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Who’s Teaching at Your School?
This tweet a couple of days ago from a teacher attracted a lot of attention:
“So, this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators – parents, siblings, etc – in the same room. We’ll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse. What does this do for our equity/inclusion work?”
It prompted a long thread of responses from teachers across the country about how to get around what they saw as the clearly negative influence of parents in order to indoctrinate their students. And the responses showed that this was not about teaching our common humanity and treating each other with respect, but rather how to instill race consciousness, disable students’ ability to think for themselves, and to increase resentment, guilt, and divisiveness. It also tells you they know how outraged most parents would be if they knew what their children were being taught.
The reason I have not linked the tweet is that the thread eventually drew wider attention and received a massive dose of outrage, causing the writer to protect his twitter feed and is now unavailable to anyone not following him.
Woke educational philosophy has begun to permeate K-12 education, not just colleges. I no longer have children of school age and our grandson is not near entering school, but if I had a child in K-12 today, I would do a social media search on every one of their teachers and if I found stuff like this would raise a public fuss and try to mobilize other parents. I’d also take a close look at the school curriculum.
Published in General
That’s it. That’s not all that ranty.
Well, my caps lock is broken.
To cut to the chase: Conservatives had better organize to lobby state legislatures & governors to help homeschooling, classical schools–all the educational alternatives preferred by conservatives.
Also, to create education schools to give conservatives the teachers they need.
To creates universities to create new elites who didn’t have to go to liberal elite institutions.
& to bully rich conservatives & Republicans into paying for all this.
TBA (View Comment):
Warning: Potential Rant
What has changed is that the idea of teaching the best tools and information that will make useful adults has been infiltrated and hollowed out for purposes of creating a new sensibility for the future.
Certainly schools have always taught citizenship and insisted on moral and ethical behavior from students.
But they are making up definitions of ‘citizen’, ‘moral’, and ‘ethic’ from a semi-secret ethos that is often in opposition to that of the country at large.
And it has worked, and is working. We are not who we are in part because we have been taught that we are something else.
That’s how the game is played; that is why religious inculcation, Pledge of Allegiance, Cub Scout oaths and so much more. We give children ideals and they work to attain greatness on that basis.
What are the ideals that our children are marinating in now?
Whether children have always been rebellious or not, they are more so now, because they are being raised by their State family where all the cool kids live.
And we pay to have this done to them and to us.
That’s it. That’s not all that ranty.
My first grader in French public school had a folder labeled “moralité et la vie civique”. She drew pictures of the flag, identified the President and Prime Minister, wrote out the country motto, sings the national song… hard to imagine this in the US right now.
Oh, their mother leaves Frankl’s book lying around in strategic locations, but they haven’t picked it up yet. Part of the issue is the distractions in their lives. They were on Japan time last night and this morning waiting for a new game release. Their parents just haven’t the heart to deny them their distractions. Life is hard. Have you noticed?
I think you’re wrong about “genetics,” Henry. In fact, I know it. I was a pretty committed atheist for the first half of my adulthood — part of that engineering brain, everything must be explainable and explained thing. I thought it’d have to be a lightening bolt zap to convince me. Instead, it was a slow, very gradual acceptance of my own limitations — of the gradual realization that I might, shockingly, have been wrong about the whole God proposition. And, yeah, I started to be convinced by appeals to authority. If Wm F. Buckley was a believer. . .?
They sound like solid people. My experience with religiously raised people (speaking as a non-religiously raised person) is that they return to it as a resource and comfort. Perhaps they take it for granted during their youth but it will be there when they need it. My husband has returned to his Catholic roots.
So there were some really interesting things in the podcast, @titustechera. However, I do think in the beginning that there is a misunderstanding about why the liberal arts are shrinking in the country, though you touch more on this in a round about way towards the later part of the interview.
While it is true that there is a stress on vocation in colleges now, there will always be students who want to study the liberal arts. This is for the same reason that your guest is right about a true liberal arts education not being as expensive as STEM. There will always be teachers who want to work in these fields and who will do it for less money. There is a deep yearning for the connections one can make with one’s fellow man. This is, actually, why I teach history. I find great joy in the work.
However, students don’t pursue certain degrees now because when they try, they find such corruption within them that they flee.
What do I mean by this?
My son took a lit course as an undergraduate at a major university in Texas. Somehow the professor steered the discussion to Jar Jar Binks being a parody of black people; the trope is that racism colors all of Western culture.
When I put together my final project for my first masters–English education–I had to redo it.
Why?
My work centered around teaching dystopian literature to high schoolers, so I started with Ray Bradbury, moved to George Orwell, and finished with Suzanne Collins. I was told this was absolutely unacceptable. My professor said something like she would not allow me to graduate by highlighting “majority” voices with no “diversity.” I pointed out that I was concerned with the books, not the writers.
Ver-bode-en!!!!
I redid the project with a great deal of resentment. No joy.
Students don’t go into the liberal arts because these are the most illiberal departments on campuses.
Additionally, I do agree that conservatives need to do something different. I would totally homeschool my kid now if he wasn’t all grown up. But to have rich conservatives, you still need them to go into business. You need them to go into law if you want to change the society. (Thank God for the Federalist Society.)
I think you are a bit hard on poor Betsy. It is not as if she has funded nothing. Perhaps she is too focused on “choice.” I get it, but it’s hard to overcome branding with new colleges.
Although the cronyism and nepotism help a lot.
Lois Lane, I sympathize with your family woes & I could tell you some of mine, but since we’re not, you know, bending each other’s ear over drinks, I’ll refrain. I know what you mean.
But I suggest you read about Jacob Howland & how the most disgusting, philistine monied Republicans destroyed the classics at Tulsa-Oklahoma. My friend Tom who mentions on the podcast an ill-fated classical education program he worked in–same deal. Philistine, destructive Republican, Christian conservatives. This happens in less dramatic or outrageous manner more than you think. Nor is the problem vocational schooling. Kids aren’t taught vocations after the liberal arts are trashed. The problem is an obsession with reducing education to a productive job with metrics that sucks the souls out of us, however much bureaucrats, administrators, & philistines like it… If it were only wokies or tenured radicals we had to fear, I’d be with you. But I know a lot of conservative academics–just look around my podcasts–including famous public intellectuals. Maybe you can trust us, the problem’s much worse than ideology, & older…
Or consider what I was saying about billionaire conservatives or Republicans who’d rather the country die than pay for a good education. The liberal arts are in a way tied with citizenship–with the dignity of being a citizen of a republic, with a notion of human greatness & the good it can do for us, & we can do for each other. It takes a long way to get there, educating kids, as you all well know, takes so long… But it’s real. But not to the rich people who lord it over us. The Republican electorate rented out the Department of Education to Betsy DeVos for chump change. She’d rather see Republicans dead, the country swallowed by the oceans rather than use those billions of hers for the public good. She could put Betsy University & DeVos University facing each other & get all the glory she could possibly want, & never miss the money, & be loved by millions. If she cared. If any of them did.
I know schools, have been to schools where some of the kids would be called white trash, if not worse–but they got a good education, they had some manners & some good habits, & the community put their money where their mouth was when they said they want to help their kids. Lots of Americans do that, though they might not show up much in the vastness of the continental nation… They are not powerless; some of them may thrive; many of us, same as these billionaires, are powerless, to say nothing worse. This is what we have to change.
It’s no use complaining that liberals trash education–that’s good for us, it means we gotta make our own education. There are red states, conservative communities, there’s money, there’s talent, there’s everything but the doing. Only those whose actions are restrained to a little place do anything–they can’t do more. Those who could do much more do nothing, or next to it.
What has been done can be done–once Americans made the great enterprise of the land grant universities happen. We can do it again, for liberal arts & the citizenship it educates, this time around. But only if we want to build more than to complain, if we feel powerful, capable, rather than impotent, & if we force people with money to serve the public good. Outsourcing the souls of our children to Silicon Valley oligarchs, I suggest, was a bad idea. We need to deal with it soon.
I do not keep as good company as you, Titus, but I know what you’re talking about with Christian conservatives and destruction of a different kind. Over years, I have seen both sides of the education-degradation coin, but I see much less destruction from the right in my own corner of academia, which is currently in Austin, TX.
Perhaps it is always the dominant ideological force that is the most destructive per OK?
As you noted in your podcast, progressives dominate academia now. One cannot even slide a moderate past hiring committees for tenure track positions. So the Left’s brand of misery seems to me more of a problem at the moment.
Keep in mind, I am also at a community college, so I am not working with the lauded elite. I have, in fact, found many students who are as bright as those who go to the “good” schools, though they have no money. I have also had many a student who didn’t really want to be in college at all and simply resented on their own that it is becoming a kind of prerequisite for more and more and more jobs, whether or not the liberal arts are good for their soul. Yet I believe my students can get a very good education if they want one where I am. (I love my little school, actually, though there are things to criticize there as anywhere else.)
I am with you when you say that communities are not powerless, and conservatives must recreate education if they have any hope for a brighter future. However, I am not willing to ascribe the bad motives–or complete lack of good motives–to the current elite.
Nor do I believe that Betsy DeVos would solve much by setting up universities bearing her name across the street from each other as long as the culture itself puts so much emphasis on brands. It takes a while to transcend the stigma of what many would see as a vanity project, even while places like Harvard discarded their missions to educate a long, long, long time ago. And I don’t think the biggest problem is in higher education anyway.
I mean… I think that we need to completely overhaul K-12 because it is such utter tosh at the moment. Perhaps DeVos could fund Catholic schools that are closing left and right because of the pandemic. That would make more sense to me than having her start a university from scratch. Kids need to learn about purpose long before they are cynical freshers who feel it’s just a party anyway apart from jumping through the hoops. They need to be formed earlier.
Here, Covid could have absolutely helped.
Perhaps one of these days, we’ll be able to have that ear-bending drink.
Geeze, Titus, it’s almost as if you’ve never heard of Hillsdale College or the Barney Charter Initiative. And, I know in a first-hand kind of way that people with money make real liberal arts education happen by supporting Hillsdale. Mr. C and I are President’s Club members in two ways: monthly donation (which goes to student scholarships) and we have Hillsdale in our wills, not to mention the tuition we pay for Elder (who also has a scholarship). In addition, I’ve spent some time on campus and overheard the money people celebrating some pretty substantial gifts to the college. President Larry Arnn is a great leader and a fundraising genius.
Hillsdale practices gentle as doves, clever as serpents citizenship training. The school definitely has a conservative presence, but is not widely known throughout the country, despite free online courses, free Imprimis publications, free CCAs to supporters, free curriculum to primary and secondary schools — all of which is made “free” by donors. Keeping a somewhat low profile and refusing all federal funds keeps Hillsdale operating without the kind of opposition they might otherwise experience from the education establishment (although their periodic accreditation requirement is a gauntlet, despite the stellar outcomes for their students). It’s what I call a “conspiracy” to educate Americans. It can be done and is being done by Hillsdale. Pray for Larry Arnn and the rest of the leadership there.
I will agree with Tituus that Hillsdale is not enough, but I am glad that good things continue to happen there. I wish I had even heard about it when I was 18.
One reason the teachers union is powerful is voters are ignorant and weak.
They fall for the propaganda: unions and teachers are essential and underpaid.
Parents who support teachers unions guarantee their children will get a subpar ‘education’.
Parents have leverage but they don’t use it. Public school teachers get paid per student and attendance. Teachers freak out if a student misses a day of school.
Imagine if 100 students are absent for one day.
Imagine if 100 students are absent for a week.
I know, WC. A bunch of professors there taught me in Claremont or we’re friends. They’re admirers of my podcasts, too, which is of course flattering, & they want to invite me over for some of their events, what with my foundation, culture, &c. Good on them–doing the Lord’s work. Back to Claremont: Prof. Arrn was there, gave us his usual most hortatory speech; also told us how bleak he sees the future.
But that’s one place. That’s one thing. Nor was it founded yesterday or even in my lifetime! What next? You have any idea how many young men ripe & ready to staff another bunch of colleges are going crazy, especially in the epidemic, because you can’t just get a college started & conservatives only care about celebrities, not educated people? What do you think those young men might learn to think about conservatism? If people keep saying “But Hillsdale,” then we don’t need to do a second one, I guess. At least, I’ve heard a lot of people saying “But Hillsdale.” & I see every year, there’s no second one in the making. Filthy reach Republicans, but there’s one Hillsdale; it’s ok? It’s not. Doesn’t classical education mean reading Aristotle’s Ethics, too? Doesn’t he say the wealthy should do great things supporting patriotism? Not in America, I guess. Only woke capital pays or exacts payment for their beliefs…
Also, you have my applause–you, too, are doing your part–goes without saying!
Lois Lane, I know what it means to not have money. Trust me on this.
Ok, don’t let’s have a grassroots movement to have billionaires talking education actually make it happen. Really, we can just keep complaining about the left’s dominance & not take that to mean, it’s urgent we mind our own business, do for ourselves. It might seem like the conservative thing to say is, be responsible for yourself & your own, private initiatives, enterprises, community. We have all we need if we start screaming about starting to do it. But maybe it’s wrong…
I think that the below link may have been referencing the teacher, whose tweet(s) started this post. I included the link because I think it’s worth a deeper dive into this guy’s brain (that is, of course, if you’d call it a brain).
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/woke-teachers-vs-parents-matthew-r-kay/
Please take a close look at the quote that leaves no doubt as to what this teacher thinks his mission is:
“…If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kids racism or homophobia or transphobia…”
Think about that: this bozo doesn’t think his job is teaching; it’s destabilizing! How was this individual allowed to come within 5 miles of a classroom?
And for those parents who object to this line of instruction?
“…sometimes, you’ve just gotta step over them…”
Make no mistake. These people are deadly serious about their mission of propaganda and indoctrination. They are so confident that they don’t even bother to hide their intentions.
All the more reason for parents to jerk their kids out of the public school system and run to the nearest charter/parochial school.
Yeah, so that means conservatives will need a lot of teachers, a lot of new institutions, a lot of help to communities & parents who want to do right by their kids. A lot of pressure on legislatures & governors to protect people, especially since many private schools will go bankrupt or any way, be in great danger, this term.
& a lot of money to get it all done.
I think that a grassroots movement is the best possibility for change, and I think that’s in motion. I mean… I don’t know, Titus. I don’t know any billionaires to pressure. I know middle class Americans who are looking for alternatives to public schools in the moment.
What am I doing that I think I can do to help others?
I am teaching history to 100+ kids every semester for less than I would make teaching high school. I am trying my very, very, very hardest to give those kids a decent foundation by pushing them to think for themselves. When it comes to education reform, I am more of a soldier on the ground, so to speak, than a general back at headquarters. But I teach with joy, and I propose the questions one should propose for kids pursuing a classic education. This is where I find a great deal of purpose: a handful of kids at a time.
By the way, community colleges are places where progressives do not dominate everything. Why? They employ high numbers of adjuncts who come and go and don’t rely on hiring committees. It’s an extremely exploitive system, actually, but… funnily enough… there is more diversity of thought in the faculty.
Look. We have common ground on the “we need to care more about education and burn what we have to the ground now” impulse. I understand the desire to start new institutions from scratch like the Vanderbilts or Stanfords or University of Chicagos. I simply think that was easier to do in the Gilded Age/early Progressive Era, but if you figure out how to move a billionaire’s money in a different direction, let me know. I’ll apply to work in his/her school. Problem is, to establish credibility, they’ll probably want faculty with degrees from those places where… you know… I didn’t go. Credentialing is your biggest impediment to education reform because only a select few have the right sheets of paper to confirm they are “smart enough” in the eyes of either progressives or conservatives.
I think shifting the lower grades is more important anyway because it touches more Americans in the end, including the future elite. (That said, I have a soft spot in my heart for the hoi polloi.)
Yes, I was referencing the same teacher. Thanks for the additional link.
From the moment this bozo entered college, through all this bozo’s own education and student teaching, and the school board or administration or personnel department who hired this bozo . . . at every level the gatekeepers approve.
That’s why the whole system must be torn down.
Today everyone cries about systemic racism or systemic injustice. What we really have is systemic Marxism. And a pandemic of it.
Not accurate. Schools are funded on a per pupil basis, not teachers. Teachers and the schools where they work freak out when students miss Count Day (typically October 1), where attendance determines funding.
I’ve devised an evil genius plan if parents want to ruin public schools: keep your kid out on Count Day, but send him the rest of the time to consume all those unfunded resources. Now, of course, schools have ways to appeal if students miss Count Day (mine might have missed one or two due to medical stuff), but that, too, consumes resources and delays funding.
And now that I think of it, what will be the requirement for determining funding if everyone is doing remote learning? What a freaking mess. Maybe this will finally be the shoe to drop that forces a voucher system. Wouldn’t that be somethin’?!
You’re quite welcome. Every school board in the country should be looking at this bozo and asking themselves, “Do we have any teachers like this one in our school?”
What really grabbed me about Matthew Kay is that he also does “teacher training”. I can visualize what one of his training sessions must look like…
Every parent in the country should be looking at their school boards and asking themselves “Who needs to go?”
You guys are a little funny. This teacher isn’t saying anything at all that is new or even radical in the field of education. This is just a day in school.
I have no doubt, but he and the college persist. It is a last outpost of western civilization.
But, it’s not really. It is spreading like a — dare I say it? — virus. The Barney Charter Initiative is opening charters, gradually, in all fifty states. And the demand for the education they provide is through the roof! You may have heard Dr. Arnn relay the story of the Texas school where his daughter is head master and the devastation of the families who failed to win the lottery.
Hillsdale is reaching adults like me with their online courses, CCAs, Imprimis, Hillsdale Dialogues podcast. . . And we’re recommending these resources to our friends and families.
Then there’s the Kirby Center, where they’re actually trying to educate Congress critters about the Constitution! Bold! Cray-cray!
It’s one place with a lot of reach. And others can learn from Hillsdale’s model.
I think it’s actually more important that Bill Ayers and ilk lose their jobs and that public schools suffer permanent shutdowns than rich conservatives start newfangled institutions. That would be nice, but it would be icing on the destruction of the education establishment cake. Hey, hey, ho, ho, the education establishment has got to go!
Hmmmm. OK. Pardon me if I don’t laugh. (I get your point though.)
Also, the charters my kids have attended were started by parents, not billionaires. Parents got together, wrote a charter and got it approved by the state. I wasn’t 100% on board with their politics, but I admire their conviction and determination to give their kids (and mine) a quality education.
I think you need to convince more parents to make that kind of commitment and sacrifice.
I agree. I also think that parents need to understand what is being taught—and not taught— when they aren’t paying attention. They need to “wake up” themselves to create a different version of “woke.”
I’m firmly on the other side of all of this. Destroying the liberals should not be your concern. Replacing them should.
Habituating people to not even being able to think of themselves & for themselves–habituating people to having an understanding of America that depends on opposition to liberalism rather than promotion of conservatism, when it comes to action or politics or practical things, is going to destroy conservatism.
So long as this attitude continues, no one will even ask himself why red states don’t have much of an education system or much coherence, despite all our recent partisanship.
A day will come when people in my generation, & younger, will make their decision about what the future holds. Is there any opportunity to be a part of something good? Some people can go to Hillsdale, & good on them, but they’re very few. Everyone else will judge conservatism very differently; most of the young men who are very online do not have any respect or love for conservatism. All they see in conservatism is, nobody gives a damn about them. Most young women, of course, are very liberal.
Good luck, as conservatives continue to pretend they care much about the Founders & never blush at the fact that from Franklin to Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, many had very serious ideas about the need to educate Americans. Probably, most don’t even know it…
What was said here that promoted a conservative vision of the world? I want to teach kids to think. I want to reform K-12 to actually teach kids, not to indoctrinate kids to *any* political persuasion. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about here, and I listened to an hour long podcast. I’m not black pilling anyone. Your greatest chance for success to reform education is to fire up parents.