksonian democracy, Texan independence, Manifest Destiny, and Reconstruction,” they wrote.

What the state standards address also has huge implications for the type of instruction teachers deliver. The current political climate means few teachers are likely to put their careers on the line to go beyond the text of the standards. In some 14 states, officials have passed vaguely worded laws or regulations that constrain how teachers can talk about race and gender. Administrators have largely advised frightened and confused teachers by the mantra: Keep to the standards.

“Teachers are not going to stick their neck out to teach something they think they ethically should talk about, but isn’t going to be assessed,” said Walters-Rauenhorst. “There’s no upside for them.”

EdWeek selected the three states—Louisiana, South Dakota, and New Mexico—for analysis because all three issued at least one draft set of standards in 2021, and received public feedback on that draft.

Other states in the beginning of rewriting their standards are already starting to see the same sort of contention. Minnesota, midway through its own process, has faced tensions over an ethnic-studies portion of its standards; in Mississippi, legislators filed a bill in November to outlaw critical race theory just weeks before the state education department posted a history draft for review….

LOUISIANA: A CRT Reckoning Awaits

Image of a proposed Louisiana standard.

One by one, the commentators stood up at a June public meeting, one of three that the standards-writing committee held to present updates. And one by one, they condemned the state’s draft history standards for purportedly including critical race theory or indoctrinating students.

A typical example: “There is no reason to make students feel guilty,” one speaker said. “We should teach the good things about this country.”

Another: “If you want to continue to talk about slavery, [you should] go to China now…”

Now it’s unclear what will happen to the draft, which is set to be taken up by the state board of education in March.

“I went to law school; I learned critical race theory in law school; I have a Ph.D. This is not something we use in K-12,” said Belinda Cambre, a social studies instructor at a lab school located at Louisiana State University who contributed to the draft. “Really the whole issue saddened me more than anything else, that it could be so weaponized to turn people against talk of diversity.”

The criticism took its toll. Even before the Louisiana department opened up an online public-comment portal, the writers had made significant changes in response to the bruising June feedback.

By August, they had removed the word “equitable” from one kindergarten standard. (That word, along with “equity,” is considered shorthand by some critics for critical race theory.)

Some revisions reframed a standard in a more optimistic way: One in the high school civics course originally called for students to “examine issues of inequity in the United States with respect to traditionally marginalized groups.” In its rewritten form, it calls on them to “analyze the progression and expansion of civil rights, liberties, social and economic equality, and opportunities for groups experiencing discrimination.”

By far, the most substantive revision to the draft was the deletion of one of the overarching skills for students—meant to be embedded across the grade levels and courses—called “taking informed action.”

This thread aimed to get students to take civic action to address classroom, school, and community problems—they might, for example, brainstorm ways to reduce waste or prevent bullying at school. Now, the entire practice has been removed—an irony, given the robust civic participation by those Louisianans who showed up to critique the draft at the June meeting….

Louisiana’s board-appointed State Superintendent Cade Brumley, a former social studies teacher, wrote in a July op-ed that the standards should strike a balance between critique and patriotism, but should not include critical race theory, which he defined as “suggest[ing] America was intentionally founded on racism, oppression, supremacy.” By October, he said that he could not recommend the draft as written.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, Equity, History, Lies, Louisiana

Peter Greene: How to Report Your Teacher to Governor Youngkin’s Stasi

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2022 //
15

Governor Youngkin invited parents to report the names of teachers who are violating the state’s vague and ill-defined law banning the teaching of “divisive concepts,” critical race theory, and anything else any parents object to.

Peter Greene describes the creative responses of respondents. Responses to an email address can come from anywhere, not just Virginia. You too can write to Youngkin’s Stasi.

Anyone can send their reports to the tip line email:

helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov

Greene writes:

But of course you know what else happened next. The tip line has apparently been hit with a variety of reports, like a complaint that Albus Dumbledor “was teaching that full blooded wizards discriminated against mudbloods.” Some of this has been goaded on Twitter by folks like human rights lawyer Qasim Rasgid. And John Legend correctly pointed out that under the guidelines of the decree, Black parents could legitimately complain about Black history being silenced (because, as sometimes escapes the notice of anti-CRT warriors, some parents are Black). Ditto for LGBTQ parents.

Greene also includes a useful list of questions to answer if you write the Governor: like, “who was your favorite teacher and what did they teach?”

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Stupid, Virginia
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »