Stop Bannning Books & Teach CRT

 

Yesterday Heather Cox Richardson’s Letter From An American made an impact on me.  She wrote about how education has changed over time and is changing again.  I read the book 1619 so I was aware that enslaved people were legally forbidden to read and write.  Why? Because Nat Turner, an educated black man, led a rebellion that failed but scared the bejesus out of whites in the south.  Over time, freed slaves and their children could go to segregated schools.

Segregated schools stayed in place until 1954, the year I was born.  The Supreme Court decided that segregated schools were unconstitutional, violating the rights of black children and their parents.

When I went to school, I learned about early cultures: Egyptian, Greek and Roman.  As I got older, we learned early European history: the Plague, Renaissance, Reformation.  By high school, we were learning about U.S. History, up to just after the Revolution.  We didn’t learn a single thing about the cultures of history of people living in the US.

Sometimes there would be an event so cataclysmic, we had to discuss it: assassinations of Rev Dr Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy are a prime example.  We’d talk about the war in Viet Nam, Kent State, and protests across the country.  We’d even dissect songs: did Mother Mary in Let It Be refer to the Madonna or to marijuana?  Was Puff the Magic Dragon a drug song?  What was American Pie really about?

When I was a sophomore, the entire 10^th grade class was housed in what used to be another school.  The reason was the high school had become overcrowded and there was no room for us.  Our English teacher wanted to start a school newspaper for the Annex and I was one of several who wanted to write articles.  The teacher said we could name our paper and we chose Western annexes Rapper. 

We were stunned at the next meeting when the teacher regretfully announced the administrators rejected that name because the initials spelled WAR.  That hadn’t been our intent and we were outraged.  We were forced to change the name to Western annex Wrapper Paper (WRAP).  We were disgusted and disillusioned.

Having gone down Memory Lane, now I come to the present.  About a third of the country is taking education back to the Stone Age, and students face more restrictions than I ever did.  I was able to read any book I wanted for a book report, and I read a wide variety of them.  Some of the books we were required to read in English are now banned in many of these states. 

In Florida, for example, the list of excellent books that have been banned is truly unbelievable.  Apparently, students are not allowed to learn anything that is not WASPy (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) and straight.  God forbid they should hear or read anything to do with systemic racism in this country, about slavery, about indigenous people being cheated of their land, about internment of Japanese-American people during WWII, antisemitism, different sexual identities.  Teachers have to provide a list of every single book they have in their rooms before they’re allowed to access books for the entire class to read.

 

Although one excuse is that children shouldn’t feel “uncomfortable”, the real point is that these states seem to want to be white only, no one else welcome.  I feel sorry for the kids in those states.  They’re going to have a skewed view of the world before they graduate high school.

I can’t imagine being a teacher in one of those states.  I wouldn’t put up with it.  That would be a deal breaker and I would move to a more rational state—especially if I had school age children.  I have been reading about teachers resigning because of these new restrictions.  In FL, the governor is making crazy exceptions to teacher education because there's such a shortage of qualified teachers.  He's allowing people in the classroom who don't have degrees yet. 

I read about what the state legislatures in these red states are passing and what their governors are promoting and I think: are we in the Upside Down?  This looks like my country but it sure as hell is not.  There is a scary evil pervading those states.  They remind me of Vecna’s tentacles and it’s really important we VOTE to stop the spread.