Mary, a high school English teacher of 20 years, has dealt with her share of parental objections toward books. From the mother who worried The Crucible contained witchcraft to the father who questioned Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because Wilde was gay, Mary has practiced explaining, advocating for, and negotiating her book selections over the decades. “Almost every English teacher will encounter parental complaints about a text choice at some point,” Mary described to me. “They are sometimes frustrating, but they are not typically difficult to handle.”
They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over. In the course of working on a book, Teaching in a Time of Book Bans: Lessons From Teachers and Librarians, I interviewed school faculty from across the country about their recent experiences with censorship. For the majority, the […]
As the article states: “They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over.”
That’s right, these pesky tax payers actually want some control over how their tax dollars are spent. Just like at the national level, where they have zero control over how their tax dollars are spent, these tax payers need to learn to just trust the experts. What do these people know about how their money should be spent? The powers that be are delighted to have them just sit down, shut up, and do what they are told. Think outside the box.
Since I’m a thinker, I often ponder about things and have come to the conclusion a number of years ago when Republicans began to take over state legislatures and winning a few presidential elections that the American education system has gotten worse and worse and scores in language and math have plummeted to national lows—-because of Republican leadership. They just hate to put money into things that don’t make money!!! So many schools don’t give students a textbook—-they have a class set! Teacher salaries are not nearly where they should be. Capital construction is minimal and we have many aging school buildings. I blame Republican leadership for this. And now we have charter schools and vouchers! These are really killing the school system and if you look carefully, you will see that charter schools do way worse than public schools. They get a portion of our tax dollar and why should they? They are profit-making businesses owned by private citizens! So we continue to see scores drop, teachers quitting for better jobs, etc. etc. Until Americans wake up to the GOP philosophy that is all about MONEY and what they can get out of something, our education system will continue to deteriorate!!!!