Republicans Hate Public Education Because It Teaches Kids To Think For Themselves
White children are perfectly capable of learning about racism, even if their parents are not.
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by Justin Rosario
Allegedly, there is an ongoing, not-at-all bad faith conversation about what books and topics are appropriate for children in school. Some Republicans are banning books left and right while others are burning them in the streets. Republican lawmakers are abusing their power to restrict what can be discussed in classrooms lest students be made to feel “uncomfortable”. And by “students”, they mean “white students”.
But, like most everything Republicans say and do, it’s all a lie. The fragility of white children is completely made up. The right’s crusade is not about Republicans protecting white children, it is about protecting Republicans from white children.
The party of “small government”
I delved into one aspect of the Republican war on education last week. That had to do with breaking public education both for the cruel joy of it and to deprive children of proper schooling. But Republicans rarely ever have one or two reasons for the terrible things they do and it is worth further exploring the renewed focus on public schools.
Part of the GOP’s modus operandi is an onslaught from multiple directions, designed to overwhelm. Thus, even as they work to turn schools into stifling trainwrecks and manipulate racist parents for political gain, Republicans are trying to roll back the clock to the good ol’ days when schools indoctrinated children into white supremacy. It is life or death for the right and it is not hard to understand why.
Back in 2017, my daughter Anastasia was seven years old. We had been having light discussions about racism for some time but I had not gotten to the really ugly stuff quite yet. She understood that people with our color skin often treated people with darker skin as less than or said bad things about them.
In much the same way white nationalists have to pave the way for atrocities with hate speech, I had to lay the groundwork to explain lynchings, the Trail of Tears, and the Holocaust. Anastasia needed to understand the hate and ignorance before she could understand the violence. I probably would have waited another year or two but the events of Charlottesville precluded that. She had to know what was happening around her and why.
It bothered her but my daughter did not shatter into a thousand tiny little pieces. Anastasia was in 1st grade. We have continued to talk about it since then, the conversation becoming more nuanced as she grows more capable of understanding the complexities of race and gender and identity.
She just turned 12 this week and her group of friends in the 6th grade looks like a CW show, pulling from almost every demographic in the school. Except for boys, because Anastasia is 12 and boys are still “gross”. Also, they’re still making gay jokes and she finds that deeply offensive.
What she also finds offensive is the entire concept of bigotry. Not a fan of it. At all. This is what Republicans are truly afraid of and why the party of “small government” is demanding direct control over what is said in every single classroom in America. This, also, is what is behind the highly coordinated attack on schools.
Republicans quote Hitler for a reason
Whitney Houston once sang, “I believe the children are our future”, and she was right. They are. Republicans know it, too. But when they get really excited, they quote a very different famous person.
Right before Republican terrorists tried to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States on January 6, 2021, freshman congressperson Mary Miller had some stirring words for her fellow fascists.
“If we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future,’” said Mary Miller, appearing to quote from the former Nazi leader’s autobiography Mein Kampf.
Miller did not snap her heels together and slam out a “Heil Hitler!” at the end but you get the idea. When Republicans rend their garments over “liberal indoctrination”, what they are really crying bloody tears over is the fact that their indoctrination has been erased from most public schools. Repeat after me: every Republican accusation is a confession.
In this instance, quite literally. Republicans have long established an alternate education system in response to Brown v. Board of Education. But it is not enough. Far more (white) children are still attending public schools and learning that black people are not criminals. They are also learning that democracy is good and fascism is bad. That is a problem.
The solution, naturally, is unabashed conservative indoctrination:
To combat this malicious trend and educate generations of young people who love America, Turning Point USA is excited to announce our newest initiative: Turning Point Academy, coming Fall 2021!
Turning Point Academy will develop and distribute K-12 curricula focused on American history, our founding principles, the Constitution, and economics. These curricula will help all educators, including homeschool parents, provide their children and students with a reliable, honest, and quality America-first education—all at NO COST.
Turning Point Academy will also train thousands of educators nationwide on how to use Turning Point Academy curricular[sic] in their classroom and how they can adopt new lessons to help transform the way our young people perceive freedom, government, and free enterprise.
TPA might as well rebrand as Hitler Youth because that’s exactly what they’re trying to produce: white children trained to believe that democracy is only legitimate when the outcome favors Republicans. That any kind of equality is an attack on whiteness. That political power comes from the end of a barrel held by white hands. Republicans quote Hitler for a reason.
Why, yes, that is the same Sebastian Gorka who has well-documented ties to Neo-Nazis.
Kirk’s white power fantasy has not yet become a reality but as long as he can hold his grifting instincts in check, it is just a matter of time. Republicans really need to massively expand their footprint in American education if they plan to stay viable.
It’s not propaganda if it’s Republican propaganda
Right now, Republicans are passing, or have passed, laws restricting what can be discussed in classrooms. Via EdWeek.org:
Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from UCLA.
Similar to legislation passed last year, many of these new bills propose withholding funding from school districts that don’t comply with these regulations. Some, though, would allow parents to sue individual educators who provide banned material to students, potentially collecting thousands of dollars.
Here’s the important bit (emphasis mine):
In interviews with Education Week, state representatives said these new bills are designed to prevent teachers from telling children what to think, encouraging them to see divisions, or asking them to adopt perspectives that are different from those of their parents on issues like policing, Black Lives Matter, gender identity, and human sexuality.
That is not what teachers do. They do not ask, and they certainly don’t tell students what to think about an issue. What they do is present the topic in a way that often leads to outcomes Republicans hate. That may sound like liberal indoctrination but, in reality, it is often a simple presentation of the facts.
The Civil War was fought because southern states refused to give up the practice of slavery. The enslaved were frequently abused, raped, and murdered by enslavers. Several thousand people were lynched by white people in the South after the end of the Civil War. Jim Crow laws were passed by white people to keep black people from exercising their constitutional rights.
Not one of these facts is disputable. There is no moral judgment involved. There is no, forgive the term, color commentary. Just a recitation of things that actually happened in a fairly bland way. Yet, in Oklahoma, I could be sued for up to $10,000 for speaking those words out loud to a classroom. Republicans would call it “critical race theory” and condemn me as an activist trying to shame their white children. Republicans have made a lot of noise about removing any kind of ideological slant from schools but even a brutally neutral curriculum is dangerous to their ongoing project.
And, to some degree, Republicans have a point. Many public schools teach children how to be good citizens. Part of that is teaching anti-racism. It is therefore quite telling that Republicans are reacting to this with absolute horror. Do they not loudly insist they are not racist? Why should this concern them? Teaching white children to resist racism has nothing to do with teaching them to feel bad about the color of their skin or the history of white people.
But it would teach them to “adopt perspectives that are different from those of their parents” and therein lies the rotten core of the issue. Republican parents do not want their children to be taught not to be racist. They want them aligned with their ideology. It’s not propaganda if it’s Republican propaganda.
Kids are not the snowflakes. Their parents are
This is important to keep in mind. With few exceptions, any Republican screaming about “protecting” children does not have the best interest of children at heart. Kids are quite resilient and capable of grappling with ideas and concepts far better than we give them credit for.
Black children encounter racism at a very young age and white people rarely clutch their pearls. White children are taught racism at a very young age and there is not a single Republican who would speak out against it. Clearly, young (white) children can withstand the alleged horrors of learning about racism throughout American history.
Instead of falling into the trap of arguing about education on the GOP’s dishonest terms, we should be forcing them to explain why they do not want their children learning to hate racism. Why is it bad to learn about the evils of slavery? Why does talking about gay kids make you uncomfortable? Do you hate gay children? Why are you afraid of books about girls having their period (yes, some Republicans really want to ban them)? Are you some kind of misogynist?
Republican kids are not snowflakes. Their parents are. Children do not need to be protected from books and ideas. They need to be protected from the ignorance of their parents. The best way to do that is to let them learn. We know that and so do Republicans. It’s why they see public education as an existential threat to be controlled or destroyed.
“Not one of these facts is disputable.”
Response from Republicans: “Challenge accepted.”
The reality is that this "Liberal Indoctrination" Republicans are so terrified of is actually Reverse Indoctrination, teaching young people how to think for themselves so they can and shrug off and break free from the very real literal conservative indoctrination that so many people are forced to grow up with.
This is why conservatives have always been terrified of and fought so hard against education: as I have been saying for so long, conservatism is entirely based on fear, especially fear of the unknown, and the more education a person gets the more they know, and therefore the less they have to be afraid of. Since conservatism depends on that fear, this erosion of unknowns to be afraid of steadily chips away at conservatism, and they know it and it terrifies them.