Teacher hypocrisy

When the 1619 Project became available, a number of historians criticized its inaccuracies. This was followed by winning the Pulitzer Prize. What came next? Curriculum built around the 1619 Project.

When a primarily conservative group fought the curriculum, teachers fought back. Not being allowed to force the 1619 Project onto students was viewed as a ban on the material. It was also viewed as an attack on teachers. They have insisted that we must trust teachers to teach children honest history.

Admittedly, I haven't actually read the 1619 Project. In all honesty, I don't think I should have to. I have read the purpose. The 1619 Project is clearly agenda driven. Agenda-driven material requires a skewed perspective intended as a means of manipulating viewpoints. Instead of maximizing accuracy, history supporting the agenda is amplified. Alternative viewpoints are either downplayed or completely omitted. Even if everything is technically accurate, the overall portrayal is not. Agenda-driven history, by its very nature, can't be honest history.

Although the 1619 Project fueled a lot of the outrage we're currently seeing, there are bigger concerns. The controversial and undeniably agenda-driven Southern Poverty Law Center is actively creating material for schools. They launched with the name Teaching Tolerance and now go by Learning for Justice. The NEA aggressively promotes this material, and the AFT includes their material on their Share My Lesson website.

Unlike the 1619 Project, I have read material from Learning for Justice. They are a big driver in the new narrative behind the Civil War. If you are unfamiliar with the new narrative, it is now wrong to consider any factor other than slavery in causing, but the North did not go to war over slavery.

I don't visit the Learning for Justice website often, but I did check out what they had to say about the events of January 6, 2021. Instead of focusing on violence to overturn election results because people couldn't accept the results, they elevated a different message. Those events were about white supremacy, white supremacy, and white supremacy.

Learning for Justice doesn't hide it. Their material clearly qualifies as propaganda. Both the NEA and AFT are openly promoting that propaganda.

More recently, the state of Florida announced that videos created by PragerU can be used by teachers. Like the 1619 Project, I admittedly have not checked out their material. I suspect the core arguments against PragerU are valid. I do believe that PragerU has an agenda, and I don't trust the videos that they have created.

The material from PragerU is entirely optional. If teachers don't like it, they don't have to share it. Teachers have actually taken a very different tactic when compared to liberal sources. They insist that some teachers might use the material despite its flaws. In other words, we can't trust teachers to teach honest history. The only option is to tell teachers that they can't use this material. By their own definition, they want to ban material developed by PragerU.

I should probably mention what these teachers have been saying about book bans. They insist that we should read banned books. I guess that means by their own logic that we should watch these PragerU videos.

Teachers are hypocrites. This isn't just about the 1619 Project, Learning for Justice, and PragerU. This is just the latest hypocrisy to highlight what many of us already knew. I can provide additional examples.

When Ron DeSantis pushed the idea that districts in Florida couldn't force children to wear masks, Randi Weingarten was quick to attack. For those unfamiliar, Weingarten is the hyperpartisan president of the AFT. She accused DeSantis of authoritarian overreach on the grounds that this was a decision that should be made at the local level. How did she respond to Democrat governors requiring mask mandates for all local districts? Not a peep.

Another issue that came out of Florida was the so-called Parental Rights in Education bill. This law limited what teachers could say to children regarding gender and sexuality. Teachers were openly critical of this bill. Like the 1619 Project, the government was too restrictive regarding what teachers could teach.

Here in Washington, we passed a sex ed law several years ago. This law gave the state control over sex ed curriculum throughout the state. Although districts were allowed to create their own curriculum, it had to be approved by the same people creating the statewide curriculum. Simply put, the state banned all curriculum that the state didn't approve. Since the Democrats control the state, that means the Democrats effectively banned all sex ed curriculum that the Democrats don't like. This is far more restrictive than the Parental Rights in Education law. How did teachers respond? They endorsed the law.

The views of the teaching profession have been swinging wildly. They hate constraints from Republicans. They endorse constraints from Democrats. What's the constant that emerges from all of the hypocrisy? The partisanship. The NEA and AFT are openly partisan, and they are willing to contradict themselves to push a partisan agenda.

By contrast, let me share my personal views. Teachers should not be pushing propaganda onto children regardless of the party behind it. I am open to restrictions addressing this problem. Access is different from force. There are legitimate reasons to object to stocking books in schools such as inclusion of explicit sexual images. Randi Weingarten once deleted a tweet because she couldn't handle the sexual content shared from a book she was defending. However, I do believe Republicans have gone too far in removing access to content they oppose. More importantly, I reject the idea that a profession that openly boasts that they are molding the minds of 90% of future voters should embrace a partisan agenda.