A true and accurate history is not indoctrination

Welp. It feels like it’s time to play the race card. Happy Black History Month!

The Trump Executive Order on “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K12 Schooling” dropped last week, and unsurprising to anyone who has worked in K12 education the last few years it doubled down on the falsehood that America’s schools are indoctrinating the nation’s schoolchildren to hate their country.

Let me concede some nuances first before I lose those of you who are not on the Progressive bandwagon—because I do believe it’s important to acknowledge that popular culture and public opinion in recent years has embraced tenets of inclusive and Progressive politics that many Americans disagree with. The use of selected pronouns, the acknowledgement of racial micro-aggressions, and the demanded shift of commonly used words and phrases to allow for more inclusive and or flexibility in how people self-identify has moved through society with lightning speed for some.

?Yet it is not the fault of educators that these shifts in acknowledging diverse identities were triggered. Instead, the collective witnessing of state sanctioned brutality like the George Floyd murder was centrally motivating. Being my most patriotic, I posit that the pendulum swings were a result of Americans wanting to live up to our shared ideals and values. We don’t want to be bigots.

But this newsletter is about schools and public education. And as I have said for a while now, if teachers had powers of indoctrination, they would use them to ensure that students could read on grade level, were engaged in learning activities, and came to school well-groomed, rested, and well fed. Educators, writ large—have great affection for their students and mean them no harm. In contrast, their struggle is to understand the individual and unique value and dreams students and their families hold in order to serve those dreams.

I am indignant. You should hear it in my tone. Politicians seek to divide us when the nation’s report card just gave us the strongest signal to work together to meet the basic academic needs of young people.

Having spent the last few years trying to stop the introduction, passage, and implementation of anti-equity legislation attacking K12 public education, the President’s latest executive order puts a damper on my spirits. The idea that the work of public educators results in indoctrination—intentionally or otherwise—strikes me as ludicrous, yet a small but significant percent of the population must hold this fear. Otherwise, I can’t see why the President’s executive order on ‘Ending Radical Indoctrination in K12 Schooling” makes much sense politically.

The Order seeks to end the “imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children[that] not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights laws in many cases but usurps basic parental authority.” It further encourages that educators are prosecuted criminally for violating the order and that schools and districts are de-funded if found in violation. A kind of ‘defund the schools’ if you will.

Criminalizing the actions of educators was a popular feature of the anti-bellum South too. Abolitionists defied the law against teaching enslaved people to read because they understood the power of literacy in the face of injustice. I suppose a true and accurate telling of history is dangerous when it tells the story of overcoming such evils and requires that we recognize the humanity of all people. I ask you—what is criminal in this?

Much of what is painted as ‘indoctrination’ is a correction to the record. The Jim Crow era ensured that history would be sugar coated and presented in disingenuous ways that favored the White ruling class. I know that many of us were raised on platitudes about ‘colorblindness’ and the virtue of sameness—but a more mature understanding of equality and justice helps us understand that we cannot erase our differences; we must embrace them and work hard to ensure that they do not harden into disadvantage. Ending discrimination requires that we understand what motivates it and what conditions create it. Every American knows that race still matters in our society but this executive order asks us to suspend that fact among others.

I wonder how we feel about those neighbors who are ok with discrimination as long as it doesn’t impact their children. If this is what we mean by parental rights, I want no part of it.

Diverting public funds to private institutions is the frosting on top for the Order’s impact. If policy dictates that we allow alternatives to ‘bad actors’ to flow out of the public system which we all have a right to—well than some of us will win while others of us will lose. The alternative space is enriched while the public space is decimated. Ask any parent what they want from their school and 99.1 percent will tell you their first preference would be a high quality school within walking distance. If only we were all aligned to working towards that goal.

In the words of Mary McLeod Bethune, a Black educator, presidential advisor, and civil rights activist: “We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.” This executive order drags us back to a past we have long outgrown.

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