Category / Election 2020

by nflanagan

Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students?

In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all… Paul Simon, My Little Town

I spent the bulk of my teaching career—over 30 years—in a single small town in southeastern Michigan. When I started teaching there, the district was distinctly rural. There were several farmers on the school board, including one who came to board meetings in overalls. When I was hired, my principal described the district as the far edge of white flight.

Over time, a lot of that farmland was carved up into new subdivisions and a 600-lot mobile home park—folks moving out of the inner suburban ring around Detroit, looking for good schools and politically conservative neighbors. I thought about my principal’s remark all the time: white flight.

There was racism, all right. I experienced it in my own family. But I was never afraid to talk openly to my students about diversity and equity. Teaching music, I was determined to open their minds to the roots of the music they were marinating in.

I liked my students—and I liked the teachers I worked with. We probably didn’t talk about discrimination and intolerance as much as we might have; some of my former students, now adults, have shared their resentment at how relentlessly white and narrow-minded their classmates and neighbors were.

And it’s gotten worse, I believe, although I no longer live there. The elected school board has grown more conservative—and more vocal about issues du jour, including racism, sexual preferences, to mask or not to mask–and dealing with student discipline.  These days, there is a local incarnation of Moms 4 Banning Stuff, and packed, heated board meetings.

Now, the district is being sued over claims of racial harassment:

A former Hartland High School student is suing the school district and three district administrators, over what she claims was a relentless and cruel pattern of racism directed at her and other Black students while she attended the school.

Tatayana Vanderlaan, now 20, filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District that claims Hartland Consolidated School District and administrators were negligent in failing to stop racist attacks that included students saying Vanderlaan “should get lynched.”

The suit describes repeated racism directed at Vanderlaan from the time she first entered Hartland High in 2019. Vanderlaan says white schoolmates directed racial slurs at her, including the N-word, and that administrators did not address the behavior, even as it escalated.

Vanderlaan says she’s seeking “accountability,” a word that strikes me as rather perfect—isn’t accountability the holy grail of all the school reforms we’ve been chasing for decades? And furthermore, just who is to blame for vile and racist behaviors in students? Are they being held accountable?

The behaviors are vile and racist—confederate flags, the N-word, lynching threats, references to the plantation and hurtful ridicule referencing personal appearance. The taunts happened at school, but also on social media. Administrators are named in the suit, and teachers painted as dismissive.

The U.S. Attorney’s office also opened an investigation, after Vanderlaan filed a complaint. I am not surprised that former students and those still attending this school described other racist incidents to investigators. Some things, I suppose, never change.

But who’s responsible?

I want to believe that teachers would interrupt these behaviors, that at least some students would stand up for what is right. But in another little Michigan town,  two brothers wore ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts to school. They were ordered by teachers and an assistant principal to remove them, because they were vulgar and profane—and for that seemingly appropriate action, the school has been sued by the boys’ mother, for suppressing their First Amendment rights:

The slogan…has become a popular form of political commentary, appearing on T-shirts and bumper stickers and is chanted at right-leaning rallies, the lawsuit says. Even members of Congress have used the phrase during speeches on the House floor, the suit states, yet no one has been censored or punished.

So—if Congressional reps are making vile and/or racist remarks, it’s now OK in middle schools?

It would be nice to think that the courts would support public school educators in their quest to keep schools from being overrun by ugly “free speech” that disrupts the learning process—and trust me, vulgar and racist speech have the capacity to do just that. Big time.

It would also be nice to think that policymakers could have an impact on hate speech and resulting violence. But making laws is one thing—getting people to believe they are fair and useful, and willingly follow them, is another.

The small town where I used to live and teach is in Livingston County—which has just declared itself a “Constitutional County” (spoiler: there’s no such thing). According to the Sheriff, a Constitutional County’s policing personnel do not have to enforce laws they find “unconstitutional”—specifically, a package of gun safety laws recently passed by the State Legislature. So there’s that.

Something has changed in this country, all right. Respect for the rule of law, respect for civic order and civil speech, respect for all our fellow citizens.

Just who are we going to hold accountable?

In my little town
I never meant nothing, I was just my father’s son.
Saving my money
Dreamin’ of glory
Twitching like a finger on a trigger of a gun

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

by nflanagan

Do Parents Really Want Control Over What Students Learn?

What’s driving the screaming matches at local school board meetings—the ones where organized parent groups show up to have their say about everything from critical race theory to bulletproof doors?

There are a lot of overlapping factors: A nation that’s bitterly divided. The pandemic we’re still dealing with, and its impact on children. Racism, sexism and the fear of losing “rights.” Gun violence. The political upheaval resulting in an insurrection, which played out live, on national TV.

And, of course, money and support from outside sources and organizations, which perceive these ongoing crises as an opportunity to chip away at public education.

I’m no stranger to parent-led fireworks at Board meetings. I’ve witnessed verbal storms over sex education and teacher strikes and girls who wanted to lift weights with the wrestling team.

During my second year of teaching, in October, the School Board decided to lay off 20 teachers (including me) who signed annual contracts in the spring, because an August millage election had failed. They made cuts to programs across the board, and established a pay-to-play model for all HS sports. There was a huge board meeting that went on until the wee hours. And what were the parents upset about? Eliminating foreign languages—or elementary art and music?

No. It was about the football team.

One mom was outraged at being asked to fund her son’s final year on the team. “This is his time to shine! Teachers can always find another job—but my son has only one chance to play football in his senior year!” There were perhaps a hundred teachers at this meeting. You can imagine how that remark went down with them.

My point is this: when parents are angry enough to publicly spout off at a school board meeting, it’s seldom centered around informed disapproval of established curriculum, instruction or even assessments (unless someone has lied to them about what’s going on in their children’s classrooms). Even book banning—a chronic hotspot for school leaders—seldom flares up because a parent carefully read their child’s assigned book and was shocked into action.

What we’re seeing now is something else: an orchestrated and funded effort to demean public education and the people who work in public schools. It’s about power and control. It’s about ginning up fear, using dishonesty as a tool. As John Merrow notes:

Many of the adults who have been disrupting local school board meetings not only do not have children enrolled in those schools; they are classic outside agitators, perhaps even from neighboring states. 

The foundation of recent wrangling over control—parents’ rights, if you will—is thoroughly political and got a big boost when now-Governor Glenn Youngkin promised to strip culturally responsive instruction from schools in VA.

Parents have always had rights—including the right to see what their children are learning, access to instructional materials, the option of observing their child in his classroom, and the opportunity to talk to his teachers about any of these.

Teachers have the responsibility to know the curriculum well, to be able to tell parents why certain materials and teaching strategies were selected.  And—should parents be genuinely concerned about any of these things—the responsibility to justify the value of a particular technique or content, to adapt or offer alternatives.

That, in a nutshell, is good teaching–based on trusting relationships and understanding. Every veteran teacher and school leader reading this has had difficult conversations with parents about what and how their children are learning. It’s part of the job. Always has been.

It’s also one of the reasons many teachers pushed back against the Common Core: the standards didn’t fit the students they were teaching. Driving responsibility for determining standards, curriculum and assessment upwards means that teachers are left with explanation that they’re teaching something because it’s on the state test, even though it may be inappropriate or irrelevant for a particular child.

It’s not just parents who want to strip control from schools. From Education Week:

States have a limited amount of power over what materials teachers use in the classroom. A new report shows how some of them are trying—and succeeding—to wield influence anyway. In the majority of the country, districts operate under local control, meaning that school systems, or sometimes individual schools or teachers, have the ultimate authority in deciding what curriculum is taught.

That means that if states want to influence what teachers are using, they have to get creative about what levers to pull. A new report from the RAND Corporation suggests that some states have managed to do just that.

Look for the phrase ‘High-Quality Instructional Materials’ accompanied by some disdainful blah-blah about how clueless teachers design lessons based on what they see on Pinterest, so professional curriculum deciders need to step in and choose better materials. Well-paid deciders, naturally.

Earlier this year, Jennifer Berkshire found reason for hope:

I’ve spent the last few days talking to voters and candidates in New Hampshire who powered record turnout, resounding wins for public school advocates. One theme keeps coming up. Voters were REPELLED by the extremism of “parents’ rights” groups. This was a backlash to the backlash.

In the meantime, all the shoutin’ has left educators limp and discouraged. From Connecticut teacher Barth Keck:

Nationwide accusations of schools teaching “critical race theory” found their way into Connecticut despite any evidence of its existence or even any accurate explanation of what CRT really means from the critics. Superintendent Freeman “cited letters to the editor and social media posts regarding the school’s teaching and equity policies which imply that ‘parents shouldn’t be trusting the teachers and school administrators who are shaping the experience for their children in Guilford.’” 

I have not felt such pressure personally, aside from comments on social media from those calling me a “groomer” and “brainwasher” of children. Granted, I don’t know these people personally, and the only thing they know about me is that I’m a teacher. But that’s the point: Strategic political posturing has convinced scores of people that, rather than a noble and essential profession, teaching is an insidious endeavor whose primary purpose is to push a far-left agenda.

It’s not about the things parents already have a say in—their children’s learning.

It’s about raising a public ruckus.

by nflanagan

Social. Emotional. Learning.

What a difference a few years—and a pandemic and an insurrection—make.

Remember when a ‘growth mindset’ was all the rage among reformy types?

In addition to teaching kids about malleable intelligence, researchers started noticing that teacher practice has a big impact on student mindset, and the feedback that teachers give their students can either encourage a child to choose a challenge and increase achievement or look for an easy way out. For example, studies on different kinds of praise have shown that telling children they are smart encourages a fixed mindset, whereas praising hard work and effort cultivates a growth mindset.

Speaking for all the experienced teachers who were introduced to the ‘growth mindset’ concept and its promotion as silver bullet teaching practice: Would that it were so easy. And researchers are just now noticing that teacher practice has a big impact on what students are thinking? Seriously?

And what about grit? The desirable persistence, an ability to pursue goals in the face of discouragement, the thing that underachieving slackers in public schools didn’t seem to have inculcated? They weren’t dumb (or hungry, scared, exhausted or neglected). They just lacked grit. Right.

Both of those things, packaged as programs, were embraced by professional developers, as part of a suite of soft skills that could be used to enhance student performance. There are plenty of other terms veteran educators have run into: Character Development. Restorative Justice. Conflict Resolution.

They all fall under the general category of encouraging the social and emotional welfare of students, giving them tools to manage their emotions and relationships—so they can learn. Also: (unspoken but obvious) so their test scores will go up.

Social-emotional learning (SEL–the reality, not any official program) is just a rather random collection of ways that school staff has always made students (who have all kinds of reasons for feeling anxious and off-balance these days) comfortable enough in a school setting that they can settle down to learn.

Different SEL programs have different foci: Positive behaviors. Making friends. Sticking with tough tasks. Being more thoughtful, less aggressive. Every time you hear a teacher say ‘Use your words’ or ‘What would you like to say to Jason?’ or ‘Take a minute to calm down’—they’re riffing on SEL ideas.

In a good column at Curmudgucation, Peter Greene says that SEL is a real thing, all right, but he can’t defend SEL programs which are now taking a beating from parents. These are, one has to assume, the same parents who thought grit was just the ticket for kids who were living in their family’s car, or that telling certain kids they were smart could cause their heads to swell and spoil them for the workforce.  

A whole lot of the murkiness around what SEL is, and how it relates to Critical Race Theory (CRT)—spoiler: it doesn’t—comes from masterful manipulation of language.

A year after a terrible incident at a local HS, where students of color were put ‘up for sale’ on Snapchat, some parents here still think that systemic racism doesn’t exist here in Traverse City. Some of them saw the incident as simple bullying, no big deal, and others thought it was a matter to be handled by police rather than the school board, although the idea started and was centered among HS students. All of them seemed to think addressing it would cause even more divisiveness.

Why wouldn’t you want teachers, using developmentally appropriate strategies and language, to address emotionally sensitive issues? If students don’t have these conversations in school, under the watchful eye of an adult (especially an adult with the skills to help them process their feelings and social challenges), where will they learn to keep a lid on? To distinguish truth from foul lies? To learn the art of cooperation? Restraint? Respect?

Where will they learn to use THEIR words, instead of picking up a gun?

The interesting thing to me is that none of this is new. Twenty-odd years ago, I was recruited to be part of a video series produced by the Annenberg Foundation, called The Learning Classroom. I had a film crew in my classroom (and my office) for an entire week, capturing footage around how I used social-emotional learning to teach more effectively.

I prepared lessons designed to engage my middle school band students emotionally, by learning Ashokan Farewell, the music Ken Burns used to great effect in his Civil War series, then tying the plaintive tune to the letter that Major Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife in 1861, a week before being killed in battle. We talked about how many of the recruits at the end of the Civil War were no older than the boys sitting in the band room, how bloody the war was, dividing families.

The filmmaker wasn’t looking for a lesson that used emotion to drive home learning (something that teachers do all the time, by the way, from reading great literature to the exploding mysteries of the baking soda volcano). She wanted to see stormy outbursts from middle schoolers.

Your classroom is like Mayberry, she told me. Everyone is friendly and nice. I desisted from telling her how long it took (speaking of grit) to build a community of 13 year-olds who worked together. I did not say that there were, in fact, days when the emotional temperature of the room was not so pleasant.

While the film crew was there, one of my students returned to school from a month at home recovering from surgery and treatment for testicular cancer. The other kids were happy to see him, and the film director asked me where he’d been. Oh, wow, she said, when I told her. Let’s use this in the episode.

I was aghast. Absolutely not, I said. Not everyone knows why he’s been out—only that he was ill. It would be a terrible violation of his personal privacy. He would never trust me again. He is so fragile right now—how can you even suggest something like this?

The next morning, the film crew was gone, two days earlier than planned, leaving my office filled with dirty coffee cups and discarded papers. I didn’t hear back from the production company, and never got the complimentary set of videos I was promised—so I never saw myself trying to teach using social-emotional learning. Whatever that is.

Last week, when I was doing some reading on SEL, I accidentally found the Learning Classroom series, and the video where my students and I were featured. If you’d like to see it, our part starts about 15 minutes in.

Seeing the video again made me realize that my students displayed more emotional intelligence than the filmmaker. There’s another lesson there.

by nflanagan

Why I am Running for Office

I am running for office. The County Commission, District 7, in Leelanau County, Michigan, to be precise. I am running for a position that has been held by the same Republican woman (whose name will not be mentioned) for 26 years.

It goes without saying that a lot has happened in Leelanau County, the gorgeous, rolling ‘Little Finger’ of the Michigan mitten, in the past 26 years.

Leelanau County is a peninsula, surrounded by Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay, and scattered with smaller lakes. Shorelines are home to new and historic million-dollar homes with killer views, and the center of the peninsula is agricultural. We grow more cherries here than any other state in the union, and the county is overrun with fruit flies every August (you get used to it). In May, however, a Sunday drive through the orchards is absolutely breathtaking.

There is a National Park—Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, named the prettiest place in the United States by Good Morning America, in 2011. There’s also an Indian reservation, on the remnant of land left after white settlers platted up and sold nearly all the land—most of the county—deeded to Indians in 1855.

I’ve been a property holder here—some 14 acres, sold on a land contract—since 1987. We built a home and moved here in 2010. And within a year or two, it was pretty clear that some of the people making decisions about my life needed to get some new ideas about local governance. There were plenty of issues.

In 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020, I worked on Democratic campaigns for the Board of Commissioner seat in District 7. They were worthy candidates, with good ideas. And in all four elections, they lost.

The data jugglers for the local Democratic party (for which, I serve as Secretary) seem to feel that no Democrat, no matter how smart they are or how hard they campaign, could win in the ruby-red center of the county.

The outer edges of the county—lots of well-heeled retirees—were turning blue or at least purple. Joe Biden edged out a win in 2020. But District 7—again, lots of farmland and a couple of tiny towns– remained persistently Republican.

Twenty-six Year Veteran doesn’t really bother campaigning much. In the newspaper candidate forums, she writes about how her family has ‘always’ lived here, and how she protects citizens from excessive spending and taxation. No need for any new-fangled ideas, programs or, especially, regulations. My district is studded with Trump signs and those yellow ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags.

But change is coming. Out of state (and out of country) buyers are scooping up agricultural land and those homes with the killer views. Our sparkling lakes are threatened by the possibility of Enbridge oil spills, and none of the service industry workers the county depends upon, summer and winter, can afford to live here.

And don’t even get me started on access to broadband, the first inkling I had that all was not paradise after we moved to Leelanau County. The majority-Republican County Commission was not interested in expanding access, seeing it as a private business opportunity, not a public utility. Ironic, seeing that Leelanau County was electrified largely by the Rural Electrification Administration, a depression-era federal project. We still pay our electric bills to Cherryland Electric.

The recent influx of federal dollars is finally going toward broadband coverage, but it took a couple more Democratic County Commissioners and a pandemic for the county to seek the kinds of internet service other entire states have enjoyed for the last decade or more.

So why am I running for office?

First, because somebody had to. If nobody ran, Twenty-Six Year Veteran might assume that everyone feels as she does: Cut taxes. Cut services. Ignore problems. Bury your garbage (this was a response to voter-approved recycling). Vote Trump.

As it turned out, there were four of us willing to run. We all filed the paperwork, then met a couple of days later, promising that whoever won the primary would have the full support of the other three. We toasted with a glass of Prosecco, then talked about issues. We’re all on the same wavelength.

We’re tired of all the Republican baloney that’s been mucking up a full-fledged, voter-approved effort to un-gerrymander Michigan. We’re tired of ongoing fights over issues we thought were settled by public vote—like funding programs for early childhood. We don’t understand why all the rich people buying up properties here shouldn’t be compelled to fund a point-of-sale septic inspection, a crucial first step in protecting our water.

We have watched Republicans force public prayer (Christians only!) at County Commission meetings (yes, I understand the dubious legality) and drive out a hard-working, super-competent local Health Department authority over masking.

There’s more. Way more.

I’ll be writing about the issues (including school-related hot topics) in subsequent columns.  I am running a zero dollars-based green campaign: No signs. No paper literature.

But in the meantime, I’m running for the County Commission.

Vote for me!

Nancy Flanagan, Allison Zimpher, Julie Kradel, Mary O’Neill–all running in District 7.
by nflanagan

The Strange Land Where We Find Ourselves Now

Ever read a book that resonates, for whatever reason, with the life you’re living—the things you’re thinking about, things that are happening in your world right now?

Munich (Robert Harris) is a fictionalized, but well-researched, account of the Munich Conference in September 1938, wherein a cluster of European leaders thought they had signed on to ‘peace in our time,’ when in fact Hitler had no such intention.

It’s one of those slow burn novels that starts out by introducing us to two very different worlds—the chin-up, upper-crust British government, trying desperately to avoid another devastating European war, and the collection of thugs and sycophants hanging around the Fuhrer who were willing to bulldoze anyone and anything to expand their own power.

I saw parallel after parallel, which made the book (published in 2018) chillingly real.

As political thriller, it’s a good read from a guy who’s written a ton of great political thrillers, many centered in Germany, in the 1930s and 40s. BUT–reading it now, as Putin is devastating Ukraine, because he seems to think he needs more space, and world leaders (elected and un-elected) are trying to stay out of war— is stunningly relevant.

One particularly galling former leader is trying to cozy up to Putin for political advantage, of course. We’re living in a world of thriller plots.

The only knowledge I had about Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the pre-war period, left over from History class, is that he was widely considered an ‘appeaser’ once World War II began, and his reputation hasn’t been burnished since.

The book is kinder to him, seeing him as a man of a different age, when one’s word was one’s honor. But the image of someone who believed in the power of diplomacy getting totally snookered by the depth of evil remains—powerfully—in mind.

Once the Munich Conference actually begins, every page in the book has a resonant sentence or paragraph, about power and the men who wield it.  Although the whole world now knows the spoiler—World War II and its horrors—the book had me thinking about alternate outcomes, about peace and how to reach it.

Also, of course, what could go wrong in our immediate future, in 2022.

A couple of nights ago, Rachel Maddow had one of my favorite truth-tellers on: Jane Mayer, whose latest piece on the Republican ‘slime machine’digs into the coordinated Lies People Tell to ruin the reputations of Biden’s nominees, the most visible example being the appalling hatchet job attempted on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Maddow precedes the Mayer interview with an illustrated commentary on Stalin, the cover-ups of his hideous crimes against his own people, and the propensity for Russian dictators to use accusations of–get this–pedophilia as an excuse to imprison or execute citizens who give them grief. The video is 20 minutes long, but worth the watch.

I finished the book, then opened Twitter to find my new hero, MI State Senator Mallory McMorrow, burning up the media world. State Senator Lana Theis (who represents the district where I used to live) started slinging around accusations of Democrats grooming and sexualizing children in her fund-raising materials, and McMorrow let go with five beautiful minutes of pure truth to power.

Accusing someone of the sexual abuse of children really is the worst thing one can say about another adult human. Scroll back to 2016, and the QAnon-inspired ‘Pizzagate’ where Hillary Clinton was accused of (yup) pedophilia.

There seems to be a pattern here. After all, it was Joseph Goebbels who said If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

More parallels. And the lying has infected our children, and our schools.

Jonathon Haidt, whose work I deeply admire, thinks that social media has been driving this:

It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history… It’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.

Historically, civilizations have relied on shared blood, gods, and enemies to counteract the tendency to split apart as they grow. But what is it that holds together large and diverse secular democracies such as the United States and India, or, for that matter, modern Britain and France?

Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three.

I am aware of the irony of posting this blog—all about lies and social fragmentation—on social media. But maybe social media is our only recourse at the moment. Senator McMorrow has had over 10 million views of her video, and it’s been enthusiastically applauded on left-leaning media.

Someone has to tell the truth.  Someone has to pay attention.

by nflanagan

The Heir and the Hillbilly

By now, you’ve probably seen Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, author and candidate for Senate in Ohio, wondering why right-thinking dads don’t just ‘thrash’ teachers for inserting their personal ‘sex values’ into the minds of innocent children. We all know that Carlson is worse than a destructive ass–but ol’ J.D., the self-described hillbilly who rose from nothing, sat there nodding and grinning along with Tucker as he incited a little righteous violence against your children’s teachers.

Incident in the Teachers’ Lounge: A dozen teachers sit around a long plastic table, chatting and eating their packed lunches. A custodian enters the room, skirting the table, to grab a soda out of the refrigerator, then stands looking at the bulletin board, while taking long pulls on his drink. There’s a pause in the conversation, and he says: So. You guys think this is funny, huh?

He points to a piece of paper tacked to the board, an internet-distributed list of excerpts supposedly drawn from parents’ absence-excuse notes. Things like: Please excuse Sally. She was in bed with gramps.

There is silence, but the custodian isn’t finished. He says: This is what you do in here? Make fun of parents? He shakes his head and leaves the room. As soon as the door closes, teachers turn to each other and begin talking. What do you think they say? How do they feel?
——————–
I was reminded of this scenario from my own teachers’ lounge as I read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. I was anticipating a good read—it was on all the “Best of 2016″ lists—but found the book shallow and insubstantial.

J.D. Vance grew up in a small town in southwestern Ohio in a working-class family. Aided significantly in a tough childhood by his ever-present, loving grandmother, and after a maturing stint in the Marines, he attended Ohio State, then got a law degree from Yale.

An impressive personal narrative—plaudits to Vance for his persistence—but hardly illustrative of the poor habits and prospects of an entire region of the country. Nor does Hillbilly Elegy illuminate any of the very real problems or crises, per the book’s title, facing working-class families in America today, beginning with the dangerous income gap between the haves and the have-nots that threatens the social order.

In fact, Vance is intermittently reproachful, blaming family members (mostly his mother) for being irresponsible and foolish, and chalking it up to their Scots-Irish heritage and growing up in Kentucky. He seems unaware of his own privilege—being a tall, nice-looking, intelligent white man in a country where those qualities are an enormous leg up, for example.

He describes his public school education as sub-par, with the exception of one demanding math teacher. The training and subsequent education benefits of a stretch in the military get short shrift. Ohio State? Easy peasy. It isn’t until Vance finds himself at cocktail parties where his admission to Yale seems to be paying off with high-level clerkships and job opportunities that he realizes he’s been handed a golden ticket, and he’s being watched to see if he can fit in.

Instead of reflecting on all that good fortune, however, he labels his family hillbillies, monetizing their salty speech, their blind loyalty to a particular funeral home, and their parochial weaknesses, as they struggle to survive in the most inequitable First-World nation on the planet.

In the post-war years, as millions of Baby Boomers became the first generation to attend college, class lines began to blur. It wasn’t until my Sociology 101 class that I realized my family was not “middle class,” but further down in the pecking order. It wasn’t until I read W.E.B. Dubois’ “The Souls of Black Folk,” that it occurred to me that moving up in the social order came with a cost to family relationships, and, sometimes, personal integrity. It wasn’t as easy as excelling in school and leaving your grubby antecedents behind—there were other important values besides “success.”

Here’s the question J.D. Vance avoids: Whose fault is it that “more than 50 million Americans live in distressed communities, where nearly a quarter of residents lack a high school diploma?” Conversely, who is responsible for lifting themselves out of poverty? Is this a result of hard work and personal discipline only, “rising above” family characteristics—or do social supports, like public education, military training, and publicly funded scholarships also form the proverbial rising tide?

Most of the educators sitting in that teachers’ lounge were second- and third-generation college graduates. To them, the misspelled excuses were funny; their students were sometimes apples who fell near the poorly educated tree. Still, the custodian’s comment—You think this is funny?—found its mark. The post came down. Teachers responded with a mix of embarrassment and defensiveness.

A good public educator accepts all students, kids raised in hothouse homes with thousands of books and trips to the museum and kids who ate sugary cereal in front of the TV until their single mom unlocked the door at midnight. Kids across the spectrum benefit from public education.

J.D. Vance’s story is more about individual good luck than an analysis of a culture in crisis. I expect absolutely nothing from Tucker Carlson, but J.D. Vance ought to know better. He’d be a terrible senator.

by nflanagan

My Little Town

In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all
And he used to lean upon me
As I pledged allegiance to the wall
Lord, I recall my little town

And after it rains there’s a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It’s not that the colors aren’t there
It’s just imagination they lack
Everything’s the same back in my little town

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town
—Paul Simon

Back in the 1970s, when I interviewed for a teaching job in the community where I would work, and then live, for more than 35 years, the principal told me that the small, rural district was the “far edge of white flight.”

He was right. The district never stopped growing while I was teaching there, morphing from a cute little town surrounded by farmland, to a kind of sprawl of dozens of back-to-back subdivisions, each new sub with bigger and more pretentious houses than the last. It remained persistently non-diverse, however, both in demographics and in thinking and behaviors.

When I interviewed there, I didn’t pay much attention to these factors. I was desperate to get a teaching job—we were experiencing a teacher glut at the time, with most Michigan universities exporting newly minted Baby Boomer teachers to states where the pay was abysmal. I wanted to teach in Michigan.

When I got the job in Hartland, I couldn’t believe my good luck. It was a charming little village, with a library, a music hall and the first high school in the county, built in 1921—the building, in fact, where I had the interview. And it was growing—I didn’t need to be worried about being pink-slipped!

My students were generally polite, and their parents showed up for conferences and programs. My colleagues were outstanding—smart, funny and generous with their time. I taught in what used to be the high school band room—probably the nicest classroom I had in all my 30+ years in the district.

Teachers often talk about their disastrous first year of teaching—but it wasn’t like that for me. I loved teaching band and general music at Hartland Middle School. In fact, if it weren’t for my really awesome first year, I might have walked away from Hartland a dozen times.

The trouble started in Year Two, when I was let go (along with 20 other first- and second-year teachers) because of a millage failure. We all signed full-year contracts in April, but two summer funding votes failed, so after starting school in September, the Board decided to lay off a couple dozen teachers. In October.

We took them to court (thank you, strong union), and all of us got a job back—just not the job we were hired to do. I became a district-roving sub, and had to be available from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day (split sessions, due to the cutbacks). I was pink-slipped an additional five times over the next few years. We were dependent, it turned out, on an ultra-conservative, anti-tax community.

I also started going to Board meetings, to hear what the nice white people in my community said—about the curriculum, sex education, teacher pay, offensive books in the library, and why don’t we sing Silent Night at the Christmas program like we did back in the day? It was illuminating, hearing parents urge the Board to make ‘necessary’ cuts in their ‘wasteful’ budgets—kids didn’t need music, art, counselors, librarians or other frills. What did they need? Well, football, mostly.

I learned that most people who addressed the Board were concerned only about their personal children, that those children would have access to the educational goodies parents wanted—a gifted/talented program, perhaps, or a soccer team, or maybe a snazzy computer lab. Or a new math program, since the one adopted by teachers didn’t work for Jennifer.

I once attended a Board meeting where a mother demanded that the marching band (MY bailiwick) wear spats. Her kids weren’t in the band, of course, but she just thought they looked good, and insisted we should be wearing them. This is a true story. What’s also true is that her husband was on that Board.

Note: I never heard a parent talk about all the kids in the community—the disabled children, those who required free lunch, the bullied or the bullies. It was always about advocating for My Child.

None of those issues was particularly upsetting. This was the reason, I thought, schools have elected Boards—to hash out contentious issues, to represent community beliefs, to address problems that arise.

Over time, those problems grew exponentially more serious. The Hartland football team made national news by hiring strippers to entertain them before a game—then confessed that they usually just watched pornography, but this was a big game. There was a series of bomb threats. There were student suicides. There was overt racism.

None of these things were directly related to curriculum and instruction—but they were reflective of how we handled emerging and controversial concerns with the children entrusted to our care. School—and yes, this is a broken record—is the stage where we prepare our children to handle what’s coming down the pike. Not a place to avoid, cover up and deny what’s happening in the world.

Slowly, it started to feel like maybe Hartland wasn’t such an innocent, wholesome place. Most of that dawning recognition happened when I started paying attention to the students who looked different—the five percent of students who were Black, or Hispanic or Asian. It wasn’t such a comfortable place for them. When students started communicating via device, outside of adult supervision, the cruelty and disrespect became endemic.

I began to understand the role of the public school teacher as much more than Person Who Delivers Academic Content. Teachers are role models, confidantes, discussion leaders and arbitrators. If we want a better, more just, equitable and democratic society, teachers and schools are part of that equation.

I no longer live or teach in Hartland. Since I left, there have been many more unsettling things. One of the men who planned to kidnap and possibly kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer lives in Hartland.  And a year ago, a Black student had to be escorted off the Hartland HS campus after being threatened with lynching.  Four students were charged with stalking her, as well as assault and battery. The district was offered assistance from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, but eventually turned away this help, due to parent pressure, and Board worries about the incident leading to (faux) CRT in the district.

I am always cognizant of something my friend Maria Stuart said. Maria lives in the next town over from Hartland—Howell–where there was once, years ago, an active KKK, and even a Grand Dragon. Maria helped found a Diversity Council there, which did a lot of good work to rebuild a town with an ugly reputation for racism and intolerance.

Once, when I was doing exactly what I’m doing in this blog, trashing people in my little town for undemocratic and racist behaviors, Maria reminded me that things don’t improve when people are accused of wrongdoing. They improve when people promote healthy, accepting communities. When they’re commended for welcoming diversity and inclusion. Not shamed.

I want to believe Maria is right.

But towns that understand diversity is a strength have better prospects than towns where a high school girl has to deal with threats of being lynched. A town that can’t adapt to change, hanging on to centuries-old prejudices, is in trouble.

Makes me sad.

by nflanagan

A ‘Diverse’ Community Needs to Hear the Truth

It was the most prosaic of news items: a local township planning commission working on a new master plan.  They secured a skilled, experienced civic planner who provided a draft, which included (as all good municipal documents do) a brief analysis of the township’s demographics: “94.7 percent of the population reported as white, 2.6 percent of the population as American Indian/Alaskan Natives, 0.2 percent reported as black or African American, and 2.5 percent as Hispanic or Latino.”

Which drew this response from a member of the planning commission:

“I’m opposed to this whole color issue. In my opinion, you’re either a citizen, or you’re not a citizen. And with this government listing everybody by their color, that’s the government and the media promoting racism. I would suggest we make a comment [in the master plan], something to the effect that we have…a diverse community.”

The planning expert: “Well, you don’t. You’ve got a 94.7 percent white [population].”

It went downhill from there—rapidly—and ended up with the hired expert and another member of the planning commission resigning, and a third commissioner stating that the ‘race thing’ in the plan was ridiculous, and oh, by the way, his brother-in-law was Black.

I share this (stupid) story for all the school districts and teachers that feel that they have been unfairly targeted by what seems to be one of our ‘new normals’—rampant, unhinged intolerance.

In other words, teachers and conscientious school leaders, it’s not you—or just you. It’s racism. Or homophobia, or xenophobia.

It’s ignorance. The problem that never goes away—and society expects public educators to solve, somehow, without ticking off parents.

You may have, to your surprise, become the enemy (after two grinding years of serving children and families during a global pandemic), for simply teaching facts and showing compassion and commitment to your students. But you’re not alone. And this is not new.

These anti-truth, anti-education campaigns come and go, in waves. Disinformation and blind opposition and noisy meetings have always been part of government-provided services.

The world is currently witnessing a devastating, lethal master class in international propaganda in Ukraine. Who will tell the truth to our students? Not TikTok.  When civic authorities assert that a 95% white township is a ‘diverse community,’ someone needs to speak up for the truth.

In a spectacularly good article in The New Yorker, Why the School Wars Still Rage, Jill LePore traces the history of this power struggle in American public education, using the Scopes trial as long-term case study:

In the nineteen-twenties, the curriculum in question was biology; in the twenty-twenties, it’s history. Both conflicts followed a global pandemic and fights over public education that pitted the rights of parents against the power of the state. It’s not clear who’ll win this time. It’s not even clear who won last time. But the distinction between these two moments is less than it seems: what was once contested as a matter of biology—can people change?—has come to be contested as a matter of history. Still, this fight isn’t really about history. It’s about political power. Conservatives believe they can win midterm elections, and maybe even the Presidency, by whipping up a frenzy about “parents’ rights,” and many are also in it for another long game, a hundred years’ war: the campaign against public education.

LePore ranges widely, sharing plenty of negative, even frightening, examples of the aforementioned American ignorance now being codified into law (as well as cautionary language for elites who feel their progressive views about raising children automatically trump those of conservative and evangelical parents).

She also makes the point that Black intellectuals immediately understood that bills to prevent the teaching of evolution weren’t really about the theory of change in biology, something that is evident to any farmer. It was about the idea that we all spring from common ancestors, that there is no real difference between human races. That’s what really scared folks in the South, some 55 years after the Civil War.

It’s easy to feel discouraged. In Whitewater Township—where the planning commissioners think they have a ‘diverse’ community—60.9 percent of the voters chose Donald Trump in 2020. Presumably, some 40 percent of those believe he actually won the election, if national survey data holds in this tiny, nearly all-white enclave.

Which is why we have to take a deep breath—as educators and citizens—and keep telling the truth.

Because the truth will set us free. Although it may take a long, long time.

Here’s a great story from Jennifer Berkshire to hearten those of you who feel that Truth no longer matters, that the anti-public education crowd, the Moms for Faux Liberty, are winning. Tag line:  An upset victory last week in a red state suggests that the Republican Party’s game plan for attacking public education may not be a winning strategy.

The red state? New Hampshire, where 93.1 percent of the population is white.

Have faith.

by nflanagan

Lock and Load and Learning Loss

This is a blog about the escalation of smack talk—the reckless/threatening/false/vindictive/facetious things people say, in an effort to gain power by demeaning others– and a thought or two about how much easier it is to be a smack-talker in 2022 than just a few years earlier.

We’re also seeing more smack talk in schools and about schools. Critical race theory and learning loss are among the many widely abused terms that media perceives as real issues. The terms are essentially meaningless, however, in the daily operation of real schools, places where teachers are paying attention to the well-being and nascent citizenship of real children.

These days, schoolboard meetings are hotbeds of vigilantism driven by smack talk, and we’re witnessing members of Congress—Congress! —trash the sitting President’s strength and motives during a delicate and critical time of international unrest.

Traditionally, school is a place where smack talk is not tolerated, even if it is a regular feature of students’ home life. Poor-mouthing classmates, the use of offensive language, and overt lying are generally suppressed by school cultures, even strongly authoritarian climates where teachers use harsh language to control students.

Every now and then, someone points out that what our students need most now is not Calculus, but media literacy, a carefully developed skill of discretion when bombarded by corrupt but persuasive language.  We used to worry about students being overly influenced by Bart Simpson or semi-dressed babes on MTV—but these days, the filthiest and most damaging lies are coming out of the mouths of politicians and news media. How do you teach kids to ignore their own duly elected Senator?

In 2017, I was part of a local ‘listening tour’ sponsored by my county Democratic party. We knocked on doors and asked people what they wanted from their local government. We wanted to know what their issues and needs were, for upcoming campaigns—but were also willing to listen to their feedback on the 2016 election. We did not call on strong or ‘leaning’ Republicans—only independent voters and those who may have leaned our way at one time.

What we learned: every single person we talked with had a distinct opinion on Trump vs. Hillary (the gender dynamics of the last name/first name contrast being kind of smack-y in itself). Most were willing to tell us who they voted for, and why, although we were trained not to ask.

They did not like or trust Hillary Clinton—and the ones who declared themselves Trump voters were clear about what attracted them to him: the way he talks. He says what he thinks! He isn’t mealy-mouthed like other politicians. He’s down to earth, but strong. His disrespect of women was ‘just locker room talk.’ More than once we heard: Give the guy a chance. Asked about local issues and government, most of them had no ready response.

What our neighbors had to say was almost completely unsubstantiated and unrelated to governing or current issues, not to mention decades’ worth of real facts about Trump’s history as grifter and narcissistic braggart. They took the measure of a candidate by his (or her) willingness to make insulting remarks. To get in a good dig, to trash your opponent. A few men spoke admiringly about Trump literally stalking or silencing Clinton on the stage, during their debates. He was a ‘fighter’—and would fight for us. Which ‘us’ they were talking about was unspoken.

Although hard to prove, beyond prima facie observations, smack talk has become more prevalent everywhere in American life. In my former State House district, for example, one of the Republican candidates told the crowd at a rally to “be prepared to lock and load,” and “show up armed” when going to vote. A Republican gubernatorial candidate suggested voters pull the plug on voting machines, if they didn’t like what they saw at the polls.

Are K-12 students influenced by this kind of loose, vindictive talk? Recently, at a school basketball game, students from a 95% white rural school made monkey noises and used racist insults when Black players on the opposing team were on the court. The report talks of similar occurrences at other games, listing several of these over the past two years.

What interesting to me is the response from the MI Department of Civil Rights: “To ignore the situation without taking those individuals who perpetuated it to account causes a problem and obviously allows it to occur again. So that situation should be controlled not only by the people who are officiating the game, but also the officials who certainly have some control over the students and the actions that they might have later on or during the game itself.”

I agree. Racial slurs and dangerous threats are best handled when they first emerge by the people closest to our students. This is what lies under at anger over faux CRT—adults influencing children to analyze their own prejudice, and respect differences. Good teachers have always done this; it’s the practice of building a classroom community.

So it’s no wonder that judgmental terms like ‘learning loss’ have caught on, and Serious Reports are warning that children in poverty have ‘lost’ the most. All children have been exposed to danger and loss during this pandemic, but whether they’re testing on grade level—whatever that is—should be the least of our worries.

We should be thinking, instead, about turning them into caring and confident citizens, able to identify coarse and deceptive language and reject it.

by nflanagan

Freedom’s Just Another Word

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’– it ain’t nothin’ if it ain’t free…

Remember free schools? They were all the rage, back in the day—long, long ago—when those folks protesting the error-filled ways of public education were hippie types, not scripted, Republican-funded moms with time on their hands.

Often educated in public schools themselves (where they learned to craft logical arguments and read great books), these lefty parents did not want Moonbeam’s schooling to consist of straight rows, workbooks and bells. They wanted the freedom to discuss Real Issues and pursue personal growth.

But as always, the times they are a-changin’.

In a brilliant essay in the NY Times, GWU Professor Elizabeth Anker describes how ‘freedom’ has morphed from the Bill of Rights model I learned about in one of those straight-rows public schools, to what she calls ‘ugly freedoms:’

Today, more and more laws, caucuses, rallies and hard-right movements use the language of freedom as a cudgel to erode democratic governance and civil rights; these laws expand the creep of authoritarianism. One Jan. 6 insurrectionist insisted, “I’m here for freedom,” when describing his participation in the attack on the Capitol. Mask mandate opponents have cited “health freedom,” even if their refusal to mask denies freedom of movement to immunocompromised people and makes communities more vulnerable to Covid.

Freedom, Anker says, has been co-opted.

I can name dozens of other words that no longer clearly mean what they once did: Unconstitutional, for example. Anti-Fascism. Illegal. Forensic Audit. Critical Race Theory. Moms, for Liberty. Election integrity. You can justify putting any number of formerly well-understood terms in scare quotes, these days.

Language, over time, does—and should—morph, as societal norms and technological advances change the way people think and behave. That’s why those 1960s ads with doctors lighting up a Camel to ‘relax,’ are so hilarious.

But I really hate losing freedom, as a political and educational concept. I especially hate knowing that Republicans have weaponized something valuable and politically distinct, turned it into a well-funded, election-winning grievance.

Freedom is a complex idea. Freedom without responsibility is moral adolescence—a phenomenon we have seen played out endlessly during the pandemic, by anti-mask abusers, phony accusations of ‘tyranny’ and a focus on individual rights rather than the common good—during a public health crisis, no less.

As a music teacher, I wrestled with the concept of freedom every year, and shared those dilemmas with my students. Why is every composition on our required festival list written by a white man—can we break free of that?  In a largely white, largely Christian town, should we be representing all winter celebrations in our music, or just having the expected Christmas concert? What are the roots of the music my students are listening to—and is it my responsibility to help them dig into that history?

My career was all about the freedom to teach music in untraditional but deeper ways. And I was incredibly lucky. I never had to deal with rigid standards or statewide assessments, and seldom had parent complaints. I was, far more than other teachers, free to craft curriculum, performances, travel and materials to fit my students, few questions asked.

What I’m reading now is alarming—the heated School Board meetings, book banning, legislated gag orders and threats over what can/cannot be taught. If you only read the news, you might think that public educators have been so thoroughly intimidated that every bit of color and usefulness will be leached out of learning.

But I have doubts about the long-term impact of this astro-turf, give-me-liberty movement. I think raging against diversity and inclusion by silly law-making is destined to fail—especially when you look at recent CNN survey data:

While parental choice has become the subject of frequent political controversy, the CNN Poll found that most Americans reject the idea that the primary responsibility for what happens in the classroom belongs either to parents or to teachers and school officials. Majorities said both groups should have an equally important role in school-related decisions ranging from Covid-19 precautions to the way various school subjects are taught.

Only about one-fifth of Americans (19%) said parents should be the main decision-makers on mask policies, with 17% saying the same about virtual learning and 16% on teaching about racial issues. Just 7% thought parents should have final say over how to teach math. About 1 in 8 Americans, or 12%, said parents’ views should have the most sway over which library books are on the shelves and how American history is taught, while roughly twice as many said teachers and school officials should have more influence on those areas. Respondents split equally over how issues regarding race in America are taught, with 16% saying parents should have more say, 16% teachers and school officials, and 62% saying both should be equally important.

These are pretty small numbers, for a so-called movement. Glenn Youngkin may have ridden parent disapproval over school policy to a governorship, but I am far from convinced that there’s a voting majority in all states to swing elections based on book-banning, faux CRT hype and other curricular issues.

When you look at the numbers, it’s easy to see this as another cycle of school-parent communication, where schools that listen to parents and work cooperatively with them for the good of all their students, are doing the best job of navigating a global pandemic and political warfare based on the Big Lie. Major challenges, indeed.

One of my former students sent me a note expressing her frustration over the screaming matches at the local school board meetings. I know these people, she said—they live in my neighborhood. And they’re not even parents of school-aged kids. For them, this is political gain. For me, this is about protecting my child.

One of the local Liberty Moms came to her door and asked, ‘Aren’t you worried about how your boys will vote, when they’re adults?’ Actually, she wasn’t concerned about that at all—they won’t be voting for many years, and there are a lot of math facts and swimming lessons and trips to the library that needed to happen first—safely. But there is no clearer example of just what her neighbor is really worried about.

It isn’t freedom. It never was freedom. It was about winning.