My children will not be allowed to hear President Obama’s back to school address on Tuesday. We live in a working-to-middle class suburb northwest of Chicago, where many neighboring school districts have come under pressure from right wing parents who evidently don’t want their children to be subjected to a speech by this President.
I checked our school district’s website during the day, and was encouraged not to find any of the timid parental warnings that have been issued in some nearby districts. In the absence of any statement from our district, I sent an earnest, preemptive email to our Superintendent. I thanked him for not going the route of some of his weaker counterparts, and congratulated him for standing up for reason in a difficult time and not allowing political fringe elements to determine school policy. I wanted to assure him that if he stood up to them, he would not be alone, that there would be at least one member of the community standing with him.
As the news from around the country grew worse throughout the day, I took comfort in the silence from my children’s district; I spoke my peace, and our school district stayed out of the news. And then I received the Superintendent’s response.
It came in the form of an email containing the text of an automated phone call that later went out to the homes of "all stakeholders." The message began with a fairly chatty reminder about school being closed due to Monday’s holiday, and then quickly got to the President's address.
In District (redacted), we will not view the speech live. Rather, we will record it and then show it to students at a later time, most likely later next week.
Initially, he offered a few seemingly-plausible reasons for this decision.
This approach makes sense for several reasons. First, as responsible educators, this will give us the opportunity to review the content, and then create meaningful learning activities to complement the President's speech.
As an example, if setting goals is a focal point of the speech, then teachers might also use it in conjunction with our goals-setting conferences, which take place several weeks from now.
So far, so good.
Second, roughly a third of our students will likely need part or all of the speech translated. Recording and then showing it at a later date will enable us to provide adequate translators for our English Language Learners who require such assistance.
Again, that makes sense. But the real intent became clear in the fourth paragraph:
Finally, we understand and are sensitive to the fact that some parents may not want their children to watch the President's speech. We want to give those parents an opportunity to exercise that option. However, given the fact that the speech is Tuesday {which follows the holiday on Monday}, it would be very difficult to give parents that option if we were to show it live.
Regardless of when we show the video, parents will have the option to hold their student out of that activity.
Thanks, and have a wonderful holiday weekend!
His message ensured that I would not have a wonderful holiday weekend (not even with his cheerful personal post-script:"Hope that helps. Take care!"). By granting legitimacy to the fear and hatred of extremists within my community, he placed their twisted politics above my children's education. This teaches students not to respect the political process unless their guy wins. It is fundamentally anti-democratic.
This might sound a bit melodramatic if you happen to live in a more cosmopolitan urban center where President Obama’s speech is not controversial, but I'm guessing that many people live in towns similar to mine. It may sound naive, but the very idea that this level of disrespect could become normalized has left my wife and I shocked and fairly demoralized. For me, the whole thing is beginning to have an air of unreality about it.
It is a symptom of how our political culture is getting progressively uglier, and every week seems to bring us to some outrageous new lowpoint. Frankly, it makes it hard not to think about fascism, and what it seems destined to look like if it takes root in this society (not jackboots and brownshirts, but Christianity and semi-coherent freedom-rhetoric, as our news-media jockey to find the middle-ground in a center-right debate).
In calmer, less paranoid moments I remind myself that the real threat isn’t the corporate-sponsored, rabid tea party-goers screaming at town-hall meetings, or even the hate-mongering right-wing broadcasters. The real threat is from the mass of ordinary people who surrender to them incrementally, mostly in small ways. People like my children’s superintendent, and mainstream journalists, and the coworkers and family members who I’m sure we all know -- basically nice people who might or might not be conservative to some extent, but who seem to have thrown some cognitive switch that allows them stare at this freakshow without blinking an eye.
It seems like we live in completely different realities, and as the reactionary fringe continues to send our political discourse spiraling into the dirt, it’s becoming harder to muster any hope of actually communicating across that divide. And that's what really bummed me out the most as I read the Superintendent's email. It seems like the a$$holes are winning, and there doesn't seem to be any effective response to them.
I guess we could throw the flag back in their faces; call them un-American and tell them to "Love it or leave it," but something tells me that this wouldn’t work. These people — with all of their fear, and hatred, and cruelty — seem to understand on some fundamental level that they are part of the fabric of America. My fear is that they may be more a part of that fabric than the hope and diversity and energy that the rest of us prefer to celebrate when we imagine ourselves as a nation.
So I wonder what’s next for my school district? Based on this incident, what reason do I have to believe that my superintendent and school board will stand up to the right-wing fringe the next time they go on a book-banning spree, or that they'll support a teacher who these people choose to target for one reason or another? I'm not betting on it.