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Posts by nflanagan

Nancy Flanagan is an education writer and consultant focusing on teacher leadership. She spent 30 years in a K-12 music classroom in Hartland, Mich, and was named Michigan Teacher of the Year in 1993. She is National Board-certified, and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network. She divides her time between wondering how things got so messed up and dreaming up ways to re-energize America's best idea--a free, high-quality education for every child.
by nflanagan

Men Who Like Books Start Out as Boys Who Read

Maureen Dowd, in a NYT article entitled Attention, Men: Books are Sexy!:

Men are reading less. Women make up 80 percent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.”

The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there’s a popular Instagram account called “Hot Dudes Reading.”

It’s enough to make me re-up my abandoned Instagram account.

I also sincerely hope that Maureen and I are not a dying breed, older women (we are the exact same age) who find Men Who Read attractive. I once experienced a tiny swoon when I read that Stephen King carries a paperback with him, wherever he goes. You know, in case he has to wait 10 minutes in line at the post office.

This is more than just my elderly romantic fantasy, however. I think Men Who Read are—or should be—a national education goal. Not men who can decode, nor men who can type fast with their thumbs or pass tests about content. Men who actually enjoy reading.

Reading to use their imagination, rather than seeing prepackaged ideas on video. Reading and—important–evaluating information. Using the language they absorb, via reading, in their daily interactions with others. Reading for pleasure.

Personal story: When I met my husband, he told me about working third shift at the Stroh’s factory in Detroit, while he was in law school. His job involved dealing with a machine that flattened cardboard beer cases and needed tending only at certain times. The rest of the time he filled with reading, hours every night. He would take two books to work, in case he finished the first one. He read hundreds of library books, mostly popular fiction.

He is still that person, 46 years later. Swoon-worthy.

When I read (endlessly) and think about how we’re teaching reading these days, it strikes me that the discussion is almost entirely technical: Do we really have a “reading crisis?”  Why? Is it the fault of a program that was once popular and taught millions of kids to read, but is now being replaced, sometimes via legislation crafted by people who haven’t met first graders or stepped foot into their classrooms?

I recently had a conversation with a middle school teacher in Massachusetts who is a fan of phonics-intensive science of reading curricula, largely because she gets a high percentage of non-readers into her Language Arts classes, kids who have big brains but no reading skills. She’s had some success in getting them to read, using sound-it-out instructional materials they should have experienced in early grades.

Good for her. And good for all teachers who are searching (sometimes in secret) for the right strategies to get their particular kids to read. But I’d like to point out that if the technical skills of reading aren’t matched by reasons for reading, it’s like any other thing we learn to do, then abandon. I’m guessing my friend’s students want to learn to read, because they like her, and they find what she’s teaching them interesting.

From an Atlantic piece: ‘The science of reading started as a neutral description of a set of principles, but it has now become a brand name, another off-the-shelf solution to America’s educational problems. The answer to those problems might not be to swap out one commercial curriculum package for another—but that’s what the system is set up to enable.

A teacher must command a class that includes students with dyslexia as well as those who find reading a breeze, and kids whose parents read to them every night alongside children who don’t speak English at home.

There you have it. We’re looking, once again, for a one-size-fits-all solution to a technical, easily measured “problem”—reading scores—when what we really need is honest reasons for people to pick up a book. Or a newspaper. To enjoy a story, or a deep dive into current issues.

My dad, who didn’t graduate from HS and had a physical job all his life, came home from work every afternoon and read the newspaper. He was more literate than many college grads I know.

He had reasons for reading. He was not carrying a smartphone and had only three TV channels, undistinguished by political points of view. He read TIME and LIFE magazines. I disagreed with my father on almost every issue, back in the day, but he could marshal a political argument. Because he was a reader.

So why are reading scores dropping? Curriculum and poor teaching are lazy, one-note answers. If we want a truly literate population, we need to make reading and writing essential, something that kids can’t wait to do. Because it’s a passageway to becoming an adult, to succeeding in life, no matter what their goals are, or how they evolve.

We currently have a president who doesn’t read his daily briefings, and bases his critical viewpoints on hunger in Gaza on what he sees on TV. But we used to have a president who published an annual list of his ten favorite books.

Which one of them is a (sexy) role model?

by nflanagan

A “Moment of Reckoning” or Just More Empty Hysteria?

I’ve been more or less off the grid for the past two weeks, vacationing in Alaska and determined not to let the repellent Epstein Saga or other assorted travesties spoil the snow-capped mountain vistas. Which means that a whole lot of education-related stories have been waiting in my mailbox.

Lurking bad news, for the most part (even Trump “returning” five-point-something billion to schools is tainted by the knowledge that we’ll see those cuts again—and more). Most of the bad news is cuts, in fact—or scams, like this voucher doozy in Arizona.

Can I just say that education journalists could do the citizenry a solid by continuously reporting all the resources—human and material—that have already been lost? Or by informing parents and communities about residual effects of a global pandemic or unwarranted attacks on public education?

Instead, we get idiotic headlines like this one: A Moment of Reckoning for Michigan Schools. (Cue disaster music.)

The headline is followed up with a series of articles with titles like Michigan spent big to fix schools. The result: Worse scores and plenty of blame. And Mississippi turned around its schools. Its secret? Tools Michigan abandoned.

The “effective tool” that Michigan abandoned? Our late-but-not-lamented Third Grade Flunk law, valid critiques of which centered on the damage done to kids by being forced to repeat a grade, the financial burden on schools as they are compelled to provide an additional year of instruction to large segments of their elementary population, and the complete lack of proof that these laws work.

Makes you wonder where this unsubstantiated condemnation comes from—that’s the disappointing part. These articles (and more just like them, hacking away at our public schools) are from Bridge Magazine, a fairly centrist, nonpartisan publication that focuses on issues in the Mitten State.

I interviewed its founder, eminent journalist Phil Power, shortly after Bridge launched, in 2011, and invited him to speak to the Michigan Teacher Forum, where he proclaimed his undying support for public education and especially for the hard-working teachers in Michigan public schools. Bridge seems to have moved on from those ideas, however, adopting a common politicized perspective: Oh no! Our state is falling behind other states!

There’s a lot to debunk in the series of Bridge articles (wherein I found precisely one veteran teacher quoted, mildly suggesting that the silver-bullet “Science of Reading” prescription was only one of the ways that students learned to read), but I am too jet-lagged to tackle these, point-by-point, at the moment.

State Senator Dayna Polehanki, a former teacher, did some debunking, however. From her Facebook post:

“While I won’t denigrate Mississippi’s efforts to improve its academics, the picture being painted by at least one Michigan publication that Mississippi is outperforming Michigan on the NAEP reading test (“The Nation’s Report Card”) is MISLEADING.

While Mississippi has *scored higher than Michigan ONE TIME over the past decade on the Grade 4 NAEP reading test . . .

Michigan has *scored higher than Mississippi EVERY TIME over the past decade on the Grade 8 NAEP reading test.

The assertion in the Michigan publication that Michigan “abandoned” our 3rd grade read-or-flunk law to our detriment is not supported by test score data.

It’s not surprising that states that flunk their “worst” 3rd grade readers achieve elevated results ahead of the Grade 4 NAEP reading test, but these elevated test scores tend to flatten over time (by Grade 8 NAEP reading), like they do with Mississippi.

This is borne out in NAEP data from other states as well, like Florida, which also flunks its worst performing 3rd grade readers.”

In fact, there are plenty of pieces debunking the “Mississippi Miracle,” from its deceptive gaming of the system, to right-wing blah-blah claiming that raising 4th grade reading scores isn’t enough—that Mississippi needs vouchers, immediately, to solve its poverty-related education problems.

What all these pieces have in common might be called uninformed–or “lazy,” take your pick–journalism. Education data is not easy to interpret, nor is it truth. One example: A NAEP score of “Proficient” doesn’t mean “on grade level” as most people (including some education journalists) seem to think it does.

Worse, relying solely on test scores doesn’t tell us how successful schools actually are. For that, we need to look at a wide range of factors. It’s interesting that, two weeks before Bridge launched its so-called Moment of Reckoning, they published a piece noting that only 9% of the state’s public schools currently have a full-time librarian.

Think that has anything to do with our faltering reading scores?    

In the end, schools are comprised of people and programming. The more instruction is tailored to the students in that school, the more dedicated and skilled the personnel are, the better the results. Score competitions with other states are pointless.

There are hundreds of ways to improve student learning: Universal free preschool attached to high-quality childcare. Smaller classes, especially for our youngest learners. Recruiting, training and paying a long-term teaching force. Stable housing and health care for all children. A hot breakfast and lunch, plus plenty of recess time. Government supports for public education. I could go on.

None of these are free, or likely to come down the pike in Michigan or anywhere else in the near future.

Are we reckoning with that?

by nflanagan

Teachers Work in Systems We Did Not Create

Back in the day, I used to go to ed-tech conferences, especially the Michigan Association for Computers Users in Learning (MACUL) gathering. Like everyone else, I was there to find that elusive app or device that would make my work easier.

For maybe a decade, MACUL was the hot ticket, worth burning a personal day, sitting in ballrooms looking at guys in logoed polo shirts and khakis, narrating fast-paced product-focused PowerPoints with amusing memes sprinkled throughout. The first question you got, wandering through the massive exhibits hall was “Are you in charge of tech purchases for your school?”

Nope, I wasn’t.

What I was looking for was new ways of thinking about education, specifically music education. It seemed to me that music, as a human endeavor, was way more than what I was teaching: how to play an instrument and replicate pre-written pieces, as accurately as possible. These were skills that were fairly easy to standardize and grade, but 180 degrees away from creativity and improvisation, the capacity to play with musical ideas, and evaluate your own results. Not to mention things like joy and fun.

I was working in a system that privileged the standard school band, including competitions evaluating fidelity to everything from instrumentation to tempo markings. The party line on music education is that it’s creative, but secondary music education often leaves little room for students’ imagination or original work. The teamwork and drive for excellence are valuable, but usually end when a student graduates.

Don’t get me wrong—learning to play a musical instrument and read music are useful, foundational skills in ways that many folks don’t see or appreciate. If I ran the world, all kids would learn to play an instrument, to understand and create their own music, and play daily with others.

But how could I encourage my students to try out their own musical ideas? To have fun, even jam, without a conductor and sheet music and—God forbid—weekly playing tests, speaking of pre-set system reqs… This seemed to be something that technology might do.

 Now, 20 years later, there are plenty of creative music apps to carry around on your phone or tablet. But what the techies were selling, back then, fell into three buckets:

The first was programs to make school administration easier— attendance, budgets, scheduling,etc. The second group were things to make teachers’ non-instructional duties easier—grading, standards, lesson planning, and so on. The third cluster was programs for students, most of which were usable by classes, in computer labs and directed by teachers.

There was lots of new! exciting! software, but nobody seemed to be interested in developing programs that let students experiment with the tools of music. At least, not for schools, where performing concerts and musical events for parents and the community were the ultimate curricular goals.

It was a system I didn’t create, and innovative technologies were no help in budging it. Even in ways that I knew would be good for kids, building their confidence and exploring their individual musicianship.

I thought about that today when I read this article in WIRED: Microsoft, OpenAI, and a US Teachers’ Union Are Hatching a Plan to ‘Bring AI Into the Classroom.’  The National Academy for AI Instruction will make artificial intelligence training accessible to educators across the country, a first-of-its-kind $23 million initiative funded by the tech companies to bring free training to teachers.

First thought: Do teachers WANT to bring AI into their classrooms? If so, for what purposes?

Second thought: Why is the AFT jumping on this bandwagon? To “get ahead” of some imaginary curve? To get “free” (and none of this is truly free) stuff?

Third thought: Since AI is essentially composed of stolen content, what does this do for teachers who still believe in nurturing students’ imagination? Somebody created all the literature, art and other media that goes into the giant maw of AI, so there are also ethical questions.

Final thought: Why are we ‘training’ educators to do what OpenAI thinks they should be doing? Did we ask teachers first—what would you like to know about AI? How do you think it could be useful in your classroom?

Once again, we’re forcing teachers into systems they did not create. And that’s never a good idea.

by nflanagan

Come On People Now, Smile on your Brother

So—I am a Democrat. Not a surprise to anyone who regularly reads this blog.

I think Democratic thoughts—Health care is a right! Fully support public education!—and support Democratic causes. And lately, I have been most discouraged by my fellow Democrats’ unwillingness to find common cause with other Democrats. To become brothers in arms against the terrifying actions of the Trump administration.

By “Democrats,” I mean people across a wide spectrum, from Bernie-loving Democratic Socialists who repost stuff from the IWW, to middle of the road Democrats with any combination of views on critical issues, to former Republicans who just can’t stomach the Mad King and his court anymore. The really, really big tent.

I live in one of the few counties, nationally, that went MORE blue in 2024. It’s a county full  of old white people who can afford expensive lakeside housing, as well as younger and more diverse people who work in middle-class and service industry jobs and are barely able to scrape by—nearly half of them are ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. One deer crash (and they’re endemic here) away from a financial crisis.

A whole lot of those folks should be blue voters—those who will be seriously threatened by cuts to Medicaid, those who should be in favor of radically raising the minimum wage, those who will be harmed by changes in tax law to favor the rich. Those whose generational fruit farm operations or elegant resorts or personal landscaping need immigrants to work in Michigan’s muggy summers.

If there were ever a time when we all, lifelong Dems and Dems Lite and Dem-ish, ought to be joining hands—everybody get together, try to love one another, or at least see beyond minor differences—it’s now, when masked maybe-ICE/maybe-J6er thugs are roaming the streets, beating people up before sticking them in unmarked vans. The entire Trump Cabinet is both deeply unqualified and out to reverse decades of scientific, military and diplomatic progress.

And yet.

We—my local Democratic party—are generally doing well on reminding folks to re-up their membership. But we are also getting not-renewing messages from people who are angry with Chuck Schumer or David Hogg(who has since resigned). Who want to spout off against Democrats in general, and find their local party a convenient target. As if we had influence over the national party’s decisions, rather than being focused on local candidates, local elections and local media. For our own benefit—and even survival.

We have Indivisible—and I LOVE Indivisible, national and local—members worried about Democrats getting credit for small local protests (which I also love). We have further-left Democrats hacking on our Senator, Elissa Slotkin, who used to work for the CIA, and is pretty purple. It does no good to remind them that Slotkin beat, 3-to-1, an attractive lefty candidate in her primary—or that Michigan itself is a purple state.

While I was thrilled to see a young, outspoken Muslim man run an energetic, youth-focused campaign for NYC Mayor, and send Andrew Cuomo spinning away, I am disheartened to see Democrats—Democrats!—express pointed reservations about his ultra-progressive policy goals, funding the devil they know, instead.

I absolutely do not want to hear “but I vote for Democrats, after I trash the party” excuses, either.

The old saw goes “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Time for Democrats to scrap their ideological purity and see the forest, not the trees. There’s a wide range of beliefs; we won’t agree on every issue—or every candidate or office-holder.

But smile on your brother. Join hands. The nation depends on you.

by nflanagan

What’s better than DEI?

It was the headline that made me read the piece: Let DEI Practices Die. Replace Them With Something Better. I didn’t recognize (and won’t name) the author, but his position as Chair of Ed Reform at the University of Arkansas was a tip-off to what I was about to be served.

I read it because I couldn’t really think of anything “better” than DEI, as a values template for effective teaching and learning. More on what the author thinks is better, in a minute.

I am of the opinion that DEI no longer can be defined as three important values: the desirability of diversity in making an organization and its goals stronger, the principle of providing equitable resources instead of a dangerous gap between haves and have-nots, and the human need to be included.

As a teacher in a (mostly white) school, long before DEI was something that could be positioned as wrong and against the law, let alone “replaced,” I would have to say that inclusion, equity and valuing student diversity were and remain cornerstones of good classroom practice.

But I realize—and this is what I hoped to understand in reading the article—that policies loosely grouped as “DEI” (affirmative action springs to mind) were maybe a topic that hadn’t been discussed enough to be clarified. Maybe there are other ways to create policies that acknowledged the worth of every student, no matter what they brought to the table, and the struggle to give them resources, including knowledge, tailored to help them live productive lives.

As if.

The author begins with a quote from John McWhorter taken out of context, then lays out his thesis:  Linda McMahon signaled she wants to replace DEI with individual student agency, enabled by strong families and schools. He then proceeds to explain how he rose above his working-class station, even though he was forced to attend mediocre public schools, because his family instilled character and a work ethic into their children.

Unlike, of course, other—let’s call them ‘diverse’—families and children, who got into trouble and didn’t achieve. He pushes the success sequence (college, job, marriage, children) as his “something better” alternative to his skewed conception of DEI. As for student agency—something I heartily endorse and practiced for 30 years–he seems to confuse actual agency with a concept right-leaning educators raved about a decade ago: student grit (which leads to hard work, obeying orders and school success).

The whole piece feels like a narrow-vision essay on who deserves to succeed, buttressed by quotes from political leaders and deliberate lies about what teachers are telling students, topped with a light frosting of racism.

So—what should replace DEI?

Actually, if you’re taking away (via federally approved punishments and reduced funding) inclusion, equity and diversity, what you’ve got left is exclusion of non-preferred students, discriminatory distribution of resources, and separation of student groups based on physical characteristics. In other words, Arkansas in 1957. What happens when a latter-day Orval Faubus emerges?

How did we get to this place? And what can people who understand and support the genuine purpose of public education do prevent erosion of genuine diversity, equity and inclusion—not “DEI”– in our schools?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a great piece on the anti-student inclusion groups and initiatives forming around the country—this goes way beyond Moms for Exclusion—and (important) who’s funding them: Together, these groups represent a growing trend: weaponizing public outrage and social media virality to enforce a narrow vision of education. Their strategies of harassment and public shaming have injected fear into discussions around race, gender and equity in the classroom.

So—one thing that can happen is resisting that fear, teachers intentionally developing collegial trust, clarifying their mission to serve all children well. And yes, I spent more than three decades in the classroom, most of those in a single district, and fully understand just how difficult that prescription would be. But still—courage and persistence are essential when you’re resisting something malign. And the anti-DEI movement is definitely malign.

I was taken by this piece by James Greenberg, shared by one of his Facebook friends:

“This dislocation isn’t imaginary. It’s rooted in real structural shifts. The collapse of industrial jobs, the erosion of social mobility, the fragmentation of public education, the disappearance of local media—all contribute to a pervasive sense of loss. Add to that climate disasters, housing precarity, and the stripping of rural and working-class communities by extractive economics, and you get fertile ground for stories that promise a return to order—even if that order is cruel.

The “stolen America” narrative—amplified by cable news, talk radio, and algorithmic social media—offers a simple explanation: you are losing because others are taking what’s yours. It’s a lie, but a compelling one, because it replaces confusion with clarity. It locates blame. It gives identity to those who feel erased.”

I would add to Greenberg’s analysis—the COVID-19 pandemic. But I like his characterization of public education as fragmented. Because that is precisely what has happened to our public schools, even those who rode the COVID wave, then dug into repairing the damage it did to trust in our teachers and school leaders. The voucher craze isn’t about giving parents choices—it’s about breaking up successful school districts attempting to serve all students as best they can.

What can replace DEI? Nothing. If we lose our framework of serving all kids equitably, we go backwards 75 years.

by nflanagan

Teach Your Children Well

It used to be fairly common in Traverse City, Michigan—a Michael Moore sighting. I once stood in line behind him at a Coldstone Creamery on Front Street (no longer there, alas). During the summer TC Film Festival (also no longer in existence), he was everywhere, leading panel discussions and walks around TC’s beautiful, turn-of-last-century downtown neighborhoods.

Michael Moore’s star has faded here, for various reasons. He’s never been an easy person to watch on TV, full of himself and, sometimes, an explosive but unreliable narrator of what’s happening in this country. You certainly know where he stands—but he can be a grating spokesperson.

Nevertheless, I read his free newsletter and found his April 30 column on the Vietnam War—where he points out that we’ve never as a nation, admitted our guilt or apologized–moving and worth deep consideration:

“They kicked the ass of a military superpower — and sent 60,000 of our young men home to us in wooden boxes (nine of them from my high school, two on my street) and hundreds of thousands more who returned without arms, legs, eyes or the mental capacity to live life to its fullest, forever affected, their souls crushed, their nightmares never-ending. All of them destroyed by a lie their own government told them about North Vietnam “attacking” us and the millions of Americans who at first believed the lie. This past November 5th showed just how easy it still is for an American president, a man who lies on an hourly basis, to get millions of his fellow citizens to fall for it. 

I think we need to do this for our children’s sake, for our grandchildren, for the sake of our future if there still is one for us. We should take just one day every year and participate in a national day of reckoning, recollection, reflection, and truth-telling, where together we actively seek forgiveness, make reparations and further our understanding of just how it happened and how easy it is for the wealthy and the political elites and the media to back such horror, and then to get the majority of the country to go along with it… at least at first. And how quickly after it’s over we decide that we never have to talk about it again. That we can learn nothing from it and change nothing after it. 

Teach our children this truth about us. About our history. Give them this knowledge and with it comes the opportunity for us to change and make different choices for our future. To be a different people. A peaceful people. The Germans did it. The Japanese, too.”

And here we are, again, creating an unnecessary war—this time on our own city streets. And the question bubbles up: Are we teaching our children the truth about the place where they live? And, even more important, what will happen if/when they believe the lies their government is peddling?

I was interested in this observation from the new National Teacher of the Year, Ashlie Crosson, from Pennsylvania: “Teachers shouldn’t shy away from using challenging texts and conversations in their classrooms, even if they touch on divisive topics.“

It’s a reasonable statement you might expect from any accomplished teacher—but one that could now get you fired in some states and districts. Chaos and fear and flooding the zone are part of media assessments of public education in June 2025, along with smiling photos of HS graduates and end-of-year academic honors.

Robert Reich said it well:
“Why is Trump trying to cancel “Sesame Street,” which has helped children learn to read and count for over half a century? Why is he seeking to destroy Harvard University? Why is he trying to deter the world’s most brilliant scientists from coming to the United States?

Because he is trying to destroy American education — and with it, the American mind.”

Is there anything teachers can do to stop the ongoing attack on becoming genuinely well-educated? To not be fearful of ideas or painful truths?

Individual teachers are seldom visible enough to draw widescale media-fed wrath (which is why I found the new National TOY’s remarks brave)—political opponents of public education generally target teacher unions, well-endowed universities, and programs that provide free breakfast and lunch or wraparound healthcare for kids who need it.

With the upcoming NO KINGS National Protests, I’ve seen lots of social media memes urging people to do what they can. To march and carry signs, of course—but also to speak to those in their circle of influence, to write, to model democratic principles. To behave as engaged citizens—and to teach their children the truth about our history, with the goal of becoming a peaceful people.

Let’s teach our children well. (click—it’s worth it)



by nflanagan

Book-banning, Book-burning, Book reading—and Truth

Cue (the 1970s): Nervous young candidate for a job teaching music steps out of her dad’s car—she doesn’t own a car, yet–in a small Michigan town on the rural outer ring surrounding Detroit, where little villages are interspersed with working farmland. The town is charming, full of old houses and 19th century buildings. The principal she’s meeting proposes they take a walk around the town while interviewing.

He gives her a thumbnail history of the Hartland Music Hall, the cemetery and the “1921 Building”—the first high school in the county. They end their walk at the Cromaine Library, the crown jewel of this little village. It’s exquisite—built in 1927, before the Wall Street Crash that sent the country spiraling into Depression—with beautiful Georgian windows, and a working fireplace. Every child in the Hartland Schools comes to the Cromaine Library and gets a library card, the principal tells her—it’s part of the school district.

Of course, I got that job (and bought a car)—and raised my family in that little town, taking my personal children to that library hundreds of times. My husband served on the library board, for a time. It was (beautifully) expanded in 1980 and has remained, for nearly 100 years, the heart of the community, a hub for both kids and adults—and for learning.

I was sickened to read that the Cromaine Library Board (like, unfortunately, the Hartland School Board) has now been co-opted by right-wing morality scolds. Serving on library boards—like school boards and other civic oversight jobs for volunteers—is a thankless job, but also a power-grabbing opportunity for those who’d really prefer to live in an anti-DEI town. In an anti-DEI world, in fact.

“For the Hartland Cromaine District Library in Livingston County, the conversation on labeling books started in 2022. Over time and with the election of new library Board of Trustees members, the conversation became much more pointed.

Much of that had to do with the election of Bill Bolin, the pastor of the FloodGate Church in Brighton, and his elevation to the president of the Cromaine District Library board in January. Bolin and his church have been written about by various publications, including Tim Alberta detailing Bolin’s mixture of right-wing conspiratorial politics and Christianity. Bolin also features throughout Alberta’s 2023 book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.”

Bolin:
“I desire to protect children from the harm that can befall them over coercive behavior. The approach I am suggesting, along with certain colleagues, is a commonsense approach to changing the sexual tone and nature of some library policies and practices.”

Bolin said the Board [under his leadership] would discuss controversial items on the agenda, including the removal of June LGBTQ+ Pride displays, labeling certain books that may be deemed controversial, moving books to an age restricted area, providing supervision in the teen area to monitor “behavior” and returning the Pledge of Allegiance to monthly meetings.

Bolin then recited a potential warning label he had created warning adults of the dangers of providing such material to children. But Bolin wasn’t talking about dirty magazines in a seedy retail store: he was talking about books within the community’s public library. Bolin added that a list of books that could be recommended for labeling was being compiled with at least 80 titles, minimum.

The article goes on to say that the Board was advised by the ACLU and their own law firm that they’re setting themselves up for legal pushback. A meeting gets heated and the Sheriff is called to escort those endorsing leaving the books on the shelves out of the room. It’s shocking—and nauseating. I loved this library.

Several attendees note that Bolin hopes this case will be the showcase legal action in front of the Supreme Court. Bolin muses on his belief that: “legal discourse was changing in America, indicating that courts in the era of Trump might be turning the tide to support measures much like the one being discussed by the Cromaine District Library board.”

And maybe that’s the saving grace—this is not just happening here, in small towns in the Midwest. When Georgia high schools can no longer present classic theatre like “The Crucible”—which is how I learned about the McCarthy hearings, as a HS student—then we all need to rise up. Show up at board meetings. And speak.  

Free choice of reading. It’s right there in the Bill of Rights. Remember?

In a previous column, I wrote about the moving experience of standing in the Square where—on May 10, 1933—students (students!) supporting the emergent Nazi party burned books. Thousands and thousands of books that the party said were too Jewish (including classic works of literature and philosophy) or not German enough: In 1933, Nazi German authorities aimed to synchronize professional and cultural organizations with Nazi ideology and policy (Gleichschaltung).

That’s precisely what’s happening in what I used to think of as my little town: synchronizing professional and cultural organizations with Trumpian ideology and policy.

Only engaged citizens can stop this.

by nflanagan

What Europeans Think of Trump

Just got home from a two-week vacation in the Czech Republic and Germany, including a week in what used to be East Germany. All of us learn from travel, of course, but this trip—planned long before last year’s election—was an incisive tutorial on how the rest of the Western world sees where we’re headed.

As of today, there are warnings against travel to the United States for citizens of Canada, Germany, England, Denmark, Netherlands, and France—probably the easiest and most accessible nations for Americans to visit.

I grew up in Michigan, where Canada hardly felt like a foreign country. I have friends who live in Windsor, but work in Detroit. College students in Michigan have routinely made pilgrimages to Ontario, where the legal drinking age is 19. Losing that easy camaraderie is huge—and that’s without taking into account the auto industry’s dependence on Canadian-made parts and trade.

I was interested and a little anxious about what the vibe would be in Europe. I’m too old for rail passes/backpacks/hostels travel—we’d be staying in hotels and led by English-speaking guides—but if you pay attention, in between historic dates and landmarks, you can hear and see what daily life is like in places that used to be Russian-controlled territories, how they see themselves in the world, and their fears for the United States.

I was also curious about my fellow American travelers. Would they agree with Jim Acosta, who said: Think of the damage done to America’s standing in the world, in the minds of young people across the globe. They see a president who is often out of touch with the real world, thoroughly corrupt and vengeful, beginning his second term launching a crypto scheme and turning government against vulnerable migrants as well as his enemies, both real and imagined.

We began our journey in Prague, a gorgeous medieval city that has been overrun by competing rulers for centuries, part of the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Kingdom of Bohemia. The old core of the city was almost untouched by WWII, but our local walking tour guides–find ‘em on the internet–occasionally pointed out architectural anomalies, calling them Communist buildings, which (local joke) come in three colors: light gray, medium gray and dark gray.

Because the walking tour groups were nationally diverse, the focus was on the enchanting city and its rich history—including the Velvet Revolution of 1989, wherein the Czechs reclaimed their own heritage and autonomy.

Traveling into Germany—the former GDP, East Germany—was revelatory. Guides were excellent—they all knew the historical markers but would often tuck bits of human perspective in their remarks.

  • Our guide in Wittenberg was born in the 1950s and grew up there. In secondary school, she said, she studied Russian. It was the only “foreign” language available. She also studied Russian in college. When she was in her 30s, and the Wall came down, she decided she wanted to learn English—and did. I never wanted to speak another word of Russian, she said darkly.
  • In Potsdam, we visited the estate where the Potsdam conference was held and the iconic photo of Truman, Stalin and Churchill was taken, before Germany was carved up. Potsdam is a beautiful town, including the upscale neighborhood where Vladimir Putin and his KGB comrades lived, in the1980s, considering what other beautiful villages and terrain they might appropriate.
  • In Dresden, we got a quick tutorial on how much of Dresden was bombed into smithereens, in February of 1945. American woman (who should, IMHO, know better) asks the guide: Who bombed this city? The allies, he replies, tactfully. You mean us? She says. Why would we do that? Well, the guide says— revenge, maybe? Later, I hear the woman ask her husband if the Germans are communists, leaving me to wonder just what we are teaching in World History classes.
  • In Torgau, where the allied armies met the Russian army, effectively shoving the tattered German army out of their homeland, April 25, 1945, five days before Hitler took his own life in a bunker. We looked at the site where the armies met, on the Elbe river. Flags from the United States, Russian and Germany have flown there for 75 years, in a memorial. The flagpoles are now empty—and have been since earlier this year, when Germany decided the peace agreement no longer applied.

Our guide in Torgau pointed out that there were a few things—free child care, for one—that made living in East Germany easier (these kindergartens were shut down as “too socialist” after the reunification). On the other hand, the omnipresent occupying Russian soldiers were brutes. His great-grandmother was shot dead in the town square, for resisting the attentions of one of them. He reminded us that Hitler came to power peacefully, and stayed there, courtesy of the Nazi party.

  • Berlin, of course, is a kind of living museum. Most powerful moment in Berlin? The square where, in May of 1933, the Nazis held their first book-burning. There’s a memorial there. Our guide said, quietly: First they burn books. Then, they burn people. But there is a little free library in the square, with hammocks and beanbag chairs. It was a chilly day—but there were children there, reading. Hope.

Everywhere we went, people were kind and hospitable. And honest. Aware of how long it takes to overcome the destruction of a great nation.  As Jen Rubin wrote, this morning:

Other countries, much older than the United States, have gone through grim, even disastrous years, decades, or centuries. And yet in Europe, the spirit of liberal democracy (however imperfect) remains alive and well. A sense of the public good still thrives, and millions of people strive to keep the achievements of Western Civilization from the clutches of fascism, xenophobia, know-nothingism, and conspiracy-mongering. The world is carrying on, albeit with dismay, as Americans struggle through its Dark Age.

Amen.

by nflanagan

Are Women the Cause of Reluctance to Read?

I remember learning–perhaps in a grad class or professional development session, years ago–that boys didn’t like to read about girl things. You know—relationships, communication, emotions, the finer points of making a home or enriching family life. Boys wanted to read stories about adventures, we were told. Starring, naturally, other boys.

Ergo, if we wanted to turn boys into enthusiastic readers, we needed books where boys did boy stuff—creeks, animals, cars, fights, danger, you name it. Write it and they will come.

I thought about this when re-reading A Separate Peace this month. My book club is doing a “Books You’ve Already Read—or should have read” month, and I thought it was time to re-read a book that I put on my Top Ten list for decades.

(Seriously—I kept continuously updated top ten lists of books, movies and LPs until I had both children and a full-time job. There are still some gems on those lists—but also some really embarrassing stuff.)

I wouldn’t, however, call Separate Peace an embarrassing pick. I read it in high school, although not as a class novel. In the late 60s, my public high school adopted a choice-based language arts curriculum. Instead of English 9/10/etc, there was an array of semester-long courses. I took journalism, speed reading and Great Books, a totally wonderful class where students did nothing but read books, then journal their impressions.

There was a list of great books (SP was on it), but you could also deviate, with the teacher’s permission. It was that teacher—Mrs. Palmer—who introduced me to Daphne du Maurier, Virginia Woolf, and Madeleine L’Engel.

It’s hard for me to put my finger now on why I loved Separate Peace so much. Partly, it was the boarding school setting—what it would be like to live in dorms, with other students whose parents weren’t scraping to pay the mortgage, for whom college was a certainty, not a stretch.

Mostly, though, I think it was because—spoiler—there’s a death in the book, under unusual circumstances, leading the reader (this teenaged reader, anyway) to muse on Big Meaningful Issues. In case you’re wondering whether I noticed the homoerotic flavor of the relationship between the narrator and his best friend, the answer (1969) is no and (2025) yes.

But here’s what really jumped out at me, some 50+ years later: there are no women in this book. Aside from a couple of sentences mentioning a screechy school nurse, and a sentence describing a classmate’s mother as kindly, there is zero female presence in this book. There’s plenty of adventure, danger, scrapes and disobedience. Even a student-led tribunal, and a World War. But not a single woman, or girl.

From a recent article in The Guardian, about a newly formed publishing house that intends to publish only books by men: 

Cook said the publishing landscape has changed “dramatically” over the past 15 years as a reaction to the “prevailing toxic male-dominated literary scene of the 80s, 90s and noughties”. Now, “excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective”.

“This new breed of young female authors, spearheaded by Sally Rooney et al, ushered in a renaissance for literary fiction by women, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic,” he said.

Hunh. I wasn’t really paying attention to any toxic literary scene in the 1980s and 90s, due to the aforementioned family and job. But I was still reading a lot—and was deeply involved in whether and what my students were reading. Or not reading.

It was a time when getting any kind of reading material—from comic books to Captain Underpants— into kids’ hands was the prescription for reluctant readers. There was a rolling bookshelf in my band room, filled with books about music and musicians. Some had some vaguely naughty photos. I purchased all of them, and they were well used.

My take on any reduction in male readers in the 21st century is that omnipresent screens, not problematic masculine voices, are responsible.

Still. What I notice about this (well-meant, I assume) announcement is that it only took a couple of decades for men to perceive that women were “ushering in a renaissance,” then set up their own literary clubhouse, no girls allowed.

There’s also this:
Less than half of parents find it fun to read aloud to their children, new research shows. Only 40% of parents with children aged 0 to 13 agreed that “reading books to my child is fun for me”, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen and publisher HarperCollins. The survey shows a steep decline in the number of parents reading aloud to young children, with 41% of 0- to four-year-olds now being read to frequently, down from 64% in 2012.

A significant gender disparity was identified, with 29% of 0- to two-year-old boys being read to every day or nearly every day compared with 44% of girls of the same age.

Plus this, ominously: Many parents focus on the literacy element of reading, seeing it as a skill, rather than encouraging a love for reading in their children.

So—who’s not reading, and why?

If you talk to the Science of Reading crowd, boys’ reading difficulties and reluctance to read can be laid at the feet of teachers who were never taught the only correct protocols for reading instruction, or—worse—fail to use them with fidelity, a word I have come to loathe when applied to pedagogy.

And since the overwhelming majority of early-grades teachers are women, this can be construed as another way in which women are not paying attention to the needs of boys. But it’s so much more complex than phonemic awareness, yada yada.

The Great Books class at my high school only lasted a few years, then fell when the “cafeteria curriculum” became outmoded, in favor of … what? I forget. Back to Basics? One of our cyclical returns to The Canon—in which white male-authored books have literally always been deemed more worthy of study?

All children deserve to be read to, daily, even when they’re able to read themselves. Stories about both boys and girls. Because that’s how they learn to be curious about the real world.

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by nflanagan

RIP, Libraries and Museums

On our way home from the Network for Public Education conference, earlier this month, we jogged to the right and spent a night in Cleveland, so we could visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Our hotel, just a couple of blocks from the Hall of Fame, used to be the Cleveland Board of Education building, completed in 1931.

It’s a magnificent structure, all marble, soaring windows, colorful painted murals and wide hallways, with a bar named The Teachers’ Lounge. Who could resist?

It made me wonder about the value Cleveland currently places on their public schools, when a century ago they commissioned this monument to public education, likely assuming that generations of Ohio kids would be duly and proudly educated in Cleveland, and go on to do great things.

They don’t build ‘em like they used to—either our buildings or our midwestern dreams of progress.

The history of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District looks like the history of many big-city school districts, scarred by changing demographics and the public’s unwillingness to support all children with a free, high-quality, fully public education. Cleveland is not unique—there are still Pewabic pottery-tiled fireplaces in public schools built in the 1920s in Detroit. You can take a bike tour of historic, architect-designed schools in Chicago.

The ”high school movement”—when it became common for American youngsters to pursue education beyond the 8th grade—occurred in the first half of the 20th century. In 1910, the number of HS graduates in the United States was less than 10%, but by the outbreak of World War II, almost three-quarters of the student population attended high school. Many factors—mainly wars, rural-urban migration, and an economic depression—shaped the movement to make 12 years of education the norm.

And, of course, what was the norm for white kids did not necessarily apply to children of color. The Brown decision in the 1950s and school busing protests in the 1970s interrupted the rosy national vision of steadily increasing investment in our public services and institutions.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but America has always struggled with the concept of “all means all” –just who “deserves” to have nice things, like decent housing and basic health care. Schools. Libraries, museums and parks. A reliable, inexpensive postal service. Public universities. The kinds of services we share, places of mutual benefit. Our freedoms.

And now, we have elected a man whose fundamental life goal seems to be taking those things we share—the things we all deserve, and have worked for, as citizens in a constitutional republic– away from us.

Defunding public services and institutions. Privatizing the Post Office, which serves rural addresses that Federal Express won’t touch. Shutting down youth programs and the Summer Reading Club at your local library. Eliminating programs for veterans. Even—God help us—shutting down suicide hotlines for LGBTQ teens.

As I watch this wrenching tear-down of all the things that make for strong communities, I am staggered by this conundrum: Trump and his acolytes have embraced the idea of making America great again by attacking the very things that actually made us great, beginning with the solid belief in our future progress that drove the city of Cleveland to build a temple to public education, and finish it during the early years of the Depression, placing a statue of Abraham Lincoln on the manicured lawn in front.

Belief in our people and their future is behind untold numbers of beautiful, shared enterprises—theatres and hospitals, stadiums and churches. Monuments to philanthropy, and showcases for art and culture. National parks that tell our nation’s stories. Organizations established to help our fellow citizens.

What is behind the impulse to tear all this down, close it off, let it crumble, progress and humanity be damned? Who does this—and why?

None of this is genuinely about waste or fraud—or even evidence of out-of-control DEI thinking. How can there be too much equity or justice in a country that prides itself on inventing a new form of government?

From an article about Lindsey Halligan (see link for revelatory photo), now charged with “removing improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums:

“I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history,” Halligan says. “We don’t need to overemphasize the negative.” Halligan, 35, is a Trump attorney who seems to have tasked herself as a sort of commissioner — or expurgator, according to critics — of a premier cultural institution.

Trump is not much of a museumgoer. 

What he’s after is power and control and riches. The men who built the infrastructure of industrial America wanted power, control and riches as well. Some of them wanted to preserve the vile institution—slavery—that made their power and riches possible. We fought a bloody, devastating civil war over the very issue of who deserves to be represented in museums, check out books from the library, or send their children to free public schools.

And here we are, again.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was wonderful. I’ve been a handful of times, and have taken 150 eighth graders—I’ve got stories—to wade around in the history of the music that has surrounded them since birth. The museum is 100% private, funded by wealthy donors and $39.50/per ticket fees. It will not be torn down, stripped for parts or sold to the highest bidder.

As I was wandering through the main exhibit hall on the lower level, I started thinking about how the roots of rock music, like the labor of enslaved workers, were essentially stolen from African-American blues and gospel singers, mixed with rough-edged country, hillbilly and western music. And then sold to the masses, after condescending  public dismissal as unimportant and vulgar.

Power and control and riches. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.