Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman have the story. All these right wingers bellowing about free speech all the time are beyond hypocritical:
At first glance, the plight of Katherine Rinderle, a fifth-grade teacher in Georgia, might seem confusing. Rinderle faces likely termination by the Cobb County School District for reading aloud a children’s book that touches on gender identity. Yet she is charged in part with violating policy related to a state law banning “divisive concepts” about race, not gender.
This disconnect captures something essential about state laws and directives restricting classroom discussion across the country: They seem to be imprecisely drafted to encourage censorship. That invites parents and administrators to seek to apply bans to teachers haphazardly, forcing teachers to err on the side of muzzling themselves rather than risk unintentionally crossing fuzzy lines into illegality.
“Teachers are fearful,” Rinderle told us in an interview. “These vague laws are chilling and result in teachers self-censoring.”
In short, when it comes to all these anti-woke laws and the MAGA-fied frenzy they’ve unleashed, the vagueness is the point.
As CNN reported, the district sent Rinderle a letter in May signaling its intent to fire her for a lesson using “My Shadow Is Purple.” The book is written from the perspective of a child who likes both traditionally “boy” things like trains and “girl” things like glitter. Its conclusion is essentially that sometimes blue and pink don’t really capture kids’ full interests and personalities — and that everyone is unique and should just be themselves.
The district’s letter, which we have obtained, criticized Rinderle for teaching the “controversial subject” of “gender identity” without giving parents a chance to opt out. She was charged with violating standards of professional ethics, safeguards for parents’ rights and a policy governing treatment of “controversial issues.”
But Rinderle and her lawyer, Craig Goodmark, argue that the policy on “controversial issues” is extremely hazy. They point out that it prohibits “espousing” political “beliefs” in keeping with a 2022 state law that bans efforts to persuade students to agree with certain “divisive concepts” that don’t reasonably apply here.
After all, in that law, those “divisive concepts” are all about race. Among them are the ideas that the United States is “fundamentally racist” and that people should feel “guilt” or bear “responsibility” for past actions on account of their race. It’s not clear how this policy applies to Rinderle’s alleged transgression.
What’s more, we have learned that this action was initiated by a parent’s troubling email to the district, provided to us by Rinderle and her lawyer, in which the parent notes that teachers were told to avoid “divisive” concepts. The parent then writes, “I would consider anything in the genre of ‘LGBT’ and ‘Queer’ divisive.”
That is a highly debatable point. Even if some might consider anything related to “LGBT” as divisive for students in fifth grade, should this really be treated as self-evident? And should it really lead to a teacher’s firing?
“This particular email initiating a termination is absurd,” Goodmark told us. “This is one parent’s view of what’s ‘divisive’ being adopted by a whole district.”
Asked for comment, the district declined to discuss specifics but said it’s “confident” that its action is “appropriate” given Rinderle’s history. The district’s letter to her says students and parents have previously complained about her choices of subject matter and class conduct.
We think it’s reasonable to debate whether parents of fifth-graders deserve a heads-up on a lesson about a book like this. And we understand that a parent might not want their fifth-grader to undergo such a lesson. These matters will be litigated during Rinderle’s hearing in August.
Nonetheless, it’s absurd that Rinderle is charged with flouting policy on “controversial issues” via such a ridiculous utilization of state law. Her predicament illustrates the danger teachers face in trying to navigate policies that seem designed to be hard to follow: The incentives strongly encourage some to avoid challenging topics (lest they face a fate such as Rinderle’s), and others to go searching for transgressions on absurd pretexts (as a parent did here).
“This is the shocking new normal in American public schooling,” Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, told us. “In many states, a widening circle of content can get someone in trouble. More and more educators are getting the message: There’s a target on their backs.”
Last weekend, at the national summit of the absurdly named right-wing group “Moms for Liberty,” GOP presidential contenders all raged against wokeness, demonstrating to the base how attuned they are to the hunger for more laws cracking down on open discussions in classrooms.
“We’re not going to have the sexualization of our children in our schools!” fumed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Former president Donald Trump outdid DeSantis, vowing to “liberate our children from the Marxists, lunatics and perverts.”
The essence of this mania is that it is forever hunting for new offenders on the flimsiest of pretexts. As GOP legislatures put the force of state power behind this push, they are creating an array of blunt weaponry, which in turn further encourages parents and local officials to sniff out new sexualizers of children, new Marxists, new lunatics and new perverts wherever they can be found. Whatever becomes of Rinderle, the scalps will assuredly continue piling higher.
This makes me so sad. They really want to go back to the creepy gender-conforming of the 1950s. It won’t work, of course. People aren’t going back to that. But a lot of people are going to suffer anyway as these fucked up people get their thrills torturing vulnerable people, especially their own kids. It’s just sick.
Of course keep in mind that they have always been hostile to teachers, a unionized group the majority of which are educated women and a pathway to the middle class for racial and ethnic minorities. They have been attacking them as public employees for decades, taking over school boards and starving public schools of funds. The war on knowledge and education is long running. This is just the latest battle and they are taking no prisoners.