Literacy: Reading

Writing about the purposes and standards for reading.

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Indoctrination is not Good Teaching

What a sad day when a school board eliminates Black Literature and Black History, because of “ideological indoctrination,” as if school is a place to be indoctrinated.  The school board assumes that a course indoctrinates student by mere exposure, rather than by how the curriculum is taught.

If there are specific objections to a teaching methodology the school board should comment on observed examples of “indoctrination,”  defining how a racial agenda is delivered in the classroom. No teacher should indoctrinate any students, regardless of the political purpose. Teachers are not trained to indoctrinate students, but to get them to think.

What any secondary curriculum teaches is critical reading, where students recognize the ideologies through discussion and written responses. No secondary student is supposed to digest an ideology without evaluating it. If you read Huckleberry Finn with numerous examples of the “N” word,  does that make Mark Twain a racist? That is a debatable question, and students learn by reading critically to decide why Twain used the word.

Is All Quiet on the Western Front an anti-war novel or a realistic account of World War I from the viewpoint of German soldiers?  Students can argue both ways. That is the point of reading controversial literature: to articulate your own interpretation, discuss it and defend it. You don’t become an anti-war activist by reading All Quiet. You identify the ideology and decide if you agree with it. It is worth mentioning that the novel and its sequel The Road Back were banned and burned during the Third Reich. Now that was a book with ideology!

How about Pygmalion by that feminist and socialist George Bernard Shaw, and which later became My Fair Lady? What a loss for the literature curriculum to eliminate that book, and yet it is full of satire on the wealthy, patriarchal class in England in the 20th century. No one expects that play to indoctrinate students, so we give George Bernard Shaw a pass.

Yes, Black literature and Black history are ideological curricula. They would not be worth reading if they weren’t. The writing of Frederick Douglas, W.E.B Dubois, and Ida B. Wells is some of the timeless historical prose of our culture. They all had something to say about enslavement and prejudice. Of course they were ideological! Reading them does not have to be indoctrination.

Are school administrators so helpless and gullible that they assume to read is to be brainwashed? It calls into question the education these leaders experienced. Are they the kind of student who wrote down everything the teacher said then regurgitated it back on their exams?  Did they use this system all the way through college and graduate school to keep their grades up? Is that what they think education is?

So the bottom line is that the Francis Howell school board does not want its students even exposed to the culture of Black America, because they don’t trust them to read Black authors without getting indoctrinated. Sad for the loss of a valuable culture, but sadder still that the school board thinks so little of its students and teachers that they don’t give them credit for reading critically and identifying the ideological substructure in history and literature.

Education is about asking the right questions and hearing thoughtful responses. It is not about avoiding the wrong ideas for fear of indoctrination.

N.B. The school board restored Black studies to the curriculum, later that week, but insisted the curriculum of the Southern Poverty Law Center could not be used.

 

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What Should We Read?

The Post-Dispatch’s “Battle of the Books,” (October 13, 2023) showed the narrow-mindedness of outraged parents, as well as intolerance of advocates of “controversial reading” .

The behavior of both sides was reprehensible. The”controversial reading” advocates (in the Op-ed “Don’t impose your limit on the rest of the school”) used ill-tempered words like “marginalizing,” “villainizing,” and “stripping resources” to describe the outraged parents. The outraged parents (in “Parents should decide what children read”) pushed the hot buttons: “LGBTQ activists,” “so-called tolerance”, and “mold (and manipulate)” to describe the “controversial book” advocates.

It was hard to choose between these extremes. Both made a good case: the rights of parents and the rights of public schools to choose the books children read. Both parents and schools have rights.  Clearly those rights have been abused in certain cases.

The article made the gap between the two groups unbridgeable.  There was no way these extremes could reach common ground. They portrayed cases that made the other side look bad.  And they were bad.

Often conservative parents have not read the books they want banned, and  liberal parents have not given thought to why the books deserve to be read.  It is as if words like “age-appropriate” and “relevant” have never been discussed with specific books in mind.  Protesters might parrot a canned response that was invented by an interest group. Maybe advocates for all reading fail  to discriminate between relevant books and those dangerous for tender minds.

What if parents, teachers and librarians read a given book together in a well-designed book club? It could be held in schools, libraries, churches or more neutral ground like a YMCA.   It could feature both controversial books and books that parents want in a school curriculum.  They could read some books compiled by the ALA as most often banned:

  • Maus, a  graphic memoir of the Holocaust, a Pulitzer Prize winner
  • The New Kid by  a Newberry Award Winner, recommended for middle school
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a New York Times bestseller about the psychological struggles of a young adolescent
  • The Hate You Give, a Printz Award Winner – community controversy about shooting of Black teen
  • Caste by Isabel Wilkerson -Pulitzer Prize winner about the claim: American society is based upon a caste system similar to what has been seen in India and Nazi Germany.

The book club would state a purpose, e.g. recommend or reject a book for the library, promote or protest a book in a book review, make a report to a committee that is deciding on the curriculum status of a book.  In any of these cases, someone should take notes on the discussion for the purpose of reporting.

Maybe the club just wants explore a new book together, the traditional purpose of book clubs.

It might be helpful to have a facilitator, who says when the discussion has wandered from the purpose of the book club or when evidence for opinions has not been offered. A few guidelines would be appropriate:

  1. Members should agree to read with an open mind and recognize both good and bad qualities of the book
  2. Members should try to back opinions with passages from the book, i.e. evidence.
  3. Members should be respectful of all other members. Disagree with respect.
  4. Members should not claim that objectionable language was their main objection. That reduces the book to its lowest denominator. There is bad language in many books that are accepted in most curricula: Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird.  So it is not fair to object to a book only for isolated words, unless it is an extreme case.

The book club would have to eventually arrive at some definition of what makes a book great and for what age.  These are hard questions, so it is no wonder advocates on both sides don’t take the trouble to read the books banned and  try to articulate informed conclusions.

A fair and balanced book  club would also choose books that parents advocate. Some would be classics, such as the books recommended by Hillsdale College:

Some might be contemporary books that carry an approved  message:

  • The Hiding Place -Corrie Ten Boom- a holocaust memoir
  • The Light and the Glory – Peter Marshal and David Manuel – Christian influences on the founding of America
  • Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand–dystopian novel about over-regulation of business

Book clubs are for the open-minded and adventuresome. Nothing should be read with prejudice. Readers should be prepared to read like the ideal secondary or college student. The outcome will hopefully be mutual understanding and tolerance, if not consensus. And perhaps another surprise: a book club might read beyond the polarizing books of the school curriculum into the universe of good reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Our Comfort with Corruption

Sometimes corruption has so contaminated a social group that it becomes normal, without rising to the level of criminal abuse.  The mistreatments may be accepted by the members of the group, until the abuse surges beyond bullying to a prosecutable offense.  We can read the events surrounding the Fox-Dominion case and the firing of Tucker Carlson as a case of a simmering pot boiling over.

Diana Butler Bass’s blog today about Tucker Carlson and the Episcopal Church will  surprise many who see him as the perpetrator of lies and racist and sexual generalizations. Bass develops the portrait of bullying and sexual abuse in a “toxic society” in which Carlson studied from 1983-87–the St. George’s School in Rhode Island.  While he has never publicly commented on the scandal, which was investigated by the church, he married the daughter of the headmaster, who was later dismissed without charges, and he has expressed public contempt for the church.

In this 2013 interview, a right-wing magazine asked why he went to the Episcopal Church. Carlson replied: “I’m a shallow guy! That’s why I still go to the Episcopal Church. But I like it! I just don’t want to think too hard about my money going to these pompous, blowhard, pagan creeps who run the church!” https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGsmWpsltzzGdBhZcktDHxTHTTr

Rather than casting Carlson as complicit in the environment at St. George’s, Bass suggests he could be a victim of a toxic environment in which sixty students were abused, both by employees and students in the school. As the report on the scandal concludes,

This report also tells the story of a culture of hazing and bullying, absent adults, and disrespect, particularly of girls and young women, that together created an environment that permitted older students to commit assaults, including sexual assaults, against younger students—girls and boys.

If Carlson did not receive counsel or therapy about his experience at St. George’s, some of that toxicity could still run through his veins and views.  He has been accused of creating comparable toxicity at Fox News by a former employee, Abby Grossberg, who reported,

I ultimately went and complained to one of my supervisors about the abuse and the bullying and the gaslighting and misogyny that I was putting up with at Tucker.  And his response to me was, ‘We’re just following Tucker’s tone. That’s Tucker’s tone.’ And I do really believe that it all trickles down from the top.

We could read Carlson’s life as a teenager experiencing the hazing and bullying of one society and turning it on his own corporate community at Fox. The norms of St. George’s could have remained the norms of Carlson as he achieved power to bully and abuse others.  Power exposes our unarticulated prejudices, our willingness to attack the dignity of some who never received respect.

As a teenager, my favorite novel was Lord of the Flies, a story of children and teenage boys trying to survive after their plane crashed on a desert island, Because of references to school uniforms and a choir, it is clear they were raised with the civility of a British public school, a school Americans would call “private.”  The novel depicts the rise of an orderly society on the island, but it declines quickly into treachery and brutality.

William Golding, the author,  implied that the veneer of civilization would be quick to disintegrate in a savage environment. Even characters we admire at first, like Jack the self-elected leader, loses his vision of democracy and fairness and begins to bully and scapegoat kids from the school.  Eventually Simon, the one character who tries to salvage his decency, is martyred by mob violence. It is a very dismal portrait of decently-educated young adults losing all sense of morality and justice.

I always thought something was wrong at the school these kids came from that allowed them to run wild on the island. Did they lack any role models who would come to mind when they began to mistreat others? Was Simon the only character with a conscience? Was the bullying of the majority a standard they lived by before their crash on the island? How did a group of literal “choir boys” turn into the hit men for a fascist dictator?

Golding might have seen his boys as typical British teens and youngsters, but I imagined they were bred from a toxic environment not so different from St. George’s School. They learned the rules of acquiring and keeping power in a dangerous society, and they had to function by those rules in the absence of positive role models and sacred standards. The under-belly of the British or American private schools could breed these violent scenarios: the abuse and the bullying and the gaslighting and misogyny that I was putting up with at Tucker.

Finally it is exposed in the Dominion Defamation lawsuit and the Abby Grossberg civil suit, but only by an army of lawyers and investigators. The atrocious behavior had been buried and normalized by years of profit and prestige in the Fox news organization.  More secrets could yet be revealed.

Tucker Carlson does not fit the victim model. It would be shocking for him to refer to his fraught adolescence as the cause of his contempt for the Episcopal Church or his cynicism about believing one thing about Donald Trump and reporting the opposite.  That does not mean he did not ferment a little in the toxic environment of St. George’s School and could have lost the moral compass many teenagers acquire in well-run schools.

Savagery is not our default behavior, but it lurks in civilized places. It may arise in what we condone or ignore. It may smell a little, but not enough to drive us from the castle.  So we ingest contamination and eventually excrete it through our pores. It is too subtle to succumb to waste treatment, but it breeds wherever it is not condemned and eventually harms those we disrespect.  That harm may go unchecked, until the wounds are more than we can bear. Then the lawsuits begin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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An Enforced Public Fast

Morality is a personal choice, as Jesus argues in his teachings. Through discipline, some Christians try to awaken morality in themselves during Lent.  It is enough to commit to disciplines before God. It is too much to enforce them on others. That is the overreach we are witnessing in the Missouri legislature and in the State Board of Education in Florida, an overreach that is un-Christian and undemocratic.

The season of Lent turns some Christians into abstainers or observers of new disciplines.  Giving up alcohol would be an obvious one.

The real test, however, is to abstain without recognition and without self-appointed sainthood, the kind of holiness Jesus advocated when he preached: “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal,  like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, so as to show others they are truly fasting. Truly I tell you they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matt 6:16-18).

After two thousand years Christians still resist the discipline to abstain in silence.  It was once popular in my former church to ask before Ash Wednesday, “What are you doing for Lent?”  The Jesus-sanctioned reply should have been, “None of your business,” but I never thought of that.

Christians want others to recognize and, even better, share their abstentions. They create laws that compel others to “fast” the same way they do.  The demand for a universal abstinence motivates the impending legislation in Missouri to compel public librarians to defend their book choices and the demands of some state Boards of Education to eliminate systemic racism from the Advanced Placement curriculum.

In Missouri we anticipate the legislature drafting a bill that enacts Jay Ashcroft’s proposal to require public librarians to submit lists of books and their rationales for their selection or lose state funding.  When Ashcroft first invited public responses to his proposal, he received 20,000 pages of reactions. The majority opposed the proposal, according to Ashcroft’s office. As the proposal becomes a proposed law,  it receives the scrutiny of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. That committee might also invite public reaction, but it may forgo the embarrassment of an aroused public.

That’s because no one wants to fast alone. If we abstain from “prurient” reading, as Ashcroft calls it, we want everyone else to abstain as well. It is not enough to keep your children from reading objectionable books, you have to keep other children from reading those books. Public librarians are being compelled to keep those books away from all children.

In the true spirit of Lent, Christians should adopt their own standards of moral literacy without enforcing them on others.  No doubt this is what St. Paul meant by his charge: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).   The “renewing of your mind” suggests that morality is a private matter, not something we enforce on others. Christians are still trying to wrap their minds around that message.

The same moral conflict motivates some legislators to control the message of the curriculum of African American Studies. The curriculum, as first drafted in April 2022, contained topics that have been marginalized in the current version, published in February, 2023.  According to the Washington Post, “An April update paired ‘systemic’ with discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism. A December version said it was essential to know links between Black Panther activism and ‘systemic inequality that disproportionately affected African Americans.’”

That application of the word “systemic” has been eliminated following a critique of the Florida Board of Education. The Advanced Placement Board claims that its edits were internally driven, not in response to Florida state educators.

When a curriculum suggests that racism is more than a personal choice, it invites a critique of our system of governance, a critique that some politicians have called “critical race theory.” Clearly the AP curriculum of three months ago was inviting a critique of a system that first allowed slavery, then practiced discrimination in the Jim Crow laws, then restricted the right to vote for another century. Why this should not be called “systemic” racism is a mystery. Our system permitted civil rights violations of some form for three centuries, yet the historical commentary on this has been called “indoctrination.”

This loaded word “indoctrination,” has made it appear that teaching about “systemic racism” was the same as compelling students to believe one theory over another. But the elimination of language from a curriculum is no different than indoctrination, because it compels students to believe that racism is merely a personal choice, that our system did not reinforce prejudice by keeping Blacks from voting from the Civil War until 1964.

In the original version of the AP curriculum, the word “systemic” was mentioned nine times. In the current version, not at all. Eliminating controversial topics from a curriculum is a white-washing of flaws that were built into our laws and practices for most of our history, but the Florida Board of Education wanted that word stricken from the ultimate goals of African Studies in secondary school. When you strike a viewpoint from an advanced curriculum, a curriculum for seventeen-year-olds, that is indoctrination.

When those who call  themselves Christians demand the indoctrination of high school seniors to their “personal choice” view of racism, they compel all society to their Lenten fast.  It is not enough that they define racism for their own conduct, they define it for everyone else.  It is not only anti-Christian to enforce moral standards on others, it is also anti-Republican in the sense that personal freedom should not be curtailed.

It is enough to commit to disciplines before God. It is too much to enforce them on others. That is the overreach we are witnessing in the Missouri legislature and in the State Board of Education in Florida. It is un-Christian and undemocratic.

 

CRUCIAL REVISIONS

The frequency of key words, phrases and names in the course plan for AP African American studies shifted significantly from April to February.

WORDS               APRIL 2022      FEB 2023

Black Panther/s                23                           18

Intersectionality              19                               1

Malcolm X                         16                              18

Reparations                      15                                1

Incarceration                   15                                1

Womanism                       14                               0

Systemic                              9                               0

Martin Luther King Jr.  9                             17

Intersections                     8                               1

Movement for

       Black Lives                  6                               0

Kimberlé Crenshaw        5                               0

Black Lives Matter           3                               1

Obama                                  3                               3

Black conservatives/ism    1                            1

Queer                                         0                           0

Colin Powell                            0                           3

Gay                                             0                            2

 

 

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Justice for Patty

I have just written Governor Parson again about the case for clemency for Patty Prewitt. I have written him before and blogged here several times to attest to her innocence. Examples below.

[https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2021/08/12/dear-governor-parson-please-consider-patty-prewitt/] [https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2020/12/18/pride-without-prejudice/] [https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2022/07/05/reversals-the-just-and-the-cruel/]

The case for the murder of her husband in 1984 was deeply flawed and, in fact, the jury was deadlocked at first. If a 36-year old case still feels relevant to pardon, here are the details: [ https://www.stlmag.com/news/33-and-counting-new-documentary-aisha-sultan-patty-prewitt/].  There was no physical evidence, except muddy boots (her neighbor says they were clean after the crime) to link her to the crime.  She was tested negatively for gun powder residue.

But the story of Patty’s service to incarcerated women over the past 36 years is more eloquent testimony to her innocence. She offered compassion to women through Residents Encounter Christ, Restorative Justice Project, and Prison Performing Arts, where she’s served as a leader. I first met her when she performed with fellow inmates in May, 2019 in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice: First Impressions. Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correction Center (WERDCC) in Vandalia MO.  Embedded within the play, each actor told the story of her first reading or viewing of this drawing-room comedy of young, white, privileged women seeking love in early nineteenth century England. What I witnessed was not only a hilarious rendition of Pride and Prejudice, but a testimony of transformed literacy and identifying with characters so distant from the ways of the inmates as one galaxy from another.

 It’s true I am a sucker for student performers, having taught high school for twenty years, but never did such heartfelt performances say so much about character and the need for a free life for these vulnerable women.  Following the show, I wrote a poem I shared  with the acting company through Prison Performing Arts about my “first impressions” of the performance. The entire poem is at https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2019/05/23/first-impressions/, but here are the final lines:

And how do I explain the pathos

That squeezed tears from me

Over a comedy of manners?

Because

I could not forget where I was

Who these dauntless women were

How much confronted and overcome,

How much risked and renounced

To deliver a two hundred-year old drawing room comedy

With spirited excess.

Two dozen stories, within this story,

Grabbing at my heart.

Patty has continued grabbing at my heart over these three years, as I have written her personally and watched the stirring documentary 33 and Counting by Aisha Sultan and finally today watching another review of her case on The Dr. Phil Show [https://www.drphil.com/shows/36-years-and-counting-clemency-for-patty/].  You cannot hear her or her eldest daughter speak of her life after that fateful night without being drawn to her humble, patient and tender spirit.  She has suffered injustice for too long.

If you are determined to do something in the merciful spirit of Christmas, check out some of the above links about Patty Prewitt. If you find Patty as compelling as I do, please write Governor Parson today at: https://governor.mo.gov/contact-us/mo-governor

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://governor.mo.gov/contact-us/mo-governor

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The Educator

Dear Mr. Pompeo,

You a cum laude graduate of West Point and a former Secretary of State of the U.S. Government. When you were asked to diagnose why the public schools are failing, you said,

“If you ask, “Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?” It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”

If you want to attack teachers’ unions, you should offer a constructive solution to prove you know what you are talking about.

Otherwise you should stop scapegoating public education like an illiterate boor.

You should demonstrate the level of critical thinking you are demanding of fourth graders (if you are using the NAEP for evidence of failure).

Among the topics you might have addressed are

What do you consider “filth”?  What kinds of literature for young adults would not be classified as “filth”?

What exactly are the problems with how  math and reading and writing are taught? How are teachers’ unions responsible for this methodology?

What is your basis for diagnosing these problems?

What grade levels are these trends most evident?

What do you consider a fact-based curriculum in U.S. History?

How do teachers instruct in “critical thinking,” rather than “indoctrination,” which would be the method in totalitarian countries?

How important is class size in the teaching of critical thinking?

How important is salary and benefits in recruiting competent teachers of critical thinking?

If you are going to use teachers’ unions as a scapegoat for performance in public education, you should demonstrate more analysis and evidence to prove you are capable of the reasoning you are demanding of fourth graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.  To date, you are a sad example for students to follow in their critical thinking in math, reading and writing.

Mr. Pompeo, Let’s have a dialogue worthy of the critical reasoning you expect of our students.

Respectfully,

William D. Tucker, Ph.D.

1895 Schoettler Valley Drive

Chesterfield  MO 63017

 

 

 

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Realigned: Lying for Power and Profit

[Apologies to my readers who struggled with the columns of “Deceit ” and “Consequences.” I hope these columns have been distinguished by what formatting power I  have on this blog]

The Big Lie, Jonathan Lemire’s current political analysis of Donald Trump as a public figure, informs citizens by revealing Trump as a chronic, strategic liar, not just a public figure defending his reputation. As the lies recede in our memories, we tend to think of the former President as one who exaggerates or struggles with facts, rather than a man whose career is founded on, and elevated by, lies.  Chronicling the public life of Donald Trump, Lemire reveals him as a man driven by wealth and power, who creates an alternate realty by manipulating the press and persisting with his version of the truth.

An outline of Chapter Three, “The Trump Presidency,” reveals a pattern of deceit.

Strategy of Deceit                                                                                           

Consequences

  1. Compelled Press Secretary Tony Spicer to announce the

Inauguration crowd was larger than Barak Obama’s 2009 crowd.

Spicer’s credibility as Press Secretary was ruined.

 Republicans on Capitol hill “laughed it off.”

National Park Employee “edited photos to cut out the empty

spaces to make the crowd look bigger.”

   Partisan ridicule.

 

2. Claimed he won the popular vote in 2016.  Said his friend

Bernhard Langer was turned away from voting in Florida. (Langer

was not an American citizen).  Claimed “people who didn’t ‘look

like they should be allowed to vote’ were permitted to stay in line.”

Announced an investigation on Twitter. “In addition to winning

the Electoral College by a landslide, I won the popular vote if you

deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

  In May Election Fraud commission established.

Chairman Kris Kobach demands state voting data,

    including names and S.S.numbers.

      New Hampshire and Mississippi publicly protest.

          Election Commissioners  Report  finding

“no fraud” published in January, 2018.

          No dire public reaction.

3. Claimed he knew nothing about payments made to purchase

the silence of porn star Stormy Davis.

 Sworn testimony of attorney Michael Cohen contradicted.

4. He claimed to have ended Obama’s family separation

   program.

Actually made it more unbearable.

5. He claimed “Joe Biden’s healthcare problems eliminated
coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. “

 Unfounded.

No obvious consequences.

6.  Claimed “the head of the Boy Scouts said his address to their
national jamboree was the best speech ever given to the  organization.”

 “the group’s leader never said such a thing.”

  Lemire calls it “an inappropriate ramble.”

 

This next generation of lies are strengthened by their repetition, a tactic Trump used to change perceptions. The consequences of these lies are more serious because of the harm to other people. Lemire also argues the lying broke down the trust level for the government, which had declined through decades of wars , terror attacks, catastrophic weather like Hurricane Katrina, and partisan warfare beginning in the 1990’s.

7.  The “Mission Act,” a strengthening of Obama’s 2014 bill,

was declared Trump’s original and unassisted accomplishment.

 

When he was corrected by aides, he brushed them aside.

Corrected by CBC White House Correspondent Paula Reid, in
2020, he looked around the room and abruptly

ended the  news conference.

John McCain was a co-sponsor and honored with his name
on the bill, but Trump claimed “McCain didn’t get the job
done for our great vets and the VA.”

Trump made 150 false and misleading statements
about the bill over the next two years (Washington Post).

8. Claiming Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama “harder
than anticipated.”

NOAA’s National Weather Service tweeted

“Alabama will not see any effects from Dorian.”

NOAA tweet goes viral.

Later during a briefing, “And Alabama could be in for some

very strong winds and something more than that it could be.

This just came up, unfortunately. It’s the size of –the storm

that we’re talking about. So, for Alabama, just please be

careful also.”

Days later, Trump shows the press the NOAA forecast
statement with a black line drawn to include Alabama.
“They actually gave that a 95% chance–probability.”

“The NOAA on September 6 published an unsigned report
in support of Trump’s original claim that tropical storm
force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama.”
The NOAA administrator criticized the Birmingham employees
for contradicting the President.

Later that summer, a Commerce Dept report named Neil Jacobs

 as the writer of the NOAA statement and “criticized the

misconduct for intentionally, knowingly and in reckless disregard

of the agency’s scientific integrity policy.”

 9.  On March 4, 2017 Trump tweeted early in the morning,

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’

in Trump Tower just before victory. Nothing found.

This is McCarthyism!” The implication was that Obama

was trying to influence the election with evidence that

Trump had urged Russia to troll against the Democrats.

Trump based his accusations on one report from Mark Levin,

a radio commentator known for spreading conspiracy theories.

Breitbart heightened the story the next day.

Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence

Committee, collaborated with the White House,

rather than launching an independent investigatio n

 Turned members of Congress into a secret ally of

 Trump against all questioning, such as the Mueller

  Report.

 

10. Finally, Lemire himself challenged Trump to
collaborate with a lie, in which he verbally doubted
the evidence of American intelligence over the
guarantee of Putin, “He just said it’s not Russia.
I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Meaning
he accepted Putin’s word there was no tampering.

Republicans, Fox News harshly criticized Trump

He yelled at the White House Press Secretary,

Sarah Huckabee Sanders for calling on Lemire, a

“tough reporter” to ask a question. He floated the

 idea of another summit with Putin at the White House.

                         His connections with Russia increasingly suspicious.

 

These few examples are among 35, 573 false and misleading claims by President Trump over his four years, as recorded by the Washington Post. By Lemire’s calculation, that’s 21 per day.

Really the book could be called The Selected Lies of Donald Trump. 

The panorama of lies over these years shows the depth, the strategy, the perseverance of deceit of the President over time. We have learned to live with his strange variations of truth without realizing we have left reality for  what former press secretary Anthony Scaramucci referred to as his “reality distortion field.”

The Big Lie tries to bring us back to a world of facts, a welcome bout of sanity.

 

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Books Unite Us

 

“. . . not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define or divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex,” said Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt about the bill H.B. 1775 after he signed it in May, 2021.

The wave of state legislation about the K-12 curriculum seems to ask: Does knowledge of race and gender identity unite us or divide us as U.S. citizens?  When books address race or gender discrimination does that give us pause to think about the other or does it turn us against the other? Should classroom curricula illumine the social stress outside the classroom or should it be gender and color blind?

The slogan for Banned Books Week is “Books Unite Us.” Is that a fair generalization? It is a challenge to this legislation designed to control student reading and public school curricula. Let’s look at the objection to one popular young adult novel as a case in point.

  1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
    Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity and violence and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda [https://bannedbooksweek.org/about/]

The novel depicts a police shooting of a teenager from multiple points of view, showing the tension within a community, BUT ultimately bringing some groups together to recognize a police over-reaction. The story crosses racial boundaries as we see some Black characters blaming the teenager and some White characters blaming the police officer. Is this a divisive book or does it energize our thinking about race and society?

The Criteria for Banning

The existence of profanity in the novel only acknowledges the coarseness of expression we see in realistic fiction. For example, the following list of books have been banned by public watch dogs in part for their “language.”

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Beloved by Toni Morrison; Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Native Son by Richard Wright; Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; A Separate Peace by John Knowles.; Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

Three books are by Nobel Prize Winners (John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison), two won the Pulitzer Prize (The Color Purple and Beloved ), and one is a Newbery Award Winner (The Bridge to Terebithia). What does this suggest? That offensive language does not mar critical excellence.  It may be part of the portrayal of real characters. If we want to expose students to professionally- recognized literature, we may have to read past the objectionable language.

The objection to violence in the novel fails to consider the subject matter. There is more graphic violence in The Red Badge of Courage, in All Quiet on the Western Front, indeed in the Bible (see Judges 5:24-27) than in this novel. At the core of the story is a violent crime, so the subject matter entails violence. Violence may be the subject of great literature.

Then comes the claim of an anti-police message. You have to read the book to decide if this is true, because it gives the law and order point of view alongside the victims’ points of view. It would be a bad novel if it reduced its characters to the good guys vs. the bad guys, and most teachers would avoid such over-simplification in their assigned reading. An “anti-police message” would be too simplistic. My personal view is that the novel avoids stereotyping the “Black” point of view against the “White” point of view by including a Black policeman as a significant character in the story.

The indoctrination of a social agenda smells strongly like one person’s personal disagreement with the over-riding themes of the book.  Critical reading, an essential skill for teen-age readers, requires a mature reader to engage with the themes of a book and decide whether the reader agrees or disagrees. No secondary reading curriculum should lack this skill, regardless of the proficiency expected in the reader. Even a hilarious book like the Newbery award winner Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli might have a social agenda, and I imagine some parents might detect one. It is the role of critical reading to ferret this out and make decisions about the point of view.

The “indoctrination” claim addresses the way a book is taught. Only bad teachers teach by telling the students what the author’s message is. It kills critical thinking, and students hate when teachers do that. If the book, itself, takes an indoctrinating approach, it is bad fiction. As I commented above, “It would be a bad novel if it reduced its characters to the good guys vs. the bad guys, and most teachers would avoid such over-simplification in their assigned reading.”

If readers can get past the language and give The Hate U Give a fair reading, I think they will find an even-handed approach to police responsibility, racial identity, and community dialog. It is precisely the community dialog that is lacking in many American communities today, the very reason this book should be read, not banned.

This book should unite, not divide communities. At the very least it would be a great read for parent groups that want to read what their kids are reading. In the interests of dialogue some high schools and middle schools organize such groups to shed light on books that parents may want to be informed of. Such reading groups would be a good test of the theory that “Books Unite Us.”

I think The Hate You Give is the kind of book that unites us.

 

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Two Days in Stratford

Our first days of theater included Richard III in the afternoon and the next day The Miser in the evening.  No two plays written within a century of each other could be more different.

We saw Richard on the thrust stage of the Tom Patterson Theater, named for the founder of the Stratford Festival.  Richard III was also the inaugural play produced in 1957 in a massive tent. Today the Patterson Theater is a sprawling complex along the Avon River. Victoria sits below just a few yards from the river with the building in the background.

If you travel northeast up the river, you come to the Festival Theater, the oldest of the four theaters that are home to the Festival. It houses one large semi-circular theater where we saw The Miser Thursday night. The set for that comedy-farce is pictured below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard the Third is a dark, authentic history with a cast of nobility in taut struggle for power. Richard is by far the most diabolical and ruthless and for a time assumes sovereignty over England by killing off the heirs in his way, including two young boys.  He also displays some ruthless charm by marrying first Anne Neville, the wife of one deceased lord, then, with subtle pressure, threatening to marry Elizabeth, daughter of Elizabeth Woodville the widow of Edward III.  This is a pale synopsis of the intrigue and betrayal that pits Richard against his own allies and other nobility at the end of the play. In the end Elizabeth marries Henry Tudor, the earl of Richmond at the close of a deadly battle for the throne. Richard’s famous line, “My kingdom for a horse!” fatally ends his rule of England.

The Miser is a seventeenth century French comedy of manners which borders on farce. We saw a play modernized by Ranjit Bolt with many contemporary allusions to the theme of greed that made you think of famous examples.  Harper, the character portrayed as the miser, is so consumed with his money that, when he discovers thievery, looks out into the masked audience and moans,”No one wearing masks can be trusted!”   The generational conflict involves his two children trying to marry their chosen partners,  while he threatens to disinherit them.

Remarkably Colm Feore, the actor playing the pathetic miser was Richard III only one day previous.  He showed versatility as a dangerous foe vs. a ludicrous greedy miser. The role of Jack, played by Ron Kennell, was particularly hilarious, as he literally changed hats to assume the roles of cook, chauffeur, and dispute mediator.

The denouement unites all the right couples with frenetic dancing and joy,  as long-lost sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers are re-united. Everybody, it appears has access to a fortune, as the character Arthur Edgerton turns out to be the rich father of  Victor and Marianne, who can now marry into the miser’s family. The moral seems to be “Money conquers all!”

The delightful gardens of the Festival Theater are barely represented here. We visited them in daylight on Thursday, but we had to flee under cloud and rain. The boar’s head flower pattern below represents the insignia of Richard III. There others representing the profile of Little Women and the handgun of the musical Chicago, all in a horizontal line of a bed directly in front and parallel  to the Festival Theater.

 

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The Discomfort Quotient

In October 2021, Republican state Rep. Matt Krause sent a letter to school districts detailing a list of 850 books that he believed “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”

If parents were given full view of public school curricula online, what might be their objections to those curricula?  Much of the recent legislation about public school curricula declares that students should not feel “uncomfortable” about what they learn. That single complaint about curriculum is enough to make most teachers hand in their resignation in frustration.

“Discomfort” is a significant goal for learning in many disciplines, especially literature and American history. Teachers are not trying to avoid “discomfort,” when they teach Huckleberry Finn,  but to incite it. Otherwise why would they allow students to read a novel where the N__ word is used in dozens of  instances? Should not students feel discomfort when they read that? Is it necessary for the impact of the book?  Hemingway says of the novel:  All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since. And yet to read this book is to be uncomfortable.

Discomfort as a Goal

“Discomfort” is not a good reason to ban Huckleberry Finn, and those who have sought to ban it include as many liberal parents as conservative, equally concerned about their children’s  discomfort with reading that offensive word. “Discomfort” is indeed the author’s goal for both liberal and conservative readers, who learn about the the racism of a border state in the 1800’s. Who learn how normalized racial attitudes affect how people are treated every day.

Another source of discomfort is the website “Facing History and Ourselves” which brings historical resources about genocide and prejudice to the attention of secondary school readers.  Some censors of history have targeted  “Facing History” as one that generates discomfort about the Holocaust and should be culled from the secondary curriculum. Why should we feel responsible for events in Germany from another decade? We need to remember, as Germany has learned, that ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ (George Santayana-1905). See Caste, (pp. 343-352) for an account of remembering and education about Nazi Germany.

“Discomfort” is an authentic response to history, indeed the response that makes us want to change the covert prejudice in our communities today. That’s the part of the curriculum that directs us to “Facing Ourselves.” The avoidance of discomfort is a reason that nothing changes in a community saturated with inequity.  Discomfort should not be grounds for censorship, but for engaging and transformative teaching. Legislators seem to have missed this point.

Rep. Krause’s campaign in Texas threatens effective learning. His own education must have been truly dull and ineffective if it avoided “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress.” I would be truly disturbed if my students felt none of these emotions after reading Othello, Death of a Salesman, or Raisin in the Sun. They arouse deep emotions because they are great plays. They make us want to change matters of economic and racial inequity.

Discomfort Quotient = Redeeming Value / Discomfort.

Ultimately teachers have to decide how much discomfort is enough for a given age of students, and parents should decide if it is too much for their own particular student. What is the discomfort quotient for Johnny Got His Gun or for The Bluest Eye, both of which have shocking scenes? Is the discomfort above what your child can tolerate? Parents should consider some of these questions before deciding .

  1. What exact scene or chapter is most disturbing?
  2. Why do you think it is emotionally destructive to your child?
  3. Does the book have any redeeming value for your child?
  4. Redeeming Value divided by Discomfort equals Discomfort Quotient. (An estimate)
  5. Should your child be removed from the book, or should the book be removed from the curriculum?
  6. What alternative readings exist that would satisfy the same curricular goals?

If this sounds like a lot of work, yes it is indeed hard to create a developmentally appropriate curriculum. Banning books is easy and destructive. Evaluating books and choosing them for the right age group is the hard work that teachers and curriculum coordinators do all the time.  That is what should be expected of parents who want to second-guess their choices.

Reading may often be uncomfortable. “Discomfort” is a poor reason for banning a book, but a good reason for re-evaluating the fit for a particular student. Make a “discomfort quotient” calculation before dismissing the value of books and online curricula.  Show a constructive interest in what students are reading, instead of taking the discomfort shredder to the curriculum.  Show your student how a mature reader deals with discomfort.