Unfortunately there is presently no way to watch The One and Only Dick Gregory that does not require a subscription. My wife and I watched it on Showtime cable last night. I heartily recommend it as a true story of Independence Day celebration. After all, independence is not just a day, but a way of life for some such as Dick Gregory or a way of death for others such as Medgar Evers and MLK.
What is the purpose of a liberal education? This is the question at the heart of a bitter debate that has been roiling the nation for months.
Schools, particularly at the kindergarten-to-12th-grade level, are responsible for helping turn students into well-informed and discerning citizens. At their best, our nation’s schools equip young minds to grapple with complexity and navigate our differences. At their worst, they resemble indoctrination factories.
In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.
Tennessee House Bill SB 0623, for example, bans any teaching that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” In addition to this vague proscription, it restricts teaching that leads to “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people.”
Texas House Bill 3979 goes further, forbidding teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States.” It also bars any classroom from requiring “an understanding of the 1619 Project” — The New York Times Magazine’s special issue devoted to a reframing of the nation’s founding — and hence prohibits assigning any part of it as required reading.
These initiatives have been marketed as “anti-critical race theory” laws. We, the authors of this essay, have wide ideological divergences on the explicit targets of this legislation. Some of us are deeply influenced by the academic discipline of critical race theory and its critique of racist structures and admire the 1619 Project. Some of us are skeptical of structural racist explanations and racial identity itself, and disagree with the mission and methodology of the 1619 Project. We span the ideological spectrum: a progressive, a moderate, a libertarian and a conservative.
It is because of these differences that we here join together, as we are united in one overarching concern: the danger posed by these laws to liberal education.
The laws differ in some respects but generally agree on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” because of one’s race or ancestry, as well as restricting teaching that subsequent generations have any kind of historical responsibility for actions of previous generations. They attempt various carve outs for the “impartial teaching” of the history of oppression of groups. But it’s hard to see how these attempts are at all consistent with demands to avoid discomfort. These measures would, by way of comparison, make Germany’s uncompromising and successful approach to teaching about the Holocaust illegal, as part of its goal is to infuse them with some sense of the weight of the past, and (famously) lead many German students to feel “anguish” about their ancestry.
Indeed, the very act of learning history in a free and multiethnic society is inescapably fraught. Any accurate teaching of any country’s history could make some of its citizens feel uncomfortable (or even guilty) about the past. To deny this necessary consequence of education is, to quote W.E.B. Du Bois, to transform “history into propaganda.” …
… In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.
Tennessee House Bill SB 0623, for example, bans any teaching that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” In addition to this vague proscription, it restricts teaching that leads to “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people.”
Texas House Bill 3979 goes further, forbidding teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States.” It also bars any classroom from requiring “an understanding of the 1619 Project” — The New York Times Magazine’s special issue devoted to a reframing of the nation’s founding — and hence prohibits assigning any part of it as required reading.
These initiatives have been marketed as “anti-critical race theory” laws. …
What is the purpose of a liberal education? This is the question at the heart of a bitter debate that has been roiling the nation for months.
Schools, particularly at the kindergarten-to-12th-grade level, are responsible for helping turn students into well-informed and discerning citizens. At their best, our nation’s schools equip young minds to grapple with complexity and navigate our differences. At their worst, they resemble indoctrination factories. …
These initiatives have been marketed as “anti-critical race theory” laws. We, the authors of this essay, have wide ideological divergences on the explicit targets of this legislation. Some of us are deeply influenced by the academic discipline of critical race theory and its critique of racist structures and admire the 1619 Project. Some of us are skeptical of structural racist explanations and racial identity itself, and disagree with the mission and methodology of the 1619 Project. We span the ideological spectrum: a progressive, a moderate, a libertarian and a conservative.
It is because of these differences that we here join together, as we are united in one overarching concern: the danger posed by these laws to liberal education.
The laws differ in some respects but generally agree on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” because of one’s race or ancestry, as well as restricting teaching that subsequent generations have any kind of historical responsibility for actions of previous generations. …
Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley and Thomas Chatterton Williams
The authors are a cross-partisan group of thinkers who have
written extensively about authoritarianism, liberalism and free speech.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The “class bias” that I remember best from public school was regarding the economics of the investors’ capital gains preference, which extolled the virtues of asset trading to insure the correct pricing by the genius of markets while eschewing the holding of securities for the purpose of income in the form of interest or dividends. This was taught side by side with economies of scale. I rebelled against this thinking as a high school senior in 1967 also noticing that monopoly fears had taken a back seat in the absence of a Roosevelt as POTUS. Perhaps Orange County, VA, was not far enough south for all that lost cause bravado. Racism was never centric to the cause of corporate America and big finance although it did serve as a convenient misdirection at times.
I haven’t seen much national coverage of recent Arizona state government actions. The same folks that brought us the Cyber Ninja’s election audit have now passed a massive tax cut for high income Arizona residents.
In 2020 the Arizona electorate passed by initiative a tax increase on high income Arizona taxpayers. The initiative (Prop 208) added a 3.5% surcharge.
Last week the Republican legislators and Republican governor essentially bypassed the citizen initiative. Here’s an article in US News and World Report that explains:
I think it might be a little naive to expect public schools to teach an unbiased view of American history or politics.
The schools I went to taught a sanitized version of history etc …actually tending to make us better than we would have been without the ideals implicit in the story as they told it. By the time we were in high school most of us figured out we weren’t getting the whole story.
On the other hand, the schools did teach us the tools we needed to learn the truth if we wanted to. I’m not sure you can get better than that. Trying too hard to teach kids “the whole truth” defeats itself, and runs the risk of being just as oppressive as when our political enemies try to teach their “truth.”
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Text book publishers lay the foundation of elite bias in the education system, but it is the local school boards that get to select the particulars for their own district that they want to have promulgated via the pedagogy. The text book publishers essentially give the localities a menu from which to choose leaving no stone unturned in the quest for profits monetized from local privileged classes. I would not lose any sleep worrying that this system would often resolve itself with deep soul searching for truth. There is far too much money to be made by other avenues from blatant social pandering to shilling for Wall Street depending upon one’s zip code. Blatant social pandering can be acquired in both chocolate and vanilla, but shilling for Wall Street only comes in mint green.
I’m glad you said that. someone had to. But I don’t think you are saying anything I would disagree with.
I was only pointing out that we really can’t expect anything else. But it might surprise you to learn that when I worked as a scab during a school strike I discoverd the textbook for the geometry class I was supposed to teach was worthless. Big book, glossy pages, three colors of ink, photographs and biographies of famous mathematicians, and even worked exercises, and a separate teachers’ edition with instructions for how to teach each subject, inluding how long to give to each lesson.
I decided to teach the kids the way I was taught…though i did not have a plain paper and ink book that laid out the postulates and axioms and then showed a few sample easy proofs, and then offered a large number of harder proofs “for the student.” No frills.
The kids got it. I told the county supervisor about my success. She told me to “teach it our way or don’t teach it at all.” [“our way” includes teaching first graders “the commutative law of addition.” This is worthless and a waste of time, and probably confuses and alienates very young children who are happier when they are actually learning stuff. I didn’t learn about “the commutative law” until college, by which time I had a fairly deep understanding of the fact that you could add two numbers without worrying about which one you looked at first. I learned “the commutative law” in about 2.5 milliseconds, and the rest of “foundations of mathematics” in good time… most of which I had to forget about if I wanted to get anything done, though I did enjoy doing a few “foundations” proofs for the fun of it.]
I feel sorry for kids in math classes, because there is no easy way for them to learn outside of class…unless they are the very few who really love the stuff. Political matters on the other hand always have other voices in other rooms to tell them about the lies and left outs of the politically approved textbooks and classroom “discussions.” Or at least they do have if all the books haven’t been burned and the liberals run out of town.
one reason i am a little dismayed to see “liberals” adopt the methods of the insane right.
Unfortunately there is presently no way to watch The One and Only Dick Gregory that does not require a subscription. My wife and I watched it on Showtime cable last night. I heartily recommend it as a true story of Independence Day celebration. After all, independence is not just a day, but a way of life for some such as Dick Gregory or a way of death for others such as Medgar Evers and MLK.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/opinion/we-disagree-on-a-lot-of-things-except-the-danger-of-anti-critical-race-theory-laws.html?smid=tw-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/opinion/we-disagree-on-a-lot-of-things-except-the-danger-of-anti-critical-race-theory-laws.html?smid=tw-share
(‘Stirring up trouble’ can only be a bad thing.)
Public schools lend new meaning to “class bias.”
The “class bias” that I remember best from public school was regarding the economics of the investors’ capital gains preference, which extolled the virtues of asset trading to insure the correct pricing by the genius of markets while eschewing the holding of securities for the purpose of income in the form of interest or dividends. This was taught side by side with economies of scale. I rebelled against this thinking as a high school senior in 1967 also noticing that monopoly fears had taken a back seat in the absence of a Roosevelt as POTUS. Perhaps Orange County, VA, was not far enough south for all that lost cause bravado. Racism was never centric to the cause of corporate America and big finance although it did serve as a convenient misdirection at times.
I haven’t seen much national coverage of recent Arizona state government actions. The same folks that brought us the Cyber Ninja’s election audit have now passed a massive tax cut for high income Arizona residents.
In 2020 the Arizona electorate passed by initiative a tax increase on high income Arizona taxpayers. The initiative (Prop 208) added a 3.5% surcharge.
Last week the Republican legislators and Republican governor essentially bypassed the citizen initiative. Here’s an article in US News and World Report that explains:
Arizona Governor Signs $12.8 Billion Budget With Big Tax Cut | Arizona News | US News
I think it might be a little naive to expect public schools to teach an unbiased view of American history or politics.
The schools I went to taught a sanitized version of history etc …actually tending to make us better than we would have been without the ideals implicit in the story as they told it. By the time we were in high school most of us figured out we weren’t getting the whole story.
On the other hand, the schools did teach us the tools we needed to learn the truth if we wanted to. I’m not sure you can get better than that. Trying too hard to teach kids “the whole truth” defeats itself, and runs the risk of being just as oppressive as when our political enemies try to teach their “truth.”
Coberly,
Text book publishers lay the foundation of elite bias in the education system, but it is the local school boards that get to select the particulars for their own district that they want to have promulgated via the pedagogy. The text book publishers essentially give the localities a menu from which to choose leaving no stone unturned in the quest for profits monetized from local privileged classes. I would not lose any sleep worrying that this system would often resolve itself with deep soul searching for truth. There is far too much money to be made by other avenues from blatant social pandering to shilling for Wall Street depending upon one’s zip code. Blatant social pandering can be acquired in both chocolate and vanilla, but shilling for Wall Street only comes in mint green.
Ron
I’m glad you said that. someone had to. But I don’t think you are saying anything I would disagree with.
I was only pointing out that we really can’t expect anything else. But it might surprise you to learn that when I worked as a scab during a school strike I discoverd the textbook for the geometry class I was supposed to teach was worthless. Big book, glossy pages, three colors of ink, photographs and biographies of famous mathematicians, and even worked exercises, and a separate teachers’ edition with instructions for how to teach each subject, inluding how long to give to each lesson.
I decided to teach the kids the way I was taught…though i did not have a plain paper and ink book that laid out the postulates and axioms and then showed a few sample easy proofs, and then offered a large number of harder proofs “for the student.” No frills.
The kids got it. I told the county supervisor about my success. She told me to “teach it our way or don’t teach it at all.” [“our way” includes teaching first graders “the commutative law of addition.” This is worthless and a waste of time, and probably confuses and alienates very young children who are happier when they are actually learning stuff. I didn’t learn about “the commutative law” until college, by which time I had a fairly deep understanding of the fact that you could add two numbers without worrying about which one you looked at first. I learned “the commutative law” in about 2.5 milliseconds, and the rest of “foundations of mathematics” in good time… most of which I had to forget about if I wanted to get anything done, though I did enjoy doing a few “foundations” proofs for the fun of it.]
I feel sorry for kids in math classes, because there is no easy way for them to learn outside of class…unless they are the very few who really love the stuff. Political matters on the other hand always have other voices in other rooms to tell them about the lies and left outs of the politically approved textbooks and classroom “discussions.” Or at least they do have if all the books haven’t been burned and the liberals run out of town.
one reason i am a little dismayed to see “liberals” adopt the methods of the insane right.