Guest Editorial: Assault on Education by Vince N. Spencer

Back before I and Sandi got sick and disabled with our respective health nightmares, we both worked for a local school district. Looking back at it now, from my perspective a decade later since I was last able to work, one can see the beginnings of the current chaos in education. We had these same issues over a decade ago. The difference now is that like minded individuals are banning together to agitate and are being actively encouraged by some elected officials. But, enough how I see things. Below is a guest editorial from an active teacher who is doing his best to deal with the current environment. Please welcome Vince N. Spencer to the blog today.

 

 

Assault on Education by Vince N. Spencer

 

I started out thinking I would write a piece about finding common ground to help render the local education topography less dramatic. The problem with that thinking is that it’s wrong. Public education in the United States has been a hotbed of controversy since Horace Mann created the first school board in the early 19th century.

 

His fight was centered on increased pay for teachers, social equity and using public education to overcome poverty. Teachers are still not paid commensurate with the educational requirements and demands of the profession, social equity is still a concern in the classroom, and school budgets still favor demographics with greater privilege. Political agendas have driven school boards since their inception. Boards have been taken over by extremists before, but not on as wide a scale, and not as quickly.

 

Confrontational scenes at board meetings have become commonplace, and in some instances, even violent. This is not a sudden, spontaneous “awakening” of parents on a national level. It’s a targeted, special-interest narrative driven by obscene amounts of money and a savvy, nationwide social media blitzkrieg of messaging about the evils of teaching equity. The misinformation alone might not have been enough to ensure sweeping victories, but here’s the thing: The fuel behind it, the money, came from special PACs created by right-wing groups with the purpose of destabilizing our educational system. Why do that? Follow the money to the private sector.

 

Follow it to charter schools and other private or corporate-owned institutions that would benefit greatly from destabilizing public education to the point that publicly funded voucher systems might look attractive, despite the questionable constitutionality. There’s a lot of money to be had there, and so a lot of money was fed into the elections across the country. They know these board elections historically have low voter turnout, so securing seats on the boards is a matter of money, marketing and a checklist of easy-to-remember messages. Then bus in enough vocal and “angry” people from outside the district to give the appearance of a massive groundswell of grievances, and suddenly boards across the country fall to activism.

 

It’s a targeted, special-interest narrative driven by obscene amounts of money and a savvy, nationwide social media blitzkrieg.

 

As of this writing, superintendents have been voted out of their jobs by agenda-driven activists across the country in deals that seem to violate transparency rules. The (wrong) belief that critical race theory [CRT] is being taught in classrooms is still alive and well and being fueled by social media accounts that suddenly sprang into existence right around the time Donald Trump brought the graduate-level law class into the national spotlight. The “CRT” issue has become a catch-all that conservatives use to label anything that has to do with student equity. Without stopping for a moment to consider what is best for students, conservative activists have moved forward with their own personal beliefs and agenda and damn the facts. Who will suffer for it? Their own kids — if, in fact, the newly elected board members have ever had kids in the systems they’re attempting to dismantle — and, of course, everyone else’s. 

What’s clear is, once again, teachers are being used as pawns in a political battle fueled by propaganda and arguments filled with so many logical fallacies as to be laughable if it were not for the harm they’re causing students. As a teacher, I see more disrespect between students, more lying, more dishonesty, and more direct confrontation. What I am seeing is a mirror of what is being brought into board meetings. Students are mirroring the behavior of their adult examples, thinking the loudest voice in the room is the one that wins. And that really isn’t the case, is it? We say no. Teachers say no. 

While it is true this kind of behavior can sometimes be expected from children, we expect those raising them to set better examples. We expect integrity to drive the decisions of our boards of education. We don’t expect the loudest and rudest voices in the room to “win.” That’s not the way adults act, is it? 

 

Vince N. Spencer