One Brian W. Jones, formerly with the Bush II Department of Education, formerly counsel to California Gov. Pete Wilson (R), formerly member of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, writes this morning that despite the angry outbursts of parents at recent school board meetings, the collective We ought to listen to them. “Violence or the imminent threat of it,” naturally, being “beyond the pale.” He’s covered himself.
“In the vast territory of civic anger and frustration lies the opportunity for growth and enlightenment, and better decision-making among public servants willing to listen.” Gotcha.
Charlie Pierce reads angry protests over vaccines in schools, masks, and Critical Race Theory differently. A believer in public education and in public schools (enough to send his own kids), he sees public education as much as a way for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty as for the rich to procure an educated work force:
And because of that, it always has been a favorite target of the oligarchs and the privileged. Those attacks always are well-camouflaged; many of them are usually disguised as efforts to help “the children.” Many of those are launched in profound bad faith by wealthy people who don’t know enough about actual education to throw to a cat. Too many Democrats and putative liberals have tried to co-opt the softer edges of the offensive, often with the best intentions. But at the moment, a new assault has begun on many fronts, and seeing it as one action is the only way some of those fronts make sense. It is another of the brushfire wars we mentioned on Tuesday. And it’s leaving casualties.
We have Tea Party-ish astroturfed maniacs showing up at school-board meetings and raising insane hell. If you want to see the toll that takes, watch this video from Jennifer Jenkins, a school board member from Brevard County who has been threatened and harassed at work and at home by these people. From NBC News:
“I don’t reject people coming here and speaking their voice,” Jenkins, a supporter of masks in schools, said. “… I reject them following my car around. I reject them saying that they’re coming for me, that I need to beg for mercy.
“I reject that when they are using their First Amendment rights on public property, they’re also going behind my home and brandishing their weapons to my neighbors.”
And this is about mask mandates in the public schools. Except it really isn’t, anymore than all the bushwah about Critical Race Theory is really about a technique of legal analysis. (A lot of the latter is about racist attempts to whitewash American history, but that isn’t all of the reason, either.) These are all part of a multi-pronged, well-funded, coordinated attack on American public education.
Pierce details goings-on in Georgia to amend review of tenure for professors to include removal for reasons “other than for cause.” And that review will now be delegated to a politically appointed board. The details are posted at Inside Higher Ed. “Professors within the University System of Georgia say the Board of Regents’ policy proposals seek to centralize power and end, not update, tenure,” reads the subhead.
Pierce sees it all of a piece and about control:
It is not about masks, or Critical Race Theory, or the 1619 Project. It is about a thoroughgoing assault on one of the last remaining redoubts of our political commonwealth, and to make that redoubt subordinate to political appointees of either the governors elected through voter suppression, and/or the state legislatures gerrymandered from hell to breakfast. And to the extent that it is not seen—or fought—as such, the assault will continue to succeed.
Listen to what parents are saying? Or treat what they say like Mad Magazine‘s “What They Say and What it Really Means”?