Public Education Under Attack

“You don’t have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.”

Conservatives are now saying the quiet parts out loud. 

I have something to say and loudly - Public education IS the backbone of this nation. Destroy that and you will destroy this country and its greatness. And demeaning and demoralizing and demonizing the very people who provide the teaching and learning to American students is a hateful way to start the process. 

Here's what I've been seeing and reading about nationally in public education and the view from the Right.

From Nashville Channel 5:

Hidden-camera video obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates reveals a recent closed-door reception with Tennessee's governor and a key education ally who repeatedly mocks the intelligence of public school teachers and questions whether they really care about what is best for their students. 

 

That ally, Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Michigan's ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, also takes aim at diversity efforts in higher education, claiming people in those positions have education degrees because they are "easy" and "you don't have to know anything." 

 

Among Arnn's provocative remarks:“The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country." 

 

We are going to try to demonstrate that you don't have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.” 

 

The governor, Bill Lee, said zero to contradict any of the statements that Arnn made. That is grade A level disrespect for his state's entire K-12 teaching corps AND those who help shape new teachers.  I wonder how many charter school and private school teachers in Tennessee went through a teaching program at a college or university.

Let's talk about Hillsdale College which has quickly become the darlings of right-wing public education. (I will be examining what this idea of" classical education" that Hillsdale pushes in a separate post.) 

From Salon (bold mine):

The school under discussion that night wasn't a regular public school. It was a recently-launched charter called the Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA), which is funded with taxpayer money but follows a private school-like curriculum centered "on the history and cultural achievements of Western civilization" and an ambiguous mission to instill "virtue."

But OCCA isn't only a school, or even a network of schools. It's just one facet of a national movement driven by the vision and curriculum of Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in southern Michigan that has quietly become one of the most influential entities in conservative politics.

For decades, 1,500-student Hillsdale College — a liberal arts school in rural southern Michigan, founded by Baptist abolitionists in 1844 — has been known as a "citadel of conservatism." For a small liberal arts school, it has amassed an astonishing endowment of more than $900 million. It describes itself as "a trustee of modern man's intellectual and spiritual inheritance from the Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman culture." Vanity Fair described the college as "a feeder school for the Trump administration.

The college has become a leading force in promoting a conservative and overtly Christian reading of American history and the U.S. Constitution. It opposes progressive education reforms in general and contemporary scholarship on inequality in particular. It has featured lectures describing the Jan. 6 insurrection as a hoax and Vladimir Putin as a "hero to populist conservatives around the world."

If you thought that Donald Trump's 1776 Commission — a jingoistic alternative to the New York Times' "1619 Project" that was roundly panned by historians — died with his presidency, that effort is now being amplified and exported, on a massive scale, around the country. If you wonder what conservatives hope to install in place of the books they're trying to ban, the answer often lies in Hillsdale's freely-licensed curricula.

Yes, you read that correctly; the "classical" curriculum that Hillsdale creates is free.

Given its record, a Hillsdale-led curriculum fight in Michigan would likely hit several themes, including some already percolating in Lansing:

• Loosening teacher training standards.

• Bans on teaching critical race theory. 

• Reframing the role of the nation’s founders in perpetuating the slave trade. 

• Restrictions around discussions of race or gender identity. 

• And a more Western and Classical focus in reading material. 

 As Hillsdale's president himself likes to say, "Teaching is our trade; also, I confess, it's our weapon."

This ties in nicely with the attacks on school districts allegedly using CRT in their teaching. As the Right does with most things, they have distorted CRT into being code for teaching ALL of American history (i.e. Washington and Jefferson, for all the good things they did to bring this country to life, did some astonishingly bad things.) There is this notion that if students are told the unvarnished truth, then they will plum go out of their little minds. Not to mention, there goes American Exceptionalism. 

As well, the distortion of CRT extends to equity initiatives. Because, don't you know, everything has been fixed so everything is equal so why are POC complaining? Because equality and equity are not the same things. Because equity is not pie with a set number of pieces; we can have equity without upending all of society. But for those on the Right, saying everything is equal even if only on paper and ignoring hard truths makes it easier to go to church on Sundays. 

This constant distorting, misusing of language and out and out lying from the Right is exhausting. But maybe that's the point. 

It's not just teachers because we also have book banning and attacks on librarians. From the Lucid blog written by Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Across the country, librarians in school and municipal libraries feel that knife being turned. Activist parents, sometimes working in conjunction with GOP politicians or right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty, are waging an authoritarian-style assault on libraries and librarians.

Who are the "Moms for Liberty?" A right-wing bunch of bullies.  Google them and you'll see; I have no need to link to their nonsense. 

School and public libraries also have long provided refuge to people of all ages with difficult home situations, and librarians can become trusted mentors and guides.

The goal is not just to create a hostile work environment for library staff, but also to pressure administrators to submit to corrupt tactics such as banning books on spurious grounds and accepting slanderous speech used against their colleagues.

For right-wing parents and politicians aren't just going after books. They are also personally attacking library employees as "groomers" who encourage inappropriate behaviors and relationships with children.

Associating LGBTQ individuals and their allies with pedophilia is an established strategy among the global right, including in Viktor Orban's Hungary.

One good piece of news: 

Luckily, the digitization of books makes it hard for total bans on content for children to stick. The Brooklyn Public Library's Books UnBanned program offers a free library card to people aged 13 to 21 across the U.S. so they can check out books digitally.