Will Bunch: 'Gag orders' for U.S. teachers are becoming our new McCarthyism

[Nevilledog]

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Will Bunch
@Will_Bunch
Banning civil-rights history and books from Maus to The Bluest Eye. Va. begging parents to reports teachers, like the Stasi

Something terrible is sweeping across America at the start of 2022. What explains the frightening new McCarthyism?

My new column

inquirer.com
'Gag orders' for U.S. teachers are becoming our new McCarthyism | Will Bunch
Education experts say a flood of new laws and proposals to curb discussions of racial and LGBTQ issues is worst classroom scare since Scopes Monkey Trial.
12:22 PM · Jan 27, 2022

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/maus-banned-books-teachers-race-mccarthyism-20220127.html


The lecture series is titled “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” and the talk by Flagler University history professor J. Michael Butler hasn’t changed in 20 years. Through his lecture, Butler helps Florida educators look beyond the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and use a wide lens when teaching during Black History Month, from the dawn of Jim Crow to today’s fights over police brutality. In two decades, the lesson never provoked even the slightest controversy.

But the political climate around Butler’s specialty — the history of U.S. race relations — has changed a lot. So the professor wasn’t completely shocked this month when administrators for the Osceola County School District abruptly canceled his planned Saturday sessions with their teachers.

The district’s superintendent told those instructors in an email, as reported by NBC News, that Butler’s lecture needed more scrutiny “in light of the current conversations across our state and in our community about critical race theory,” and she expressed concern about potential “negative distractions.” The cancellation came as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is making his jihad against “critical race theory” — an often-misused phrase to describe teachings about racism — a linchpin of his reelection drive, and as state lawmakers in Tallahassee weigh a bill that would block schools from making students feel “discomfort” over race.

While not surprised, Butler told me by phone Thursday that “I was disappointed, I was mad, I was depressed. ... It went in cycles.” The Flagler professor is suddenly on the front lines of a new paranoia about classroom teaching, not just in Florida but across much of America. “I contend you can’t understand what it means to be an American without this history,” he said. “This is the quintessential American story — how do we guarantee equality for all of our citizens?”

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[wnylib]

2. Whatever happened to Republican demands

for free speech, like when they posted photos of Dem politicians with gun targets on their faces? Not to mention their current shouts about freedoms regarding masks and vaccines?

Freedoms only apply to them, I guess.

A case for the ACLU to take up?