Every time they try to hide an ugly fact of history, they look worse — they’re just compounding the problem. We’re seeing this mistake in Florida and Texas and Tennessee, where Republican legislatures cobble up laws to silence teachers and prevent them from mentioning the ghastly evils that previous legislatures have executed. It’s not going to work. It just means that the next generation is going to be confronted with the fact of American slavery, for example, and the fact that America tried to hush it up in the 2020s. Tennessee has been eager to join in the shameful displays of cowardice.
Last year, Tennessee passed one of those cookie-cutter rightwing bills banning the teaching of “divisive concepts” in higher education — the very same sort of hogwash that’s currently under a court injunction in Florida. The law, SB 623 prohibited teaching a whole bunch of very bad ideas, like the concept that “One race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex” or the always fun “An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex” — so you can’t read about Ruby Bridges, you. The bill also prohibited “penalizing” students for not endorsing the concepts, because we all know how professors like to demand that students recite from the Maoist catechism.
(Do follow that link to the Ruby Bridges story. There is a woman in Florida named Emily Conklin who is going to be on the poster about the wicked perpetrators of bigotry, her picture right next to the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern Democrats of the 1960s, and Steve King of Iowa.)
You can tell these congressvermin know nothing about how education works — they’re of the God’s Not Dead school of projection, where they think their authoritarian vision of how to teach by law enforcement is the way we must work. For example, my genetics students have been given a bunch of papers on racist and sexist misconceptions in genetics that they’ll be summarizing in class this week…and I’ve explicitly told them that they can disagree with the papers without penalty. I can’t imagine standing up in a class and dictating how they must interpret the science. That’s not how any of this works, this is an exercise in learning how to think for themselves about the evidence.
Does that make me one of those red professors? There’s no way you can compel me to wear a bowtie.
I presume that includes addressing whether the Earth is flat or round. People are divided on this issue.
I was tabling for Citizens Climate Lobby yesterday, and a woman came by who doesn’t like the solutions promoted. Apparently, one of those solutions is Bill Gates spending millions of dollars to manufacture masks for cattle.I guess if you’re grasping at straws, something like that sounds reasonable.
To Republicans, “divisive” just means “not authoritarian enough”. If your rules dictate that the Diary of Anne Frank is objectionable, but Mein Kampf isn’t, then your rules need to be examined.
I hope this saying comes true ‘He who ignores history is doomed to become it!’
And, the education system in ‘patriot texass’ has been ‘fortified’ with this:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-badash/105981/texas-lt-governor-brags-just-passed-senate-bill-is-bringing-prayer-back-to-our-public-schools
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/22/texas-republicans-pass-bill-to-require-ten-commandments-in-every-classroom/
There’s no way you can compel me to wear a bowtie.
Heck, even Tucker stopped wearing one.
Hmm, maybe that’s a good reason to start wearing one. It would be fun watching him complain about “evil bow-tied commie college professors”, especially when people start bringing out the old footage.
jimf, would wearing a bow tie as a headband count? That should be enough to piss off all oddball fringes.
Ah, but Dr. Who says “Bow ties are cool!”.
This Florida rule should be simple enough to exploit. Just have EVERYTHING reported. Insufferably any text that they like, but as long as enough material gets reported the system will collapse.
According to the article, they’re introducing a law that allows student societies to invite anyone they want to give a talk. What if they invited a, say drag queen, to read a book to such students.
Emily Conklin has a face made for punching. Especially with that self-satisfied smug smirk on it.
To riff on a phrase, “The ignorance is the point.” They want us uneducated, unwashed, employed only at the whims of the rich employers, and unable to organize to fight back.
@10, I’ve dealt with other YMCA managers professionally in the past. Suffice it to say, I’ve avoided the organization professionally and in time of need as a “charity”.
To the point where, given a choice of swimming in a YMCA swimming pool or cesspool, I’ll come out cleaner in the cesspool.
The bastards are just that toxic.