HICKORY STICK HIT PARADE

I‘m hearing a lot of mindless crap about parents and public education from our friends on the right. I say it’s mindless crap for two reasons. First, it cynically employs clear cut ideology to attack anything outside of that reality tunnel as ideology. Second is the glaring hypocrisy that gaming parental rights is the ticket to controlling curriculum content. Well, my Republican, capitalist, free market buddies you ignore the heartbeat of your own ethos. I am not a parent. I have never had a child. But wait for it, I pay for public education. It is not a charitable donation. It means, kids in school or not, I get a word, as legitimate as anyone else’s in what the School Board does. Else we have de facto taxation with third or fourth tier representation. If you count up taxpayers without kids currently in public school, they far outnumber parents. Public education is a public good. It is not a service delivered exclusively to parents. The common good is not equated with a cadre of axe grinders hiding behind the skirts of the PTA. Ya know what. The foundational premise of Critical Race Theory, that perennial racism has been reflected in public and private institutions so as to create and perpetuate a Black and Brown underclass, is so flippin obvious it’s delusional to think otherwise. Plus, the proposition that this reality is a fantasy that ignores progress and causes white kids to self-identify as oppressors is bizarre. Why! Well kids aren’t stupid, and they see racism in the world no matter what they are taught about the glorious Republican campaign to free the slaves. Further, this particular attack on the perniciousness of CRT validates it. There is an essential distinction between this Is who we have been with ongoing impact, and this is who YOU are sixth grader in your own present heart and soul. I can fully understand how threatened some School Board Members would be in a world where kids grow up learning to read and write. A world where, it’s my opinion that opinions don’t matter, is seen for the shallow, self-righteous horse shit that it us.