A Response to eduwonkette on Social Justice Teaching

eduwonkette posted this on Sol Stern’s article about Bill Ayers.  While I think Ayers is now and has always been a terrorist and while I believe that he is being coddled by academia, that was not the subject of her post.

Indeed, she asks two things:

1) whether controversial social issues have a rightful place in K-12 classrooms,

and 2) what general guidelines we might endorse for these projects.

First, a few general observations.  I am not an educator.  My wife, however, is an elementary music teacher with Prince George’s County Public Schools, so I do try to keep up with the teaching trends.  I am also a father of two wonderful boys and so, as a parent, I have strongly held opinions about what, if anything, I want my children to be taught.

Secondly, for my purposes, I would like to separate out the notion of social justice as a motivating factor that drives people to teach (i.e., Teach for America, KIPP, etc.) and the idea of inculcating impressionable young minds with certain ideas that progressives believe constitutes a proper understanding of social justice (i.e., discussions of homosexuality in grade schools, etc.). 

I would certainly hope that anyone who entered the teaching profession was driven by a desire to help young people prepare for adulthood.  Unfortunately, most of us have different ideas of what this means.  Many educators (and education schools, from my admittedly limited experience) seem to believe that it is less important to teach a student how to learn and more important what to learn.  Our mandatory testing regime tends to reinforce this notion.  The social justice aspects of many college education curriculums is designed specifically to provide the “correct” ideas that teachers are supposed to pass along to their pupils.

There is a deeper notion that we, as educators, parents, and taxpayers, never really question.  That notion is the purpose of education.  Is it merely to instill basic knowledge?  To instruct you in such a way that you can continue to learn for yourself?  Or to become a model citizen?

We accept all of these ideas as our conception of the purpose of education.  However, the last notion: creating a model citizenry is so accepted by both sides that we do not even question it anymore.  In fact, as Jonah Goldberg has noted in his book Liberal Fascism, this concept of education is a relatively recent development.  Its genesis is found in the Progressive movement of the late 19th century that spawned modern liberalism, communism, and fascism.

I don’t mean to suggest that this is wrong or somehow immoral, but it is important to realize that social justice in education is a very recent idea and it was a brainchild of the far left in this country.  That being said, it is generally accepted and we’re not seeing any signs of turning back the clock.  Nor am I entirely convinced that would be a good idea.

So, do controversial social issues have a rightful place in the classroom?  Yes.  I don’t know that, as a society, we do our kids any favors by ignoring the problem.  However, I do feel that the most educators should do is to introduce the issue, acknowledge that there is considerable debate about it and leave it there, especially with grade, and possibly even middle, school-aged children.

High school is probably the right time to have a more in-depth discussion of many complex social issues.  Here I think that it is important for the educator to act as facilitator, not lecturer.  Lead them toward resources and provide open-ended assignments where there is no one answer.  Not will the students be more engaged, but they might actually learn something.

In closing, I have to note that I laughed out loud at the notion that teachers in general are conservative.  Does eduwonkette mean politically?  If so, that is simply not true.  Not in any school district I have ever seen.  The simplest test to prove is to ask a teacher who the last Republican that was endorsed by the union was.  99 times out of 100, the answer will be: I don’t think I can remember it ever happening.

Letter to the Editor, Gazette Newspaper (P.G. County Edition), April 24, 2008

Global warming ‘facts’ are flawed

Dearly beloved, our global warming brethren provided several ‘‘facts” that they claim prove that global warming is real and that it is caused by humans [‘‘Don’t stand by and ignore global warming,” Letters to the editor, April 3]. Anyone who disagrees with them is either in the employ of Big Oil or too stupid to understand how science works. 

There are flaws in every piece of ‘‘evidence” our fanatical brothers and sisters cite, starting with the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Report. In fact, the ‘‘evidence” doesn’t actually say what they say it does. Many of the scientists involved refused to endorse the executive summary that was written by bureaucrats at the U.N. This summary is cited repeatedly by the acolytes of global warming. The actual report, however, is very careful to point out that there is no definitive link between human pollution and global warming. We cannot even say for certain that the current trend is unnatural.

Environmentalists on the left cite the report of the National Academy of Sciences, which actually stated that there is no conclusive link between human activity and global warming. In fact, only 17 percent of the members of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union think that the increase in greenhouse gas emission in the 20th Century caused global warming. The leadership of both organizations has embraced the global warming theology and threatened to excommunicate members who don’t follow the catechism.

Computer models that portend to divine the future are extremely unreliable. These models cannot take into account the effects of cloud formations, precipitation, and changes in the ocean or the sun. That’s because science doesn’t understand them well enough to make use of them in the models. Considering that clouds and ocean currents have an enormous impact on our weather cycle, it is critical to understand these areas of inquiry before leaping to conclusions.

Finally, recent scientific evidence actually suggests the current climate change may be due to solar radiation changes that are affecting the entire solar system. Measurable increases in recent global temperature have been found on Mars and the moon. If confirmed elsewhere in the solar system, this would cast doubt on the dogma of global warming.

All you tree huggers needn’t fear, however. Big Brother has the situation well in hand. Tim Wirth, an adviser to President Clinton, has stated, ‘‘We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory is wrong, we will be doing the right things in terms of economic and environmental policy.”

Forgive me, Tim, if I’m skeptical that selling me and mine into state-sponsored slavery for a ‘‘problem” that has no definitive cause is for my own good or even the good of the planet. I’d prefer to wait for science before worshiping at the Church of the Almighty Kyoto Protocol with its high priest, His Eminence Al Gore.

Jason Papanikolas, Laurel

What Obama Thinks of Small-Town USA

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. … And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

- Barack Obama in San Francisco over the weekend.

Having had personal experience with this notion that Barack is peddling, I can say with certainty that it is both correct and yet only one-half of the story.

My wife was born and raised in Libby, Montana, a town roughly four hours east of Spokane, Washington. Some folks may have heard of it. It is famous for the vermiculite mine that produced zonolite, a common asbestos insulation sold in the United States. This mine and the Champion lumber mill in the center of town employed perhaps 80-90% of the town up until the late 1980s.

The Libby of this period was a bustling, busy town of 6000 hard-working people. It had three elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. As the county seat of Lincoln County, it boasts a county courthouse and the entire county bureaucracy. Land was cheap and homes were abundant, though many still chose the trailer park communities on the outskirts of town and on the hill overlooking it. It was in many ways an idyllic setting; so idyllic, in fact, that the movie A River Runs Through It was filmed there.

This is the community which my wife was born into and which both she, my father-in-law and others in the town have described to me. Unfortunately, that’s not the Libby I know.

I first came to Libby in 2002. By this time, the mine and the mill had been closed for years, along with the jobs that they produced. Anyone who could move away did, leaving behind those who were either too old, too stubborn, or too ill-equipped to find work elsewhere. Sure there were the people who had always provided services to the town, those who worked at Libby National Bank or the grocery stores or the dozens of various shops, restaurants, and stores that keep a town operating, but I’m sure that even they felt the creeping depression that slowly settled on this town. Spend a week in a town like Libby and you’ll begin to feel it, too.

This is where Barack is right. These people are bitter. They had good paying jobs until the government came in and closed down their places of work and took their jobs. Imagine being told that your $40,000/year (in the 1980s) job was disappearing because some tree huggers didn’t understand or care about sustainable forestry (a practice which has always been prevalent in the timber industry). In its place, the government offers you roughly $12,000/year in welfare. No wonder they are bitter! I’d be bitter, too!

However, Barack is enormously wrong when he passes these people off as a gaggle of depressed, gun-toting, God-loving, xenophobic,  rustic yahoos. On the contrary, Libby, as a town, is committed to the arts and to education. These “rustic yahoos” can appreciate the beauty of a Renoir, be moved by the strident notes of a Tchaikovsky symphony, and find deeper meaning in a Shakespearean soliloquy. To listen to Barack, these are not things “common folk,” especially depressed rustic yahoos, do. Apparently, in between target practice and rousing choruses of Deutschland, Deutschland Ubër Alles, these folks are hunting down immigrants and mounting their heads on the walls of their bunker.

I think that this is what Barack Obama truly believes about America and Americans. Especially, when combined with his failure to repudiate Rev. Wright. Sadly, one gets the feeling that his views increasingly represent the views of the Democratic Party. That’s why Democrats are so desperate for change. “Don’t you understand!?!? Americans are so inherently evil and misguided that change, any change, has to be for the better,” they say. Barack’s slogan “Hope for Change” unconsciously reinforces this notion. They don’t understand why people in Libby might feel betrayed by the government that destroyed their livelihoods, yet allows those who break the law by entering the country illegally to live here without paying taxes and without being deported when they commit other, more serious crimes.

I don’t know what’s so hard to understand. Perhaps they’re thinking, “I was born and raised in this country. I paid taxes and kept my nose clean. The government took my job away from me. These immigrants crossed into the country illegally. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t pay for their own health care, and they can’t seem to stay out of trouble with the law. And my government wants to invite them in with open arms and with no questions asked!?!?”

I, for one, am glad that I can identify more with the citizens of Libby than with Barack Obama and his ilk. When I last visited Libby in 2007, it was to bury my father-in-law. Yet, in our shared grief, my wife and I saw reason for hope. Libby has audacious plans to rebuild from the ashes of the asbestos catastrophe and closure of its businesses. Like all great American cities, and like the great Americans who reside in them, Libby cannot be kept down. Not be an uncaring government or raving environmental lunatics. Not even by Barack Obama . . . unless, of course, you mean President Obama.