A few links on a loosely-connected theme

[conuly]

1. The US government is inviting comments on civics education. A quick glance at the negative comments should suggest what sort of response is necessary.

2. We Found the Textbooks of Senators Who Oppose The 1619 Project and Suddenly Everything Makes Sense.

3. Homeroom: I’m Concerned About Wokeness at My Child’s School

I've actually seen a few articles of this sort lately. Most of them are in the third-person, enlivened with quotes, but this one's first person. I barely even glanced at the columnist's response because I didn't care.

I don't know if these people just don't know how to write, which doesn't speak well of their own educations with "the classics", or if they're deliberately mendacious, but they all bring up that "books have been removed from the booklist" without once mentioning what those books were replaced with. It's almost like if we knew, we might have a different opinion about the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird or Huck Finn (neither of which is really suited for mandatory reading in a 5th grade class, but I digress) if we knew that they were replaced with equally "classic" books.

I'm reminded of an article I read at least a decade ago now. I posted about it at the time. It was about some high school English teachers who had looked around, realized that their students were not capable of going through the curriculum, and did a lot more independent reading on their students' levels, tailored to the kids' interests. Which is a lot harder to do than having everybody to all the same reading and all the same writing and all the same quizzes, pass or fail.

And one of the students was mentioned as having started with like Twilight and had now moved on to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

And in the comments somebody pointed at that specific student who started with Twilight, and with apparently no sense of irony whatsoever asked how we expect kids to understand the realities of the Jim Crow South if they're not all dragged through To Kill a Mockingbird in lockstep.

...yeah.

Anyway, back to the letter, quite aside from being weirdly vague about the booklist, they also give blah blah "taught to feel bad for being white" nonsense, so I'm voting that they're actually lying.

Comments

[silveradept]

I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually lying, but having seen the various eruptions around the change of name to the Astounding Award for the Hugo ceremonies, the change of name to the Children's Literature Lifetime Achievement award from the American Library Association, and the general uproar about the removal of Seuss books (or other racist materials) from classrooms and libraries, if they are being genuine, the argument seems to be mostly "I was super comfortable in my not having to think about the colonial and enslaving history of the United States, and by doing this, you're making me think and have to answer uncomfortable questions. Stop that."

Which, hah, you have a child, foole. Uncomfortable questions and rethinking the way you were raised are part of the package.

[swingandswirl]

While I understand why DW does not have a Like button, times like this I am woeful about the lack.

Which is to say, yep, this, exactly. Heaven forfend these (presumably white) folk have to be even a little uncomfortable. That's much worse than kids getting better representation, books they enjoy, and even becoming less -ist than their parents.

[silveradept]

Almost universally white on these issues, and if you ask them, they'll say they're fine with those kinds of books being available (somewhere else that is not their school, school library, or public library where their darling white children might see or read them), but we can't be pushing an agenda on them. (Pay no attention to the agenda already being pushed because reifying a racist, white supremacist, cissexist, heterosexist history is the unmarked and often intentional default, by God, and if it was good enough for me, it is good enough for my children, and therefore the best for all children.)

Meanwhile, time marches on, and children are observing the world with their own eyes and trying to find the materials that reflect what they observe back to them and tell them they are sane and seeing the world correctly.

[conuly]

They will also say that it's insulting to nonwhite kids to suggest that they can't identify with books about characters who don't look like them, after all, they had no problem reading Dickens or Twain even though they, personally, are not a Dickens character trapped in a Twain novel.

The hypocrisy astounds.

[silveradept]

If that is the argument, given how much publishing puts out in picture books that are about white people and inanimate objects or fantastical creatures, the problem isn't that nonwhite kids have no practice at identifying Wyeth characters who don't look like them, it's that they have too much practice and the white kids need to develop their abilities instead. And on contemporary situations, not white-filtered tales of the long past.

[conuly]

1. Oh yeah.

2. Don't forget, most of those nonhuman protagonists still manage to be coded as white, non-immigrants.

[silveradept]

I had forgotten that, thank you for the reminder. Even the nonhumans still reflect white values and societal norms, unless they're supposed to be nonwhite stand-ins, and then we get beautiful pale wise elves and swarthy guttural primitive orcs.

I can certainly see people raising the lid on that box, seeing everything inside, and slamming it back down in fear of what will happen to their world if they let it all out. But it is going to get out, and waiting until it explodes isn't going to help anyone.