GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS ARE INEVITABLY CENSORSHIP PER SE.

During the corona tyranny, a salutary side effect of the prolonged virtual education as the kids were confined to quarters was the ability of parents to see what passed for instruction, and, where there were elections, to turf out the school boards and replace them with people more respectful of their world views.  That didn't sit too well with some teachers.

“School District of Waukesha (SDW) students and staff [have] become aware of a significant increase in teacher resignations this school year.” So says the Alliance for Education in Waukesha in a June 7 press release.

“From April 1 to June 5, 2022, SDW has received at least 54 resignations from employees. In 2021, there were a total of 28 resignations from April to June 30. Because contracts from teachers are not due back to SDW until the 15th of this month, we anticipate there will be a surge in the already staggering 93% year to year increase in resignations.”

At the May board meeting, newly elected board member, Marquell Moorer, was puzzled by what he called the “hefty” number of teachers leaving. Were there exit interviews done with these resignations?

Sharon Thiede, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, said that there was no formal system of exit interviews, but employees leaving were free to give the district feedback.  A lot of people are moving to schools closer to their homes, said Thiede.

At the June board meeting, several teachers who were quitting gave the board its answer.

“I am not leaving because I am moving or because my husband got a new job. I am not leaving because of a dispute with a colleague or administrator, or because of my students,” said Stacy Kolafa, a Spanish teacher at West High School for nine years. “In fact, it is because of the students that I have stayed here as long as I have. I do not agree with the direction the school district has taken in regards to diversity and equity.”

Monica Whaley reinforced what several other teachers said that night. Much of it came down to a school district that no longer accepted diversity. Signs in classrooms supporting Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ kids were taken down. Some were nothing more than rainbow signs that said “Safe Space.” Teachers were being monitored when they taught about race and diversity in their own classrooms.

It doesn't matter, dear reader, whether you agree with those reasons for leaving or whether you would just as soon have those culture-studies majors teaching elsewhere, or what side you take in the following exchanges.

Heidi Gerlach, who has 22 years in the district, was leaving for additional reasons. The workload had become unmanageable, Two to four meetings a week left little prep time for classes; every minute is micromanaged.

Parents chimed in as well. Jan Mandela’s family is removing their children from the Waukesha schools because of the school culture’s lack of acceptance and respect. What had taken over was an “antiquated ideology,” Mandela said. “We will be moving out of Waukesha next month so that our children can attend a district that aligns with our morals as civilized human beings of an extremely diverse and unique world that we live in.” Teachers are the “true heroes” here, Mandela added.

But not everyone agreed with that assessment.

Paul Reese, who speaks frequently at board meetings, began with “I love this board and what it has done.” He quoted the Bible and pushed for adherence to the dress code. “People don’t want to listen to what you have to say. Instead, they shout, ‘You are a homophobic’ because you disagree with them.” Teachers should stick to teaching the basics, Reese said. “Some teachers just want to indoctrinate our kids.”

Kathy Keller, a grandparent, said, “Thank you for getting back to basics.” Some teachers are leaving because they are unable to “sexualize and politicize” their students, she added, so let them go.

None dare call it censorship?

The unifying theme in that conversation is that Somebody in Public Office is establishing content standards, and the tussle among Critical Studies pedagogues or school board members endorsed by teachers' unions or school board members elected by conservative populists is over who gets to be the censor, even if it's under the rubric of establishing content standards.  That's evident in a Quit Letter recently posted by former Waukesha teacher Ross Freshwater.

I passed on an offer to work at the number one ranked school in the state for the opportunity to be a part of one of Wisconsin’s most diverse school communities.

Composed of a rich mix of Latino, white, African American, Asian, and Indigenous students from across the socio-economic and political spectrum, the high school is in many ways a microcosm of both 21st Century America and the rapidly changing face of its suburbs. In my classroom sat students with rainbow earrings and MAGA t-shirts, who carry family stories of contemporary global conflicts alongside Wisconsin’s pioneer settlers. They play sports and act in plays together, engage adeptly in the give-and-take of a pluralistic space, all while forging a rich community from their collective teenage experience.

Over my first five years with the district, central office and building administration encouraged the practice of research-based pedagogy in the classroom. In social studies, this took the form of theme-based units that took deep dives into inquiry-based teaching and learning. Teachers were encouraged and provided support in the cultivation of a deep and diverse trove of lesson materials, from which they had the discretion to pull the topics and material that were most relevant to the interests of the students in the room. Then came the COVID-19 mask debate and the death of George Floyd. What had been a school board populated by candidates of nonpartisan elections was soon replaced via one political party’s open endorsement of a full slate of candidates.

Once upon a time, there might have been enough agreement among voters that a school board election could be "nonpartisan" (in reality, it never was) or that the PTA and the local teachers' union could be trusted to endorse responsible adults.  The rot might have set in a long time ago, well before the replacement of history and civics by the amorphous "social studies;" and by the time the textbook publishers balked at having to produce different sorts of textbooks because California content standards were so different from Texas's, the very choice of content became a source of conflict.

This new board’s reign began with the removal of masks before a large cross-section of the community was vaccinated. Soon after, the small rainbow colored “Safe Zone” signs that hung by many teacher’s doors disappeared. Upon our return to our classrooms in August 2022, teachers found gaps in their shelves where “controversial” books had once stood. Remaining in district libraries were six copies of (Adolf Hitler's autobiography) Mein Kampf. The day after, at a district meeting, history teachers were handed a heavily scripted curriculum, expected to be taught in lock step across schools, with the explicit dictate that all potentially controversial topics be presented to the board before entering the classroom. In February 2023, the board then ordered staff to address students by their assigned birth gender in the event that a student’s wishes on the matter contradicted their parents.

So it always is with political decisions. I wonder if anybody uses Mein Kampf as anything other than an insomna cure, it's tendentious in any language.

The choice of the new content standards?  Not edifying.

Over 40% of South’s students come from families with direct ties to developing countries, yet they are now forced to learn the vocabulary word, “Third World,” within the new scripted history curriculum. Outside of Waukesha, that word was mostly retired over a decade ago to avoid offending people from those nations. What Waukesha students are not being taught is that Mexico has grown its economy to the point that it is the 15th largest in the world - a fact that could be a major point of pride for those students with ties to that country, who also comprise about 35% of the South community.

The board, instead, chose curriculums that stress the deficits of foreign cultures over their assets. When their family roots are framed as deficits within a class lesson, young people often shut down. When they are framed as developing assets, by teachers given the executive function to build bridges between knowledge and learners, those students’ interest in the topic often comes alive.

"Third World" should have been retired in 1991.  It was shorthand for a Cold War era taxonomy of the world into a "First World" of the Anglosphere and its post-War alliances, a "Second World" of the Communist bloc, with or without Albania and China, and the remaining countries, which might have been a nonaligned bloc (the wish of Yugoslavia's Tito or India's Nehru, or sometimes Red China's Mao) and later it became a short way of describing the less developed countries.  Now, "undeveloped" or "less developed" cause the process-worshippers to fret, while "Third World" connotes corruption, ethnic or religious strife, and poverty, you know, life in Chicago.  But even if the textbook authors have intentions as honorable as those of E. C. Hartwell in Story Hour Readings, it's still censorship, and if the immigrant kids don't object, perhaps the old-line residents do.  Nor is that a bad thing.  There might be a knowledge base of civilization, there might be different ways of defining that, and hoping for the common schools to do the job in a way satisfies everybody isn't going to be easy.

I take pride in the fact that my classroom is a place where students of many backgrounds and persuasions often engage in meaningful discussions about the prominent issues and questions of our modern world. Anonymous student surveys reveal that the young people in my class feel they are in a safe space where they are free to discuss important topics that are relevant to their lives. The fact that kids in Bernie Sanders and Thin Blue Line t-shirts stop by after 3:05 p.m. reinforces for me the notion that this is true. If I were to remain at South I’d commit to maintaining that spirit within my classroom. And I fear that would lead to my dismissal by the board.

Thus he is out.

Note, though, what has gone wrong.  "Safe space to discuss important topics" is not the same as "safe space for identity politics posturing" or "safe space for traditionalist posturing."  In the contest over what sort of censorship shall structure the curriculum, the fundamental mission of education, which is to say, equipping young minds with the ability to sort out the sensible from the silly, at ever more nuanced levels of sensible.