Getting Ready for the New School Year? Then Prepare for Hating Haters Indoctrination

Maybe it might best be described as Hating Trump Voters 101.

I’m not spending a lot of time on this, too much backed up in my posting queue, but I just saw this Opinion piece at the Philadelphia Inquirer that tells us to see the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s “Hate at School” report. (I’m betting there is nothing in it about how to treat even Trump supporters with respect.)

Do your kids have the “emotional intelligence” to be ready for the 2020 Presidential election? Indeed are they ready to confront “racism, sexism, and heteronormativity” this year?

If not, may I suggest home schooling!

To confront the 2020 election cycle, we need emotional intelligence in schools | Opinion

In the history classes I teach, I begin with a digital dialogue called “What Gives Us Pause.” Before we begin formal instruction, I invite students to share with each other the social and political currents that worry them most, or make them most hopeful for the future. This dialogue unleashes a flood of student voices.

Every year, students name wars that tear nations apart, gentrification that disrupts the fabric of urban communities, environmental crises, and hate and prejudice. I expect them to talk about the most recent incidents of mass shootings and gun violence right here in Philadelphia. Very quickly, this bonds the classroom in ways that prepare us to support and hold each other accountable, and name patterns of behavior we witness — in the news cycle, on social media, and in our own lived experiences — as the year unfolds.

When I began teaching in 2007, the first years felt sterile. I was discouraged from getting too political or confronting social power structures like racism, patriarchy, or class. I was trained to believe that teachers had to create “safe spaces” that were apolitical and socially neutral. We celebrated civil rights victories but did not discuss the dark legacy of slavery. We didn’t talk about the environment. Textbook-driven instruction drove my practice at the expense of student voices and authentic connections with each other.

Grrrrr!  “Student voices!” “Authentic connections!”  But, did they learn anything about the Revolutionary War or the Civil War?

I digress…. after a recent visit to the Antietam Battlefield, a friend whispered a question—what about all the northern white families who lost their husbands, fathers and sons fighting to free the slaves, don’t they deserve reparations?

Jobs goes on….

Too often, public conversations stop at simply naming transgressions: identifying something as hurtful or difficult and then moving on. In other cases, policy-driven mandates aiming to keep discourse respectful — like bans on the use of specific words, music, readings, or opinions — leave little room for gray areas. School communities, on the other hand, can model practical responses to and discussions of these moments that young people can use their entire lives, including when confronting racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. [You can bet any students who support our President will never emote in Jobs’ classes!—-ed]

[….]

The stakes feel high. The special report “Hate at School”by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project showed a sharp increase in hate and bias in schools since the 2016 election.

Thankfully, the “Hate at School” report offers many entry points for engaging students, educators, and families in inquiry around how to notice, name, and combat acts of bias and hatred on an ongoing basis — not only when individual moments grow large and public. This defines the work that educators across the nation prepare to engage as school resumes, just over a year out from the 2020 election. [It is all about 2020 to the Progressives.—ed]

There is much more (if you can stomach it!).

Are you looking for a project?  Even if your kids are grown, how about looking into what is being taught in your local schools?

My post over the weekend about Michigan teachers being indoctrinated with incomplete information about Islam, see it here, was a huge success on social media.

Fascinating that the beat goes on at the Southern Poverty Law Center. You might think the media (and people like Jobs) would hesitate for a few minutes about using the work of the hypocrites at the SPLC after the incredible airing of their dirty (racist!) linen earlier last spring.

See my complete archive on the SPLC by clicking here.