I kept detailed journals throughout high school, and when I read them now I am amazed at how much drama I could wring out of a single encounter. A short conversation between classes was fodder for two or three pages! I can’t fathom how I had the stamina to keep up with that kind of constant turmoil.
I doubt the histrionics of student hierarchies have changed much since, but I do think there’s more drama in school today than there used to be. But don’t interpret that as me taking a shot at students — these days, most of that drama comes from the adults.
The Big Takeaway
Elected officials control school budgets, so education has always been entwined with politics. And that’s always invited controversy, from segregation and busing to teacher salaries and reading material that strikes the school board as a little too racy for students.
But the link between schools and politics seems more direct now. That’s partly because of the pandemic — things like masks and vaccine mandates were politicized well before they hit schools, and large-scale virtual learning is an imperfect system that doesn’t work well for all students — but it’s also just a symptom of our larger reality. Schools are ultimately a microcosm of society, so if the society is hyper-polarized, the schools will follow eventually.
Politics have permeated every level of education. Former university leaders in North Carolina said during a panel discussion Wednesday that the state’s university system has been under unprecedented partisan assault for at least a decade, beginning when the GOP took control of the General Assembly.
It started with money, NC Policy Watch reported. New conservative appointees to the UNC Board of Governors paused tuition increases, which dried up budgetary surpluses and hampered the system’s ability to provide need-based aid and attract or retain top educators.
They moved next to ideological issues, shutting down the law school’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and stopping the Center for Civil Rights from participating in litigation. They fired the system’s president (officials suspected it was because he was a Democrat), and stripped the governor’s office of its power to appoint trustees only after Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was elected.
It’s overt partisan maneuvering, yet Republicans act innocent anytime they’re accused of playing politics with the university system, said Holden Thorp, who served as chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill from 2008 to 2013.
“I wish a lot of the folks who are doing what they’re doing would just say, ‘Listen, we won the election and we get to do this stuff,’” he said. “Then we could have a debate about whether their political policies are best, like you would in any political situation.”
This sort of thing happens a lot. Schools are politically popular, so lawmakers usually claim to support them, even (maybe especially) when they’re eyeing budget cuts. In Florida on Thursday, state senators led a round of applause for school board members in the chamber who they said had worked “tirelessly” for students during the pandemic, the Florida Phoenix reported.
It was a nice gesture. It might have been nicer if Republicans weren’t also pushing legislation to cut salaries for those same school board members. A Senate proposal would cut salaries to around $30,000, roughly the same as lawmakers (so if lawmakers give themselves a raise, board pay would also increase, a probably-not-coincidental talking point).
The House proposal is more drastic, scrapping school board salaries entirely in favor of a $200 per-meeting stipend with an annual cap of $4,800 per member. The savings would be reallocated toward pay for “media specialists,” whose sole purpose would be to determine if books are acceptable for library or classroom use under state guidelines.
But that’s just a bonus, according to the bill’s lead sponsor. Eliminating salaries is really about keeping school boards apolitical, ensuring members are “there for the right reasons,” as opposed to trying to launch their political careers.
Plenty of other bills take direct aim at reading and learning materials, including one that would ban “sexually explicit materials” in Arizona’s K-12 classrooms. That proposal, approved by the Republican-controlled House on Thursday, is meant to protect “the innocence of Arizona children,” according to state Rep. Jake Hoffman, a Republican and its lead sponsor, the Arizona Mirror reported.
Per the bill, schools can’t use any textual, visual or auditory materials that reference sexual activity or conduct, defined as physical contact with clothed or unclothed “genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such a person is a female, breast.” (The definition originally included homosexuality but was amended after complaints that it would exclude any reading materials that referenced the LGBTQ community.)
Hoffman justified the proposal by claiming that “sexually explicit content” is being shown to children as young as 9, including a booklet titled “Dry Humping Saves Lives.” That pamphlet appears on the website Stop Comprehensive Sexuality Education, which describes it as a “vulgar” reading that teaches kids “anything goes sexually as long as they don’t pass their sexual fluids on to their sexual partners.”
The website says the booklet has been distributed in Oregon and “likely” other states, though it doesn’t name any. (Hoffman never responded to a request to identify districts in Arizona that are spreading its dry-hump gospel.) The site itself is a product of Family Watch International, a homophobic Christian lobbying organization that’s been labeled as a hate group due to its homophobia.
The bill passed the House along party lines with a few amendments, including one that exempts “classical and early American literature” with parental consent. (A separate bill would require teachers to post a comprehensive list of classroom books and worksheets online.) But they’re still banned by default, and the amendment doesn’t really explain what constitutes classical literature.
Normally, I would assume this goes without saying, but it’s 2022 and nothing matters, so just to be clear: It is already illegal to show pornography to children. In practice, the bill would only restrict mainstream reading material, including classics like “1984” (a cautionary tale about the dangers of authoritarianism) and “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” (the first of Maya Angelou’s autobiographical works that includes rape and frank discussions of racism).
Because the children, you see.
The syllabus: (Iowa) Bill would charge teachers, administrators with serious misdemeanor for ‘obscene’ content … Teachers, students protest new Douglas County (Colorado) school board’s alleged plot to oust superintendent … After campaigning on involving parents in public education, Virginia’s new governor is denying FOIA requests on education orders … (Minnesota) Lawmakers hear plea for more mental health resources for schools … (New Jersey) Bill would create state division to study school desegregation … Louisiana school board task force rejects $80 million budget increase for public schools
State of Our Democracy
It’s easy to dismiss people who claim that democracy is under assault. The very phrase sounds alarmist and extreme, like something in a John Grisham novel (except John would word it much more eloquently).
We trust that democracy can’t fall overnight. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fall. There’s no atomic bomb to drop on it, so instead, they launch small attacks and pass bits of legislation that dismantle it piece by piece, under the dark of night, over the course of many, many nights.
So of course we think the claims are alarmist. The frog doesn’t know it’s cooking if you turn up the heat slowly*.
There are literally hundreds of examples of this — you can see a collection of them here, or in any edition of the Evening Wrap — including today’s story from Michigan, which describes Donald Trump asking state lawmakers to have police seize voting machines after the 2020 election.
The plot, outlined in a report published this week by The New York Times, failed because lawmakers said no. We don’t know why, or even which legislators were involved, though Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told the Michigan Advance they were “people with integrity on both sides of the aisle.”
But that refusal was far from a given. Republicans in Michigan have done plenty to support the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump won the election.
A majority of their caucus in the state Senate signed a letter asking Congress to examine (baseless) allegations of voter fraud (an earlier version asked them to delay the electoral vote count past Jan. 6). Eleven House Republicans signed a letter to former Vice President Mike Pence asking him to delay certification of the results. They let Rudy Giuliani use a committee hearing to rail about (baseless) allegations of election fraud. (He didn’t wear a mask, reportedly farted while talking and was diagnosed with COVID-19 days later.)
They tried to give Michigan’s electoral votes to Trump. They replaced members of county canvassing boards with Big Lie believers and passed multiple voting restrictions, even after a Republican-led panel concluded there was no widespread fraud in Michigan’s 2020 election.
This is a non-exhaustive list from a single state, and it’s still overwhelming. But if you put weeks or months between these events, string them out over a year, and throw in the rest of our busy lives and daily worries, it’s easy to see why we take our eyes off the ball. And that’s exactly what they’re counting on.
*OK fine yes he does but I didn’t know that before today.
Caught Our Eye
Happy 109th birthday to Rosa Parks, born today (as Rosa Louise McCauley) in Tuskegee, Ala.
In 1955, Parks, then a 42-year-old seamstress, refused to surrender her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. (She said later the bus “was among the first ways I realized there was a Black world and a white world.”) She was arrested for her act of “civil disobedience,” which sparked a civil rights movement that culminated in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
She died in 2005, eight years before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and 12 years before Trump took office. A bust of Parks sits in the Oval Office with President Joe Biden today, about two miles from the U.S. Capitol where Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) declined to abolish the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.
From the Newsrooms
- (New Hampshire) Travel nurses have been essential during the pandemic – but at a cost
- (New Jersey) For some lawmakers, end of legislative career means start of new public post
- (Florida) Elections official on GOP voting law: ‘I just don’t think that any of it was necessary’
- Definition of rape debated in (Ohio) Supreme Court case
- Kansas House lawmakers slow process for ‘train wreck’ megaproject incentive bill
One Last Thing
On one side of the Atlantic, federal officials suggested that reporters who doubt the government’s account of a military strike probably think ISIS and Russia are good sources. On the other side, Queen Elizabeth II sat down to go through her collection of trinkets but was interrupted by Candy, her dorgi (a cross between a dachshund and a corgi).
I know, I know, we fought a war to escape the monarchy, blah blah blah. I’m just saying, of the two scenarios, the little old lady looking at greeting cards and talking to Candy the dorgi sounds more fun.
This edition of the Evening Wrap published on Feb. 4, 2022. Subscribe here.
