Parents Vs. Teachers

 It's a good thing for parents to want to be included in their child's education. Even teachers agree with that. We get a weekly email with each teacher saying what will be taught this week in their class. If you have questions about how your child is doing, they are great at emailing you back with answers. But some parents have brought this to an unhealthy level. In the parents vs. teachers battle, I hope teachers win!

1. Classroom Cameras

2. Book Banning

3. Parents Choosing Curriculum

All of these are overstepping. Teachers are the ones who are trained for teaching, not parents. We need to respect boundaries that are no longer being respected. Teachers are quitting in large numbers. That's because they can no longer do their jobs the right way. They no longer want to put up with parents whose favorite hobby is yelling at school board meetings. 

Classroom Cameras

Apparently, in Utah they are thinking about putting cameras in the classrooms so parents can watch their kids in school. This brings helicopter parenting to a whole new level! But some things should stay in the classroom. This opens up gateways to a lot of gossip. Which kid needs extra help, which kid is always in detention, which kid doesn't have lunch, which kid is always late. All of those are things every parent can see, then talk about with other parents. The idea of being able to see your kid during the day is great. But what family secrets would their classmate's parents be learning through the classroom camera? It's a massive overstep of privacy. It's not your business to see your kid's classmate's struggles and it's not their parent's business to see your kid's struggles. 

Book Banning 

When I was in high school, we read "To Kill a Mockingbird". We talked in detail about what was happening. Why it was wrong. We talked about the historical aspect of it. We are better for having read it. Was it uncomfortable? Yes, it was supposed to be. It was probably easier for my class. We are all from Northern New Jersey, so no ancestors were slave owners. But it was important to learn about that period of time, so it doesn't get repeated. 

We also read "The Diary of Anne Frank". Another important book about what life was like for the victims of Nazis. Uncomfortable to read? Yes. But we understood the horrors of what the Nazis were doing. We learned an important part of history that must never be repeated! No downplaying what the Nazis did here! We again are better for having read it. 

Books are an important way to learn about history. To see into the lives of people different from us so we can empathize with them. That's why my town today is mostly white yet covered in "Black Lives Matter" signs. That's why when George Floyd was killed our school superintendent asked parents for ADDITIONAL ideas about what to ADD to the civil rights curriculum. We are better for the books we read. Our kids are learning that it's important to respect people different from you and that you can learn a lot from them. 

White supremacist parents don't want their kids to be uncomfortable. But their approach makes different kids uncomfortable. They don't want their kids coming home asking "did we have any ancestors that owned slaves?" because the answer is "yes" in a lot of cases. So, they would rather try to make it, so their kids don't know slavery ever happened. But the country owes it to the kids who go home asking "Do we have ancestors that were slaves?" to teach about their suffering in hopes that it never happens again. 

This is how racism ends. Racism has to end. There is no excuse for racism. "White Privilege" should really just be how things are for everyone. There is no excuse that makes it okay. A desire to be superior comes from a fear of a shrinking majority. white supremacists = cowards. 

Parents Choosing Curriculum

That last part brings me here. Usually, a movie accompanies these books that people want to ban. "Swing Kids", "Roots", and many others. All of it makes us better. My classmates and I are better for the assembles we went to on these topics. We are better for the books we read and the movies we saw. That's something I saw first-hand when I went to college. 

My degree is in dance. For my first two years of college, I was in a very small school in South Carolina. In the Spring of my Freshman year, I was a teacher's assistant for the director of the dance program, Nancy Boland. She was very southern yet definitely a democrat. A mentor I miss. It was for her two general education classes, and I even taught a couple when she was absent. 

That February brought a black history exhibit to the performing arts center for a couple of days. It was familiar for me. A lot of tables filled with accomplished black Americans. A lot of those names I had learned about in High School. The woman running the exhibit did a dramatization through the eyes of a slave. It was so powerful I cried. I wanted to hug her! Dr. Boland felt that it was very important for people to learn about so on the first day she took both classes to the exhibit. Just like my teachers in NJ would have done. 

I watched the two classes that day. Both were full almost exclusively with people born and raised in the south. Earlier in the day were the kids my age. They looked stunned and appalled by what they were seeing. Like it was new information. I remember thinking, "Didn't they learn about this in High School? South Carolina was ranked 48th in the nation for education at the time. This is one example of why that is a bad thing. This was all new information for the kids my age. It shouldn't have been. For me, it's what I am used to February at school being like. Why hadn't they learned about it before? Parents who wanted the truth hidden, that's why. 

The night class was full of adults. They looked bored, uninterested. They were numb to it and didn't care. That was in 2000. The parents who want to control what teachers say and the topics taught, Guess what, the kids are going to learn about it anyway as adults. A certain amount of them will resent you for keeping it from them. What other inconvenient facts have you simply kept them in the dark about? 

The curriculum needs to be decided by teachers. Not parents, not politicians, not lobbyists, not businesses. It needs to be designed by teachers! If some kids come home with questions that make parents uncomfortable, too bad! It's just the facts of history and it's important to learn about whether you like it or not. Embarrassed by history? Learn about it so it doesn't get repeated.