Some thoughts about schools--and parents

 

When I was in eighth grade, I had a math teacher who for whatever reason did not like me. Admittedly, math has never been one of my best subjects, but I was not disruptive or a troublemaker. I talked to my mom, and she agreed that for some reason Miss Evans did not like me. I can still see her in my mind’s eye—an “ample,” older spinster lady with “styled” white hair and sensible black shoes that laced. My mom supported me, and my dad tried harder to help me with math, which was painful for both of us. What they did not do was rush up to the school and demand that Miss Evans be fired, or that I be assigned another math teacher—there wasn’t another one anyway. They taught me, instead, that life wasn’t always going to go my way, and I would survive.

I am really weary of a handful of today’s crop of parents, who think they can dictate school policy and curriculum. The furor in Carrollton/Southlake over teaching “alternative” theories of the Holocaust is but one example. That school district now has an open seat on its board and will have a non-partisan election—only it’s gotten quite partisan. When I hear a candidate say that we must protect children from radical ideas, my hackles go way up.

Parents have always been charged with protecting their children, but the nature of the perceived enemy has changed. Anything that makes children uncomfortable is now deemed unsuitable, so students are being taught a white-washed version of American history, from witch hunts to slavery to LGBTQ issues. The Critical Race Theory threat looms large and is purely a problem created by Republicans (thank you, Governor Abbott) to distract from their other problems. Those of us who pay attention know that CRT is a complicated discipline that is taught at the graduate level, primarily in law schools, and never in elementary or high schools. I have read articles about it, including some about the former Harvard faculty member generally credited with its origin, and frankly, it’s tough stuff. I can’t quite wrap my brain around it, and I am fairly well educated. I love the anonymous grade school teacher who said if she can teach her kids to read, write, and do elementary math, she’s happy. CRT is the farthest thing from her mind.

This attitude that parents can dictate to schools is not new when it comes to books, but it seems to have escalated—or maybe we have new issues. Race has always been contentious (banning To Kill a Mockingbird is insane), but I don’t remember LGBTQ issues being a topic when my kids were in school—today’s openness is a positive improvement, except for small-minded bigots. Unknowingly, these folks have given a great sales boost to Jerry Craft’s New Kid. It reminds me of the spurt in sales of Forget the Alamo! after Dan Patrick banned the book from the Bullock Museum. I read recently of a parent who objected to several books which were summarily removed from a teacher’s classroom, which led the teacher to complain that one woman had taken those books from all 142 of her students.

The mask controversy is the worst. In Fort Worth, four parents objected to masking and so far, their order carries the day. Masking is not mandated in Fort Worth schools. (Don’t pay attention to the governor’s anti-mandate mandate—more schools are ignoring it than complying and he can’t enforce it; in Florida DeSantis’ efforts at enforcement have simply weakened school programs by costing schools money). The worst about the anti-masking idiots, other than that they get their science from Facebook, is that they threaten violence. While most incidents have involved yelling, “We know where you live” and other threats, there have been a few violent outbursts.

At the risk of being accused of elitism I would suggest that these parents who fear so much for their children have one thing in common: a lack of education or intellectual curiosity (okay, make that two things). And now they are passing that on not only to their children but to all of ours because they are dictating policy and curriculum.

Think of it: one mother removes books from 142 children; four parents put an end to masking in an entire big-city school district; a governor says teach the Alamo but not the story of Greenwood, OK. It is similar to what’s happening in our county—the minority has grabbed the reins of power and are dictating, against the wishes of the general public.

Trying to imagine my parents in today’s world

I miss my parents fiercely, but many days I am glad they are not here to see what this country has become. My dad came home from WWI undamaged, excepted for his lungs because he had been gassed and his psyche just a bit because jet planes later reminded him of incoming bullets--he’d instinctively duck into the nearest building. They had both survived the 1918 flu epidemic and lived through the Depression, WWII, the death of an infant child, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. They were survivors. Like most of us, they were immigrants or nearly so. Dad was Canadian-born and served in the Canadian Army; Mom’s parents were first-generation German. They would have staunchly identified as American and would be heartbroken at what is happening with immigration today.

A preacher’s kid, Dad believed in honesty, integrity, morals, and table manners. He was not a feminist, the only non-liberal attitude I can attribute to him. He always voted for the best man, but we knew the best man without exception was a Democrat. FDR and Churchill were his heroes, and he thought Truman did a great job in difficult circumstances. After that things sort of went downhill, but he admired Kennedy. In Chicago, he voted repeatedly for Mayor Richard Daley, I think on the Machiavellian theory that if the Daley machine was corrupt, it was helping the little people. He was definitely an egalitarian.

He was a news junkie. We knew not to talk during the evening news, when Dad in later years would sit, Scotch in hand, before the TV. Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite ruled in our house. We did not have television until Dad bought a very plain one on a rickety stand so he could watch the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Yes, sigh, I grew up without television.

Mom had studied at the University of Chicago and was secretary to Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins, developer of the Great Books Program. She remained a lifelong student, always reading, learning, reaching, and growing. She, too, was a Democrat, though she tended to be less stoic about it than Dad.

One of my first public memories was hearing a woman yelling, “Hooray! Roosevelt is dead!” as she jumped out of a car. I ran in the house to tell Mom, who was quick to tell me to hush and not talk like that. Of course, we later found out it was true.

Mom hated Richard Nixon, absolutely despised him. She violated Dad’s no-talking rule during the news more nights than not. When Nixon would come on, she would proclaim loudly, “He’s a crook. Look at him. You can see it in his eyes.” Her finger would be pointing and shaking. After Nixon disappeared in disgrace and Dad died, she pretty much lost interest in politics. But today she would be shaking her finger and yelling at Trump. The absurdity of his vanity would not get past her either.

Mom and Dad were intellectuals, something not generally in favor in today’s world. Their greatest pleasure of an evening was to sit in their easy chairs, in front of a roaring fire, and read the works of Will and Ariel Durant to each other. There is much about today’s world that would dismay them, including sometimes the behavior of their great-grandchildren—no hats, elbows, or cell phones on the dinner table, please!—but the current administration, the way our country is headed, would dismay them. Then again, they were generally optimistic people of faith who would believe, as I do, that our country will survive (barring nuclear war) and that, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said, the pendulum will swing back.