Total Pageviews

Search This Blog

Friday, January 14, 2022

Florida is criminalizing teaching

Governor DeSantis has accused “liberal” teachers of teaching their students to hate America. He wants to make it so teachers can be sued individually if they teach something they don’t like. It’s ridiculous and designed to gin up a fact-free base but the thing is it can pass. Gerrymandering has assured a republican majority in the state legislature. 

There are other onerous bills like requiring cameras and teachers to wear microphones that are in the pipeline as well. It’s all dreadful but what is perhaps fear-inducing in a Sherriff Mike Williams calling for restoring order in our classrooms. 

 


I don’t think he is talking about unruly students there. No, I believe he is talking about teachers who may teach something he doesn’t like, like the truth about America. The right doesn’t understand that you can acknowledge and even be disgusted by some of our history and still love our country. They don’t get it. 

Look at our founding fathers, most of them slave owners, they are revered despite their sins.  

The right doesn’t care. They want their whitewashed sanitized version of history and are willing to ruin teachers' lives if they don’t give in.   

Teachers have become the enemy of the right.  

Well, I say $#&% them. 

I don’t teach a subject that explores history, but during black history month I plan to cover a famous African American figure every day and not sugarcoat anything, and if that leads to some uncomfortable conversations or revelations then good. They will be better off for them.    

Who is going to want to be a teacher in this climate? We already have a thousand vacancies in Duval alone, and tens of thousands across the country. Fewer and fewer people are going to school to become teachers too. DeSantis’s solution is to demonize them? Williams to police them?  


No comments:

Post a Comment