"School decides to read book on Black astronaut to all students after parent complains about it"

[krispos42]

School decides to read book on Black astronaut to all students after parent complains about it


Instead of giving in to the complaint by a parent in the Rockwood School District, the book will now be read to the entire elementary school.
Brian Kelly
September 04, 2020 - 9:45 am

WILDWOOD, Mo. (KMOX) - The Rockwood School District is responding to a parent's complaint about a book that was read to a second-grade class, by having it read to the entire school.

The book is called "Ron's Big Mission," written about Astronaut Ron McNair – the only Black member of the 1986 NASA Challenger crew. The book focuses on his fight to get a library card in segregated South Carolina when he was a kid growing up there in the 1950s.

But it apparently didn't sit well with one parent of Pond Elementary School.

After hearing it read to her 7-year-old during an online video chat, the parent urged other parents to "preview what we are letting the kids see on there." The statement was posted in a Facebook group for Concerned Parents of the Rockwood School District. The parent said she called the school about it.

<more>

https://kmox.radio.com/articles/news/school-responds-to-complaint-about-book-on-black-astronaut

Amazing. Just amazing how people want to pretend slavery and segregating never happened in the past so they can be self righteous and tone deaf in the present.

Apologies if this has already been posted here.

[JI7]

1. They want to pretend after slavery everything was great and after civil rights it was

actually white people, specifically straight xtian white men who were most oppressed .

We need to teach and learn about how life was at the individual level for people. We need these stories.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

39. Hell, a lot of them want to pretend slavery itself was great,

for the slaves. All those kindly old Masters and their benevolent ways toward their human property..

[Illumination]

2. What an excellent idea to combat racism! These children need to be educated about racism

so they won't be brain washed into hating like their relatives & others. There needs to be an understanding & shift in thinking...

[CaptYossarian]

11. It sure as hell beats the way I learned acceptance (I won't stop at tolerance).

My (white) family moved from inner-city Chicago to a small town in extreme northern Wisconsin. The kids there knew there were about 1 million blacks in Chicago. I was immediately nicknamed the N-word and repeatedly beaten/kicked by these hicks. A usual encounter would have 5 holding me down with 2 doing the damage, all the while shouting "N*****!". This even happened at recess with an adult monitor with her back turned.

The bumps and bruises have healed and I developed a profound amount of compassion and empathy for women and minorities because of those hellish years.

I can't thank them enough for their making me a better person, which has been passed down to my 2 daughters.

[Illumination]

13. WOW CaptYossarian! Sorry for what you shouldn't have had to endure! Bullying is abuse

& abuse is never acceptable! I was bullied also. That's why I hate the Tramp in the W.H.! Also have always had a soft spot in my heart for the underdog...

[CaptYossarian]

22. I'm sure most DUers have had similar experiences with bullying.

That's why we're on this side of the aisle.

The trick is to "make lemonade" out of those memories. I've done that with my remarkable girls. One is currently making a BLM flag for her art class. She recently made a 20-page book on Dr. King's Dream speech and dedicated it to me.

It's a way of coping--by thumbing your nose at these Confederate wannabes.

(Jeez, it must be joke-free Sunday.)

[Illumination]

30. Great advice. You're raising those girls RIGHT! The flag & book are very perceptive & show an

appreciation & love for the values you've instilled in them! There should be more parents like you. It would be a much better world!...

[CaptYossarian]

40. Thank you.

That means a lot.

[okaawhatever]

41. I am so, so sorry for the behavior of my white cohorts.

It sickened me just to read about that kind of behavior. And, I suspect you’d have raised wonderful daughters no matter what happened to you in school.

[CaptYossarian]

43. Thank you.

I sometimes wonder how I would have turned out if those years hadn't happened that way. I might have become a jerk to fit in with the majority. I do know that my parents weren't racist and I hadn't really heard the N-word used in Chicago.

That town up north is still predominantly white and I'd guess that those kids had never met any blacks until they (may have) gone to college or served in the military. The blacks in their existence were all on TV or in pro sports.

(By "white cohorts", I'm getting the vibe that you think I'm black. I'm an olive-skinned white guy with a slightly detectable Chicago accent that I'll never give up for anything.)

I have already forgiven one girl in the group. That was earlier this year--about 30 years after she died in her late 20s. I'm not totally bitter, just reflective.

These are not my usual posts. Where are the jokes? Oh, yeah...Mar-A-Lago.

[okaawhatever]

44. For me, I believe that experiences like yours give us a level of empathy

and understanding that few people possess. Having that knowledge and self-awareness enriches relationships in ways that others will never know.

Oh, and also a quote I like: forgiving isn’t forgetting, it’s remembering and letting go.

[CaptYossarian]

45. Every syllable you posted is so very true.

[LAS14]

3. I can't even imagine what her rationale was. What was the content of her warning..

... on Facebook. "School read a book by a black astronaut?" Cheesh!

[ZenDem]

4. Her rationale was simple.

Makes her and her Klan family look bad.

[IronLionZion]

5. I'm curious about that too

if it was a racist who doesn't want kids to know black people can be astronauts or they are a segregation/Jim Crow denier and want to erase history. Or if it is something else entirely that the article left out, like a misunderstanding.

[Aristus]

6. Doesn't sound like a misunderstanding.

Sounds like a parent being a rotten human being.

[RVN VET71]

16. Aptly -- and accurately -- put

Ignorance is still rife, but judging from the reaction of the other parents to her post -- and to the wonderful response of the school -- it appears not to be as rife as I had feared.

For what it's worth, this goes out to all the squinty eyed, rage-fueled racist supremacists out there working at "they garages" or just "hangin' out to the general store" with their other toothless (metaphorically so, at least) racist buds: McNair held a PhD in Physics from M.I.T.

Stick that in your goddam "they's inferior to t'us white folks" pipe, light it up and put it, as the philosophers say, where the sun don't shine.

[Pacifist Patriot]

7. What in the bloody hell is there to object about that book?

Other than it is by and about a black guy, I mean. Nice own goal there by a stupid bigot.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

8. I didn't know that book existed

Now it’s definitely going on my 8 year-old nephew’s Christmas list.

[catbyte]

9. Glad to see her bigotry blow up in her face. Kudos to the school.

[sl8]

10. Sounds like her complaint encouraged more sales of the book.

[...]

Rockwood Education Equity and Diversity Director Brittany Hogan says the response from other parents supporting the book was immediate.

"They were saying this is amazing that they were buying copies of the book," Hogan says. "One of our parents came out and said she was going to purchase a copy for every second-grader at the elementary school that her children attends."

Hogan calls McNair, who died along with the rest of the crew in the Challenger explosion in 1986, a hero.

[...]

[left-of-center2012]

12. #1 Best Seller in Children's Social Activists Biographies (Amazon)

32 pages

https://www.amazon.com/Rons-Big-Mission-Rose-Blue/dp/0525478493

[onecent]

14. This makes me cry!!!! I think it is wonderful!!!

[pansypoo53219]

15. had a nice NPR story corp about him when he was a kid during segregation in texas.

made into a cartoon on PBS.

[sl8]

26. Thank you. Link to video:

(Cross-posted to Video & Multimedia)

Eyes on the Stars

1,218,745 views

StoryCorps
286K subscribers
Published on Jan 27, 2013

On January 28, 1986, NASA Challenger mission STS-51-L ended in tragedy when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. On board was physicist Ronald E. McNair, who was the second African American to enter space. But first, he was a kid with big dreams in Lake City, South Carolina.

Funding Provided by:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
National Endowment for the Arts

In partnership with POV.

Directed by: The Rauch Brothers
Art Direction: Bill Wray
Producers: Lizzie Jacobs & Mike Rauch
Animation: Tim Rauch
Audio Produced by: Michael Garofalo
Supervising Sound Recordist: Elaine Davenport
Music: Fredrik
Label: The Kora Records
Publisher: House of Hassle

Please tell us about your StoryCorps viewing experience: http://bit.ly/2wfcUS9

[TNNurse]

17. So sorry no one in her family is successful at anything

and she is hurt to see a successful Black man.

Not really, I am not sorry at all.

[PatrickforO]

20. Well, you've hit that on the head.

Look at Obama. He was an excellent president. No indictments, all kinds of accomplishments, no drama, and lots of transparency.

But he had the temerity to do and be that while being black, and the Kluxers and Nazis just couldn't stand it. Seeing a successful black man in the presidency. So now we have Trump.

Sigh.

[djacq]

18. Afr Am History will be a High School requirement in VA.

Governor Northam Signs Executive Order Establishing Commission on African American History Education;

[link:https://bluevirginia.us/2019/08/governor-northam-signs-executive-order-establishing-commission-on-african-american-history-education|

Ending Systemic Racism starts with our youth.

[PatrickforO]

21. That's really cool. I'm glad to hear that.

[Lonestarblue]

25. That helps for now.

But what is needed is for traditional history books to remove the whitewashing that has been done over the last few decades and incorporate all people into the history of this country’s development. And we need to stop sanitizing history because parents don’t want their delicate children to know the horrors perpetrated by white people on others. It’s no wonder children grow up today with absolutely no understanding of anything but white history, even minority children. When courses are separate, it’s too easy to dismiss them as “their” history, which isn’t the real history of the country.

Sanitizing history means that slavery has been called immigration for work and images of the Holocaust are photos of camps, not the emaciated bodies of prisoners freed after WWII or the stacks of bodies waiting for cremation. Obviously, some of this needs to be age appropriate, but I still remember a television program from my childhood, from the 50s or early 60s, on the Holocaust that showed such images. They were seered on my brain, but I understood the evil things the Nazis had done. Today, such photos would most likely not be shown, and not in prime time, or they would come with a warning from the moderator that the content might be difficult to watch. If we never see difficult events, we can just go on believing they never happened. Today’s children are protected from so much that they grow up to be insensitive, ignorant adults—like Donald Trump.

[Lucinda]

28. ❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[Ligyron]

32. Some sort of class should be required for elementary school children.

Heck, by the time they get into high school, they could be confirmed racists by then.

Maybe more like a tolerance of diversity class showing how a group or even a nation's strength springs from that and exposure to different cultures and ideas. Cause there are other darker than white skinned people in this country experiencing some degree of discrimination as well.

I know some more enlightened communities often have these type of classes taught at the elementary school level but those places aren't the ones who need them the most. Know what I mean?

Then when they get to HS do the Black Experience in the USA class.

[PatrickforO]

19. Ah, the forces of racism rear their heads yet again.

A 'concerned parent.'

Good for the administration of that school.

[AllaN01Bear]

23. produ of your ignorance arnt you?

[mwooldri]

24. Could have really rubbed it in her face...

... rename the school Ron McNair Elementary. That was the name chosen for a new elementary school in Greensboro a few years back. A magnet school with a focus on STEM - quite appropriate IMO.

[DFW]

33. That was done here where I live

There is building near us that was the local Gestapo headquarters during World War II. After the war, it was made into an elementary school--the Anne Frank Elementary School!

[Lucinda]

27. KNR

[llashram]

29. many millions of americans

at the encouragement of THEIR CIC have given themselves over to the darker nature of their spirits. Our country never came together to heal after slavery and the many generations of enforced segregation that ostensibly ended with the 64-65 Civil and Voting Rights Acts.

D. trump has given us a wake-up. Under his presidency it is now apparent that many still would like African-Americans forcibly segregated again and ALL other nonwhites classified as the S. Africans did under Smut to F.W. de Klerk.

To read a story such as this where parents want to wipe out African-American contributions to a still ungrateful racist population is sickening, disgusting and shameful. 400 years of this shit. All trump has shown me is American racism is here to stay and has enlightened me to just how many will actively keep racism as American as apple pie.

And at this moment I am picturing millions sitting in their church pews being told white supremacy is God-ordained.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Sounds like just the kind of book all kids should read

Written for the right age group too:

Nine-year-old Ron loves going to the Lake City Public Library to look through all the books on airplanes and flight. Today, Ron is ready to take out books by himself. But in the segregated world of South Carolina in the 1950s, Ron’s obtaining his own library card is not just a small rite of passage—it is a young man’s first courageous mission. Here is an inspiring story, based on Ron McNair’s life, of how a little boy, future scientist, and Challenger astronaut desegregated his library through peaceful resistance.

6-8 years

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298004/rons-big-mission-by-rose-blue-illustrated-by-don-tate/

[DFW]

34. I have a book for this sick parent

Someone should make her read "Yellow Back Radio Broke-down." (one of the coolest and funniest books of the late 1960s)

THEN let's hear her complain about reading material!

**oh, and make her watch the film "Putney Swope" while we're at it!

[MagickMuffin]

35. Astronaut Ron McNair died along with the rest of the crew in the Challenger explosion in 1986

And here's another great story about Ron. He was a saxophonist.

Ron worked with Jean-Michel Jarre a famous French musician.

The last track on the album was originally scheduled to include a saxophone part recorded by astronaut Ron McNair on the Space Shuttle Challenger, which would have made it the first piece of music to be recorded in space. However, on January 28, 1986, 73 seconds after lift-off, the shuttle disintegrated and the entire Challenger crew were killed. The track was dedicated to McNair and the other astronauts on board Challenger. On the album, the saxophone part is played by saxophonist Pierre Gossez.

In April 1986, Jarre performed the large-scale outdoor concert Rendez-vous Houston in Houston, Texas, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Texas. The show attracted a then-world-record live audience of 1.3 million people. The concert was originally to have included a video projection of Ron McNair's performance, recorded in space.

We drove down to Houston to see the concert it was magical to say the least. I'm so glad we got to participate. The saxophonist Pierre Gossez played on a scaffold platform against a large skyscraper. Several skyscrapers had huge sheets of canvas hung down the buildings and images projected upon them, and lets not forget the fireworks. And then there is the laser harp. It was truly a wonderful experience!

We got as close to the stage as possible. The concert blocked traffic on all the highways.

It interested you can watch the concert here:

Or just Ron's song

I'm glad the school decided not to be bullied by one parent and decided to share the story with more children. This should happen more often. Ron's life should be celebrated.

[crickets]

38. I enjoy Jean Michel Jarre's music but know nothing about this.

Thank you so much for sharing the story and the concert link, MagickMuffin.

[littlemissmartypants]

36. Mr McNair was an amazing human.

I have been to his memorial garden and he has an entire library named after him. The book should be required reading for all of the students from now on.

Thanks for sharing this krispos42.

❤ lmsp

[crickets]

37. Fantastic clapback, Pond Elementary!

That's how its done. Now I want to read Ron's Big Mission, too.

[Skittles]

42. that group is just a bunch of MAGAt nutcases

https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/coronavirus/messenger-a-facebook-group-for-concerned-parents-turns-its-back-on-science/article_7b333656-7a96-5f32-b960-17959a2644e3.html