"Culture Wars" as They Unfold Throughout the U.S.

 Not sure how much of the so-called "culture wars" have reached uber-woke Seattle but I do wonder from school to school if there have been issues. 

Here's a good article from The Washington Post, complete with map of laws passed because of the arguing over what gets to be said or not said in schools. 

Over the past three academic years, 25 states have passed 64 laws reshaping what students can learn and do at school.

Over the past three academic years, legislators in 45 states proposed 283 laws that either sought:

• to restrict what teachers can say about race, racism and American history; 
• to change how instructors can teach about gender identity, sexuality and LGBTQ issues; 
• to boost parents’ rights over their children’s education; 
• to limit students’ access to school libraries and books;
•  to circumscribe the rights of transgender students; 
• and/or to promote what legislators defined as a “patriotic” education.

Of these, 64 bills have been signed into law across 25 states, whose populations together add to roughly 42 percent of all Americans.

Most of the legislation, in every category The Post identified, is restrictive in nature, erecting guardrails around what students can learn, read and do at school.

As a result, many teachers have begun to self-censor in school, The Post has reported, restricting what they say about race and the darker parts of U.S. history.

Without clicking through and looking at the map, try to guess how most of those states lean. Yup, red states. And hey, look at that - my state, Arizona, looks to have passed the second-most number. Sigh.

A plurality of the passed laws, 42 percent, bar transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identities, The Post found. Laws limiting instruction on race, racism and history make up 28 percent of all passed laws. Legislation that restricts what teachers can discuss related to gender identity, sexuality and LGBTQ issues accounts for 23 percent of the passed laws. It is often up to state education agencies and school districts how to enforce the new provisions.

Of all the categories of culture-war education legislation included in The Post analysis, bills targeting transgender students’ participation in sports had the highest pass rate, with 60 percent of the 45 bills proposed in this category becoming law. 

I have noticed this trend on Twitter that many districts are rushing to define who gets to play on what team. We might be talking about this when I get to my promised post on gender in K-12 education. This is one issue I struggle with because I have read differing accounts of whether transgendered boys are actually stronger/faster than girls. 

A huge part of this growth in these types of laws is around "parents' rights." Parents should be able to demand any number of rights and accommodations such as to paralyze many districts.

The burst of education laws around cultural and societal issues is unprecedented, said Houman Harouni, a Harvard lecturer who studies education. It suggests that both political parties in America are doubling down on the culture war, he said, using the education laws to signal their values to voters: While Republicans are proposing and passing the measures, Democrats are loudly opposing them.

Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, swept to the Virginia governorship in 2021 by campaigning to change education and give parents more control over lesson plans, Pondiscio said. Politicians everywhere sat up and took notice.

“So now, there’s a sense among some conservatives that pushing this kind of legislation can actually win over swing voters,” Pondiscio said. “A sense that attacking public education is an electoral winner.”

Gotta say that last sentence makes me very upset. Public education used to be a shining light in this country; a place where every kid could get a shot to move up. But now, public education is denigrated and criticized almost beyond belief. 

Here's one example of a law, this one passed in Georgia:

Prohibits certain ways of teaching about race, including that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently or consciously racist or oppressive” and that “'an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, should feel anguish, guilt, or any other form of psychological distress.”

There are two parts to that law and both are wrong. I think the structure of American life may be the reason why white people should see how white people generally make out better than people of color. That may get reinforced at home but I think that the many areas of American life that kids come in contact with might tell them that even if mom or dad are not around. 

The second problem is the idea that, by telling the whole truth about American history, kids are going to feel "anguish, guilt or any other form of psychological distress" due to their race. American history is FULL of distress and yes, some of it is at the hands of one race to others. But I still have faith in teachers to be able to convey this information without judgment and certainly in a sensitive fashion. As well, kids can feel guilt for all kinds of reasons. I recall learning more about slavery in the U.S. in high school and being very shocked at all of the manifestations and crying (at home) about it. Did I feel guilty as a mostly-white person? No, I just felt very sad that ANYONE would treat other human beings like that. I suspect that many students might feel the same way and have simple human empathy towards others. 

I am fascinated by this from a teacher interviewed for the article:

MacRae, who is now running as a Republican for state Senate on a platform of “transparency,” said the history lessons of today — particularly those touching on slavery and the oppression of Native Americans — spend too much time rehashing sorrow and suffering, an emphasis she believes will weaken and depress students of color.

“Yes, we need to educate everybody and acknowledge the truths, but we also need to recognize that we need to move past it,” said MacRae, who is White. “There’s got to be a better way to acknowledge, move on, then make a stronger person.”

 I would be interested to see the lesson plan that MacRae, a former teacher, would have that would cover slavery in the U.S. and the destruction of Native American life by colonists. Where is the line for educating versus too much "rehashing?"

From a Missouri state elected John Wiemann has to say:

“Thomas Jefferson, yeah he owned slaves, absolutely. But he was also a great person. And now, I mean, they are wanting to make him to be a bad guy,” Wiemann said. “We have to stop this, [and] I do believe something will pass. Eventually.”

I'm thinking Mr. Wiemann did not see Hamilton. To me, the beauty of Hamilton is that it shows the men who started this country as what they were - smart, brave, petty, ambitious, and deeply flawed human beings. They were willing to give their lives to start this country and that should not ever be forgotten. They wrote a constitution that is admired and yet they left out women and people of color. Are they bad guys or good guys?

Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute said: 

Pondiscio said he believes these measures are a necessary corrective to the recent sway that progressives have achieved in education, partly by training teachers to act as agents of social justice who encourage children to make the world a more equal place. A growing movement of conservative parents, politicians and pundits believe educators should remain focused on basic academics, Pondiscio said, and leave societal and cultural issues to parents.

I haven't been to a teaching college; are they really churning out social justice advocates? And what basics? On Twitter I have encountered parents who don't want SEL taught. It's makes me just want to shake them and ask, "What the heck did you think you were getting taught when you were in school (but without a label to it)?" We were all being taught:

- sharing

- wait your turn

- be kind

- don't laugh at others with disabilities

- acting as a collective instead of just one person

And that sure looks like SEL to me. Why does a label make it bad? I even had parents say on Twitter, "Well, I'll teach them at a home," First, it'll be a heck of a lot more useful to teach about being in a group when your kid is actually IN a group. Second, we have always looked to schools as places that help parents with social learning. 

But Keri Rodrigues, president of education advocacy group the National Parents Union, said the flood of legislation is actually not what most parents want right now, as schoolchildren nationwide struggle to recover from a coronavirus pandemic that inflicted major academic, emotional and mental harm. She pointed out that national test scores in elementary school math and reading plummeted this fall to levels not seen in decades.

Mothers and fathers are terrified that “our children don’t know how to read and write,” she said. A September Gallup poll found that less than half of Americans — 42 percent — are satisfied with the quality of the nation’s K-12 schooling, marking the lowest score in that category in two decades. The leading reason for dissatisfaction was concern over a lack of rigor in curriculum or teaching methods, Gallup found.

“We’re watching kids fall through the cracks in real time,” Rodrigues said, “while letting ourselves get distracted by this deeply political conversation that does nothing to get our kids where they need to be. It's a tragedy."

It's a very good point by Ms Rodrigues because these culture wars really only serve political issues, not public education. And if we to continue to divide our country even more, this is just one more crack to try to exploit. I wish parents saw that.