Critical Race Theory: What an angry mother and the GOP are doing to destroy school freedoms...and how we must respond.

This will take a while, so be prepared.

Virginia’s Nov. 2 gubernatorial election did more than interrupt the state’s blue trend lines over the last 20 years. It gave the Republican Party what it sees as a Willy Wonka-like golden ticket to the 2022 and 2024 elections: “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) and its GOP-manufactured link to public education. 

The election also introduced a rising new star in the Republican firmament, Virginia mother Laura Murphy, a parent who called for book banning after her son Blake had trouble reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved in his senior AP English class.

Immediately following the Youngkin victory, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced support for a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” opposing the teaching of “critical race theory,” the new generic phrase for learning about (or, more accurately, preventing learning about race in U.S. history). According to Virginia exit polls, 38 percent of those polled said CRT ranked as their number one reason for choosing Youngkin, even though some on-camera interviews revealed voters could not articulate what it meant. 

For that, McCarthy and other Republican leaders see CRT as a game-changer for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election. A Republican full-court press to score points on CRT gives the GOP a chance to change the subject from five disastrous years of Donald Trump and the party’s sycophantic support of Trump’s initially failed but on-going attempts at insurrection.  

On the surface, Democrats may find the whole CRT thing laughable--voters’s inability to even understand what CRT means smacks of being another Republican culture war red herring without much meat.  

But to TRG, Democrats pooh pooh the potential strength of the GOP’s new shiny object at our peril, as CRT hits close to home for parents who fear education’s ability to open up their children’s minds to ideas they don’t agree with or understand.  They’re so afraid they’re willing to turn over local education decisions to state legislators—party hacks happy to sacrifice the quality of children’s educations and the viability of the American educational system on the altar of their own political greed.

Max Boot echoes this concern saying in a Nov. 8 Washington Post column:

“CRT may have started off as an esoteric theory about structural racism. But it has now become a generic term for widely publicized excesses in diversity education, such as disparaging ‘individualism’ and ‘objectivity’ as examples of white supremacy culture or teaching first-graders about microaggressions and structural racism. You don’t have to be a Republican to be put off by the incessant attention on race in so many classrooms.”

Boot added that while Democrats should take such criticisms to heart, they should also not take them lying down, as Republican response to any perceived CRT overreach is to overreach themselves as they’re already doing by passing authoritarian-style anti CRT laws.  As evidence, Boot cited a person in the Texas legislature (with the scariest title TRG has seen of late), the “Chairman of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating,” as demanding on Oct. 25 that all Texas public schools in that state report whether they stock any books, “that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” To be especially helpful, he included 850 examples of such suspect works.

The growing censorship putsch was also on display in Southlake, Tex., an upscale suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth, when a local school administrator instructed teachers to make sure, under the state’s new anti-diversity legislation, they offer “opposing perspectives on the Holocaust,” Boot asks rhetorically, “What would that be--neo-Nazism?

Legislation banning the teaching of racial history and corresponding pressures on teachers to airbrush not only American but now also Nazi history proves the growing high-stakes nature of Democrats getting their act together in countering a growing attack on honesty in teaching and educational freedom. As a newly retired high school and college teacher of literature, TRG believes we’re looking down the barrel of the kind of book burner mindset typical of tyrannical governments--the kind we believed could never happen here.

Authoritarian classrooms

Under authoritarian regimes, classrooms looked very much like ones being created in Texas. Texas law now requires instructors to teach any subject, not just history, but also such classes as Literature which expose students to minority writers and experiences, within a narrow set of political expectations. Teaching must take place within official paradigms that will not disturb a longstanding belief that the country's historical treatment of minorities has not been as brutal as it’s actually been. 

Even a countervailing message along the lines of “while America was founded on great values, it has materially not lived up to them in matters of race” would not cut it under this legislation. 

At least six other states have also passed laws banning teaching an explicit history of the violence against African Americans in the country’s history. (More on the specifics of those bills and the states that are passing them later in this posting.) 

Authoritarian playbooks

In a way, the GOP’s aims to eliminate “CRT”--as defined in Republican state legislation as “preventing teachers from discussing topics that might cause (white--my add) students to feel uncomfortable.” And the (newly passed Texas HB 3939) and others like it may effect an outcome not all that different from schools in the Weimar Republic that set the table for National Socialism in Germany in that no messaging existed to curb a burgeoning anti-semitism in schools. According to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, an award-winning account of what led up to the Nazi takeover of Germany:
“A survey of the political and social life of Weimar reveals that virtually every major institution and group in Germany--including schools and universities, the military, bureaucracy, and judiciary, professional associations, the churches, and political parties--was permeated with anti-semitism...the youth and young adults of Weimar Germany provided large, willing cadres for the coming Nazi dispensation.”

Typically, before, during, and for a time after WWII, Americans imagined their school systems as immune from ever becoming like those common in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany where pervasive--and, yes--structural racism was accepted as a matter of course. The belief, “this could never happen here,” overlooked the rampant racism and violence most dramatically on display throughout much of the American South, with separate schools for black and white students and widespread, blatant voting inequalities that required blacks to weigh carefully whether they wanted to endanger themselves or the lives of their families by even trying to register to vote (see the Neshoba County murders of voter registration activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwermer in June 1964).

Goldhagen went on to cite an unnamed American educator who in 1941 claimed the difference between American and German educational systems ranked as one of the key reasons America could never become a Nazi Germany:
“Nazi schooling produced a generation of human beings...so different from normal American youth that mere academic comparison seems inane and any sort of evaluation of the Nazi educational system is (therefore) extremely difficult.”

Goldhagan’s aim in showcasing that statement was to demonstrate how even highly educated Americans in the 1940s could still not believe that American racial prejudice rose to the level of early German anti-semitism.  Or that, by extension, the effects of American tolerance of racial prejudice should not concern this country long-term.

Unaddressed racial discrimination in schools showed up later in American businesses, which, beginning in the 1970s, began to see that the absence of minority voices in their companies or inability to retain minorities in the workforce could hinder their reaching out to diverse customers and hurt their bottom lines.

And, as American schools were becoming more diverse due to Brown v. Board of Education and also the rise of Latinx immigration, educators felt the need to sensitize teachers and administrators to the growing numbers of minority students flooding into schools.

And so school systems and businesses, wanting to defuse or nip in the bud workplace racism reached out to the growing industry of diversity training to help employees begin to see the world, if only for a few days or hours, through eyes different from their own.

As an AT&T employee in the 1980s and 90s I attended a number of these mandatory HR-sponsored programs. And even though I did not consider myself racist, having many friends from different backgrounds, I could not help but gain new insights whether I immediately realized them or not.

Tired from being black

One particular comment from a black male diversity trainer stuck with me, something like: “I go home at night tired from being black all day.” 

Although unaware at the time of its connection to statements by late 19th century-20th century black activist W.E.B. DuBois, I later paired the trainer’s comment to DuBois’s description of black American life as generating “dual- ​​or “double consciousness”--the experience of having to appear one way to those with more power, and returning to one’s true feelings or self only when they’re not around.

But in keeping with Republican beliefs that Americans apparently do not need or could be harmed in some way by diversity training, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) on January 7--one day after the Jan. 6 insurrection--banning diversity training throughout the government and for its contractors.

Trump’s EO was rescinded by Joe Biden in his first days as president. But the State of Iowa followed up on Trump’s order six months later by passing a bill “that would ban teaching certain concepts as part of diversity training and school curricula (and) would help to address parent complaints of ‘indoctrination’ of students, according to the bill's sponsor” (June 8 DesMoines Register). A similar bill is under consideration in New Hampshire as Republicans see the political benefits of stoking racial bias and disharmony for votes.

French import

What was CRT originally? Republicans would have us believe the new CRT grew from evil foreign roots transplanted in U.S. law schools in the 1970s.  But just like everything else, the GOP has turned something that’s been helpful in creating new ways for minorities to find justice in America into the Republican version of “bad.” 

Critical Race Theory had remained buried in the halls of American legal academia for almost 50 years, beginning the 1970s when it arrived on our shores via French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. 

It’s not an unfamiliar pattern for new philosophical constructs to originate from French thinkers, such as John Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, who possess a unique talent for creating new approaches to understanding reality and existence and intrigue other scholars around the world.  Such was the case with Bourdieu’s “Critical Race Theory,” which examined marginalized peoples' relationship with the dominant societies in which they live.

Bourdieu was interested in colonized people in French Algeria who appeared to have no special allegiance to French government, institutions, or values. Providing little help or hope for a better life, the institutions became, at best, irrelevant or, at worst, powerful symbols of what’s stacked against them. Both the alienated colonists and Algeria in general then suffered the consequences, in terms of poverty, lack of civic participation, unemployment or under-employment, and crime.

Instead of approaching the problem as authorities had in years past--looking down on groups, blaming them for their lack of industry and progress, and exhorting them to pull themselves “up by their bootstraps”--Bourdieu created a framework for tracing alienation back to the structure of society and the various trip wires within it that can sever loyalties and an ability to fit in.  

As Bourdieu’s theory made its way to America, scholars here explored its usefulness in understanding culturally disadvantaged peoples in this country--notably African Americans, immigrants, and indigenous peoples who, like French Algerians, also faced uphill battles in places not sympathetic to them or their needs.

First stop: law schools

CRT found its home first in U.S. law schools in the 1970s where the study of criminal justice became newly energized in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren was redefining citizens’ rights vis a vis the police and courts. 

For example, the Court’s 1966 Miranda ruling requiring police to advise suspects being taken into police custody of their right to remain silent and be represented by an attorney either of their own choosing or one supplied at the court’s expense inspired law students to specialize in criminal justice and look at the causes and effects of crime through a new lens.  

Examining the high numbers of brought charges and incarcerations of minorities going through the justice system compared to whites committing similar crimes revealed a number of disparities.  What Bourdieu described as cultural “reproduction”--forces and structures that perpetuated inequality--seemed also to fit with the kind of advantages offered to accused white felons--all-white juries, better legal representation, police friendliness, and more lenient prosecutorial attitudes--in contrast to accused black people who enjoyed none of those advantages once they entered the legal pipeline. The word “systemic” emerged to describe the relationship of built-in advantages for whites vs. built-in disadvantages for blacks. 

Although African Americans' relationship with the law became the CRT’s initial focus, it eventually expanded to include other marginalized groups.  The CRT framework provided a voice for Native Americans whose tragic history was one of being shunted off to reservations and taken advantage of within the American system of jurisprudence throughout the 1800s and beyond (https://sarweb.org).

Native American scholars reported on their use of CRT as giving them new language and structure for addressing their issues. Invoking cultural syntax, the Brayboy study cited in the previous paragraph described Bourdieu’s approach as enabling them to “perform truth-telling”--i.e. speaking up and back to powerful people after centuries of being silenced and ignored. 

But while Critical Race Theory has found a home in American law schools, it has not taken over legal scholarship as much as it has augmented it.  A quick review of leading law school curriculums on the internet--Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Cornell, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and Duke--reveals that while many of these schools offer courses in “human rights,” “criminal justice” and “racism and the law,” most do not explicitly use “Critical Race Theory” in their course descriptions. This is not the case with the UCal Berkeley and University of Michigan law schools that actively invoke the term “CRT” in conferences and guest speakers on the subject.       

Objective observers can admire law schools’ use of Critical Race Theory’s ability to shine a light on problems in the justice system, but Republicans look at that same experience and twist it into something negative. And in that transformation, CRT set the stage for becoming the GOP’s latest boogeyman to scare Americans for political aims. 

Another GOP think-tanker to divide Americans

Enter Republican ideologue Christopher Rufo, a 36-year-old conservative activist who works at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank funded by a few--of what seems to be a limitless supply--rich white men determined to use their wealth to keep things as they are or roll them back to “simpler” times.

Rufo emerged on the national scene last summer with a prime-time appearance on Fox news that caught the eye of inveterate TV watcher Donald Trump. Rufo took the still relatively little-known CRT and infused it with unsupported scary-sounding theories on how it’s gone from law schools to now grades K-12 in the American public school system--local institutions, no matter where, the alt-right views as bastions of the liberal left.

As such, Rufo follows a pattern seen in virtually all major Republican operatives since Lee Atwater, the dirty trickster who made cultural wedge issues the centerpiece of Republican strategy from just before Nixon until now.

Atwater’s legacy lives on

Everything Atwater did was in service of the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” created to bring the south into the GOP column following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The strategy was so successful the political divide across the midsection of the country has lasted ever since, but with cracks showing in 2020 in states like Virginia, Georgia, and Arizona.

And Atwater reigned supreme as GOP’s inside man, widely successful for more than 20 years until brought down by a brain tumor in 1991.  On his deathbed or close to it, Atwater obliquely apologized for his racist activism, saying:
"My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood, and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything...

“It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.”

Nevertheless, the GOP seems always replenished with new generations of Atwater legacy clones, and Rufo is poised to take on that mantle as the man with the magic for pulling elections out of a hat. And his tactics fall straight out of Atwater’s playbook--find something that’s essentially good, give it dangerous-sounding racial overtones, and keep its idea simple enough to work with a certain segment of the American electorate--especially those who do not like black people.

According to Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey in their April Washington Post profile of the GOP operative, Rufo admitted plucking CRT out of law school obscurity and misusing the term with little known “woke overreach” stories in local news:

Intentional misuse

“Rufo described his strategy to oppose critical race theory as intentionally misusing the term to conflate various left-wing race-related ideas in order to create a negative association.[6]According to Rufo, ‘I am quite intentionally redefining what critical race theory means in the public mind, expanding it as a catchall for the new racial orthodoxy.’”

Fueled by Rufo’s energy and money, Republican governors and legislatures have fallen all over themselves to pass anti-CRT and voter suppression laws in their states at record paces across the deep south and southwest, with some exceptions.

In May, Texas became the first of seven states to pass legislation to ban race education history; the other six include: Idaho, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arizona.  

At least 11 others have introduced similar bills currently working their way through state houses, including: Ohio, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York have Democratic governors who will veto such legislation, as has already happened in North Carolina where Democratic Gov. Ray Cooper became the first state chief executive to veto one of the bills. 

Alabama, Florida, and Montana have used their state Boards of Education to issue banning directives, while South Dakota has put forth what amounts to be an executive order verbalizing the ban.

Kudos to Arkansas and Louisiana

Of special note, TRG loves citing two southern states--Louisiana and Arkansas--for withdrawing bills that had been introduced into state legislatures. In March, Arkansas Republican legislators drew back a bill that would have prohibited "social justice teaching." EdWeek.com reports that in April Louisiana Representative Ray Garofalo voluntarily withdrew a bill that would ban racial history teaching in his state after strong criticism from other state lawmakers and education officials.  Kudos to both these states!  (TRG will follow Arkansas and Louisiana’s education achievements in comparison to those that passed the laws.)

Censored education, Texas style...

I’ve looked up the key provisions in the Texas bill, which strongly resembles later versions passed in the other six states. They’re posted below along with TRG “translations” and “comments”:

1) “A teacher may not make part of a course or award extra credit for efforts to persuade (anyone in government--my shorthand edit) to take specific actions by direct communication.”  TRG Translation: No more student letter-writing to the president, congresspersons, senators, mayors, etc.-- a standard assignment in civics courses. And no extra credit for anything remotely resembling political activism, a provision counter-productive to developing a next generation excited for democratic advocacy.

2)  “A teacher may not make part of a course the concept that the advent of slavery constituted the true founding of the United States or that slavery and racism are  anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to that authentic founding principles.” TRG Translation: Texas legislators, not historians, are now actively censoring the discussion of all serious points of view about the role slavery played in the country’s founding.

3)  “A teacher may not require an understanding of the 1619 project.”  TRG Translation: Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work may never be required reading in any Texas public or open-enrollment charter school as it is simply too dangerous for (white--my add) students to learn about slavery’s impact on the United States from its inception until now.
4) “A teacher may not make part of a course the concept that an individual bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race.”
TRG Observation: German philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1946 published The Question of German Guilt in the belief that “an acknowledgement of national guilt was a necessary condition for the moral and political rebirth of Germany.”
But Jaspers’ belief is verboten in the Lone Star State. 

5)  “A teacher may not make part of a course the concept that an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race.” TRG Translation: So it’s forbidden that any study of American slavery, lynchings, Emmett Till’s murder, the Birmingham church bombing killing four young girls, Jim Crow legislation in Texas and other Southern states, and the historic, widespread dislocation of Native Americans may produce any empathy in subsequent generations, often accompanied by a resolve to envision a better path.

(Question: How do you monitor for that--with a psychologist?) As a former teacher, TRG believes that fact-based teaching and empowered discussions—not gag laws—channel “guilt” productively. And tapping a younger generation’s ideas for a better future? You simply can’t get any more “American” than that. 

And that’s what this bill destroys.

6) “Any employee of a state agency may not be required to engage in training, orientation, or therapy that present any form of race or sex stereotyping on the basis of race or sex.” TRG Translation: No diversity training for the people who need it most--Texas legislators.

7) “A teacher may not make part of a course the concept that an individual is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Question: TRG wonders who actually wrote this statute, Carl Jung--the eminent psychologist of “collective unconscious” fame? Wandering into the realm of consciousness or unconsciousness seems likely to invite even more lawsuits to tie up court dockets, joining present and future litigation over Texas’ ever-growing list of anti-democracy bills. 

Texas’s flagging schools

Another sad consequence of Texas’s law-making: the unimpressive reputation of the state’s public schools and colleges, which exists now and will likely worsen from its clampdown on academic freedom.

According to U.S. News and World Report (USNWP) rankings of Texas K-12 education systems, the state fails to place even within the top 30, despite the state’s size and wealth.

As for colleges, the same survey cites only Houston’s Rice University as (barely) placing in the top 20, with a number 19 ranking. The University of Texas at Austin comes in at number 38, while Southern Methodist falls much lower at number 68.

The top 20 states with the best K-12 school systems are, in order: New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Illinois, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Virginia (for now--my add). But Texas ranks #34 on the list just behind Tennessee, according to USNWP.

Enforcing draconian laws will inevitably require webs of “spy networks” to entrap instructors or administrators who, in the state’s view, do not fall in lockstep in enforcing them. As such Texas, et al. will likely fall even further behind New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, etc.--states with the best reputations for school excellence and that embrace the power of truth and freedom in their schools. 

The damage to Texas can be further inferred from research cited in The Hill, a Washington political news publication that has looked at the growing disparities in wealth and education attainment between blue and red states:

“The economic divergence between red and blue states is staggering--and growing rapidly. While income and education levels are increasing at a swift rate, they are stagnant or declining in red states, which is a recipe for disaster.”

Key to states’ economic health is their ability to count on the quality of the state’s schools and colleges to supply them with people who will ultimately become the doctors, lawyers, business people, communicators, educators, and legislators who fuel the state’s success.

How will Texas students fare in getting into top colleges?

In addition to high reading and math scores, college admissions specialists look for graduating high school seniors applicants with these qualities, according to the College Board web site:

• Leadership

• Willingness to take risks

• Initiative

• Sense of social responsibility

• Commitment to service

• Special talents or abilities

Taking each trait one by one, here is TRG’s take on how the state’s race history policies could affect college applicants from Texas schools:

Leadership: States that hold political guns to the heads of their teachers and forbid truth-telling in their classrooms model behaviors opposite leadership in democratic nations. Students other than those from very conservative homes or white supremacists-in-training will likely shut down in these classrooms and become angry that they must learn in such an environment. 

And prohibitions against students participating in their communities via letter-writing, civics projects, and reach-outs to local officials will likely produce outcomes familiar to those authoritarian societies where young people associate state leadership as the kind that restricts, punishes, and silences.

Willingness to take risks: Students love to take risks and solve problems, but with one of the biggest issues in the country concealed from them in its entirety and importance, the state’s uber-authoritarian efforts in suppressing democracy and voting access coupled with its hyper-masculine focus on denying women a right to choose, students may conclude that risk-taking --especially in terms of improving their communities--are exercises in futility.

Initiative:  This synonym for “ambition” and “drive” cannot take place in systems where educators are spied on, reported about, and ultimately fired for teaching truth in classrooms.  Students who see educational authority figures penalized for doing the right thing will learn the kind of lessons taught in totalitarian societies: keep your head down, mouth shut, and opinions to yourself.

And students showing “initiative” in helping their schools quash the truth will not earn points with any college worth its salt.

Sense of Social Responsibility: (See Leadership)

Commitment to Service: Texas lawmakers show no commitment to service toward students in their state, so why shouldn't students turn a cold shoulder to serving their communities, or anything else?

Special talents and skills:  TRG is certain Texas students possess a multitude of talents and skills, but they are less likely to shine to their fullest potential in unhappy educational and cultural settings. Many musicians--particularly African Americans--actors, and writers have left Texas because of racism, attitudes toward women, and a perceived close-mindedness in the state.

Murphy again

Coming full circle back to the Virginia mom who has catapulted Critical Race Theory into the national spotlight, TRG feels compelled to ask: “What does Laura Murphy want?” And, more importantly, “How can this affect me?”

Much misguided punditry suggests the new governor will be his own man and exert independence from Republican task-masters. But TRG finds that Panglossian conceit virtually impossible to believe.

First, Youngkin is an inexperienced politician, and this will put him at a disadvantage with a crowd that’s practiced in the art of manipulation. With Youngkin’s CRT-fueled success, Virginia will become ground zero for Critical Race Theory in education leading up to the midterms. So any weak or half-baked attempts that fall short of robustly playing that role just won’t fly in Youngkin’s party, TRG fears.

And looking around the country there is more than enough evidence to support that theory.  In Texas, already anti-CRT police are actively taking out an African American principal for putting out a relatively benign message to staff and students suggesting “systemic racism is alive and well” and urging them to be “anti-racist.” Seems fairly tame stuff to TRG, but to Texas CRT “thought police,” educators not fully in lockstep with the state’s ban on race history policies have got to go. For the record, the school district denies CRT has played any part in its decision.

Virginians who boast of a relatively highly-rated public school system may believe their state could never fall prey to such exaggerated decisions. But just focusing on the Laura Murphy phenomena provides enough warning signals that should trouble Virginians. And these include the possibility of more restrictions on teaching and educators growing from the seeds Murphy planted and still nurtures as a new Republican “star.”

Laura Murphy’s poor choices

For example, when Murphy’s son Blake objected to his having to read Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved because part of its story features a black mother’s killing her two-year-old daughter to prevent the child from having to return to slavery, Murphy’s approach was nuclear.  She went to the Virginia Board of Education and state lawmakers to plead her case. And what did she want--tutoring for the son having a hard time with the book? Teacher assistance? Dropping the class and joining a different one?

No. Murphy’s goal was to get Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel banned from the district, extending her pique well beyond her son’s problem and hurting all students in her state. 

Murphy also sought new policies that would offer students alternative readings to those assigned to the rest of the class.

In justifying her stance, Murphy contended:
“I’m not some crazy book burner. I have great respect for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I disagree with the administration at a policy level.”

Murphy’s phraseology, “disagreement at a policy level,” seems a more palatable way of getting rid of books than, say, burning them, as young German Student Union members did while joining forces with hordes of German and Austrian civilians in the 1930s, swept up in the nihilism of that time, but also, perhaps, prescient to book-burning’s new form.

What the 1930s can teach us

The German book burnings began in “limited fashion,” destroying books representing opposing ideologies like communism and socialism. But over time the smoldering piles grew to include those written by a vast array of writers--English, French, and American authors like Hellen Keller and repatriated scientist Albert Einstein--anyone whose books the mob felt like doing away with at any given time.

Additionally, to TRG, saying you respect your local educators, but then going behind their backs to eliminate books from their curriculums, forcing them to change their instruction practices--which they are certified to teach and you aren’t--and cast them in a negative light with state lawmakers takes helicopter-parenting to aggressively dangerous new levels.

Calling McLuhan...

As Marshall McLuhan said: the medium is the message. And the medium Murphy used--betraying Fairfax County teachers and administrators, demanding the banning of an important book in the district’s curriculum, and essentially upending the teaching of AP English in her son’s high school--reveals Murphy’s real message, “I really do not have respect for Fairfax county educators and do not believe they are second to none.”

Murphy’s call for alternative readings is also problematic, both for reasons of principle and practicality. As a high school Literature teacher of 15 years, it’s been my experience that “alternative readings” is a euphemism for watering down the curriculum. And watering down not just for her child, but also for all of Blake’s classmates present and future...students, unlike him, who were eager or at least willing to tackle difficult texts but now forced by “Murphy moms” to see their challenging classes changed in ways no longer beneficial to them or their hopes to attain future goals.

Reading alternatives—not good

Whenever a student insists on a separate reading, that immediately raises the question, where does he or she go and do?  Many teachers would logically resort to the creation of some sort of a packet with generic questions about plot, characters, motifs, setting, etc. for a book of the teacher’s or more likely the student’s (or their parent’s) choosing. The student would likely have to leave the classroom and head to the school library to work alone or, likely, chat up other students there. 

Generally, completing packet questions will not offer a particularly rigorous alternative to in-class work and discussions, as it would not be unusual for him or her to avail themselves of online book apps like Shmoop that provide plot summaries and answers about the book. 

Ultimately, the teacher will require the student to probably write a literary analysis about their book choice--another land mine, since students may select books based on papers they find on line, adjust a little to make it look like they wrote it, or pay for one “over the transom.” Again, there goes rigor. 

Meanwhile, Blake’s teacher will be leading group discussions which probe students’ understanding of on-going reading sequences of Beloved or some other challenging work. The teacher is trained to try to engage all students, or as many as possible, rather than allow only a few particularly engaged and prepared students to answer all the questions, although that is usually easier said than done. 

How Blake might have advocated

Here is where Blake, if he had not given up reading Beloved, could have received help by asking questions, assumedly beyond the “I don’t get it” variety used by students refusing to try at all.  A better phrasing could be something like: “Why does Sethe feel better after Beloved disappears? I thought she loved her.” would more than suffice in soliciting answers either from other students or the teacher. Such a proactive “I can figure this out” approach could, over time, have kick-started Blake’s learning process and boosted his confidence as a reader--the very essence of why one goes to school in the first place as applied over any given course.

An even worse outcome than one student being given an alternate reading option may arise if Blake’s mother succeeds in getting Beloved banned from the curriculum, opening up the prospect for still other “controversial” texts being black-holed, too.

This would create the hellscape of an English curriculum forever dumbed down with reading assignments chosen from a book cart or book list of titles approved by the state’s Republican legislature, chosen for their likely ability to satisfy mothers like Laura Murphy and--as a bonus--destroy the appeal of reading altogether. To the GOP…win/win! 

Book carts to hell

Speaking of book carts, another hellish outcome, thanks to banning books fostering critical reading, might be the return of the ever-unpopular
Lit Circle pedagogy. A technique used more frequently in elementary or middle schools, Lit Circles allow students to make their reading selections--again from a list or from books (no-one-likes-to-read) on a cart. Students choosing the same text work together in small groups as they read and probe the book’s meaning. 

Meanwhile, the teacher benignly hovers around the classroom, offering help to students who ask for it, or to those who need it but don’t ask. On one day, students may read their book aloud to each other and answer prepared questions.  On other days, the assignment may be to discuss and then write about what they’ve read.

At least, that’s how they’re supposed to work. 

Lit Circles are famously unpopular with teachers and both high-performing and average-to-low performing students because students tend to read very little and talk very much in their small group settings, thus getting away with doing hardly any work at all. Some students may like the chance to not work hard and socialize with classmates, but on some level they know they’re wasting time and it doesn’t feel good.

The multi-book nature makes it unlikely the teacher will be fully informed about (or interested in) all books equally, and kids know that. Plus, teachers have a hard time classroom-managing the process, as being a strict task-master is nearly impossible for many English teachers by nature. And being too loose and lenient will, depending on the class, result in the afore-mentioned wasted class periods where students just goof around.

But perhaps the most scathing critiques come from students--those who do all the work because they’re that way and no one else will. And from students who knew they purposely underperformed. 

As one student put it in a posted on-line critique, comparing low-interest Lit Circle books and small groups with regular discussion-rich classes with challenging texts, the choice isn’t close: challenging all-group approaches are the far more satisfying of the two:

“In class discussions (in regular classes), students and I were able to go in depth into the text. And students from the whole (regular) class presented their views on different aspects of the book that strengthened my understanding as well. However, we don’t have that luxury in (Lit Circle) group discussions which usually turned into student play sessions due to the lack of commitment to a challenging task and spotty leadership.”

The Great Jago

Santa Monica High School teacher and author (With Rigor for All) Carol Jago, an English teacher’s go-to resource for insights on achieving Common Core standards and meeting increasingly higher expectations of classroom rigor, the only good book in a classroom is one that challenges the reader:
“Classroom texts should pose challenges for readers...reading demanding books makes students stronger readers and, over time, stronger people.”

So TRG believes Laura Murphy didn’t do her son Blake and other Virginia students any favors by buying-in to Blake’s “I don’t like or know how to read this” complaint.  Although Murphy became involved in her son’s plight, she did so in a bad and unproductive way. 

More Trump-like chaos

Instead of causing Trump-like chaos within her school district and state capital, Murphy might have sought help from teachers, librarians, tutors, or other parents known for their reading skills as well as accessing online sites for strategies.  There are also many books in the library or for purchase to help readers at any level deconstruct the reading process.

There also appears to be no evidence from online interviews with the Virginia mother that she ever invested her own time and effort to help Blake with his reading, such as reading his book either separately or with him and discussing it.  Showing Blake that she, too, feels vulnerable sometimes as a reader might have modeled a mindset Blake could have carried into the classroom to feel less alone and more secure.

Could Laura Murphy read?

Murphy may be lashing out against educators to compensate for her own incompetence as a reader—feeling the anger that could accompany a fear of inadequacy and choosing instead to berate teachers, school, and state.

If the characters, themes, and settings were giving Blake problems, why not seek out information about Morrison and the black experience in America--especially the dangerously ambivalent post-Civil War period and its effect on black people in the border states. Any librarian worth his or her salt could provide guidance exploring Beloved themes related to historical issues, black issues, female issues, and black female issues that span across the body of Morrison’s work.  

Did Murphy consider doing that? It doesn’t look like it, so my guess is, no.

Antidotes to Blake and Laura

Writing this post also caused me to think back on my experiences as a teacher in a school district very different from the one where Laura Murphy’s son attended school in Fairfax County.  Mine was a Title One high school in suburban Chicago, meaning that at least 40 percent of the student population in the district were from “low income” homes.

Our high school student demographic was about 75 percent Hispanic and 10 percent African American, with a passel of white, Asian, and Native American students in the mix.

In all the years I taught there, I never came across a parent like Laura Murphy. Yes, some parents got in my face and those of other teachers  over teaching styles. In a few cases with African American parents, I needed to overcome embedded fears, perhaps based on prior experiences, that a white woman from suburbs could or would give their child a fair shot at doing well.  Over time, I believe most of those fears were quelled. 

But at no time did a Hispanic, African American, Asian, Native American, or white parent attempt to restrict their child from reading anything in our curriculum as did Laura Murphy.

And, they could have. One of our core freshman texts was Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Set in rural California during the depth of the Great Depression, it’s a story of two drifters, George Milton and Lennie Small, who travel together, work together, and form the only family they have. 

Steinbeck’s word and dialogue choices could, by rights, have caused a volatile parent like Murphy to similarly call for banning the book and insisting their son or daughter have an alternate reading.  True to the 1930s, the (mostly male) characters were constantly swearing “God damn this” and “God damn that,” but that hard-boiled syntax enabled students to get a feel for the kind of tough shell people in Depression-era America constructed to deal with their hard lives.

The n-word nothing burger

Steinbeck also used the n-word prolifically, and that word choice also was not by accident.  The word is used by all the characters to describe Crooks, the only black character and one of the most prominent in the story. All characters, even Lennie, used that word--except one, George Milton, the protagonist with whom Steinbeck wanted us to empathize and respect. 

As we discussed as a class before even opening the book, the word is there to reveal to readers then and now the casual and widespread nature of racism in 1930s America.  People used the word as readily as “hello” with the specific intention to denigrate and hurt.  

When reading aloud, students were given the option of not verbalizing it or using “n-word” in substitution. Most said “n-word” when reading, but those who didn’t were neither chastised nor resented, because it was an English class and we were expanding our understanding of the world; and although the book’s choices were instructive, they could be different from our own.

Wife of Bath? Yeah, we cool…

I also taught Senior English, but seniors in my school were so adult-like, with many working in jobs after school and having to juggle outside obligations with schoolwork, that it was inconceivable their parents would be upset (or even know about) what their students were reading. So, for example, the often explicit passages about the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales appeared to never be an issue in class or at home.

But another freshman text, The House on Mango Street, also could have set off a Laura Murphy-like mother in our school district, if she existed, and happily she did not. A coming of age story about a young Hispanic girl growing up in the 1960s in nearby Chicago, the book features domestic violence, sex, and a not-always 100 percent flattering picture of the male patriarchy in the lead character’s world, leading up to a scene where the protagonist is raped.  

Pride, and grace

The story might have gone against the grain of the Hispanic version of helicopter parents, those who carefully protect their daughters, especially, from harmful outside influences. Or of their fathers who could have objected to the brutish nature of some of the male figures in the story.

But those concerns, too, never emerged during our readings. Instead any feedback I received during our open house nights when I presented parents a syllabus of the year’s readings and talked openly about them was always positive. Parents expressed pride their children were reading such important and impressive works.

So, bottom line, I’ll take the feisty, autonomous students from my Title One high school classes any day over those from schools with Laura-Murphy-parents who parrot Trump’s approach of yelling loudly, causing fear and chaos, and making life worse for the sane majority who do not want to live that way.  

For her efforts, Murphy cheated her son and now possibly other Virginia students out of the chance to learn valuable lessons about the black experience as told by a gifted African American writer, among the very best we’ve ever had.

Channeling our own (nicer and smarter) “Laura”

But another takeaway from the Critical Race Theory flap is that Democrats could use some Laura Murphy mojo to combat her, red states, and Republicans who are out to destroy the America we know and love. We're sometimes too polite with members of the other side for whom politeness—or anything we want—is never their concern.

And suburban Democrats should stay on the alert for others like Murphy--lurking about their own school boards, but now emboldened to effect their own warped aim to take our freedoms away, step by step. 

Additional pushbacks include donating to and working for Democratic candidates at every level to retain the Democratic majority in both houses.  A U.S. Congress in the grip of the incandescently ambitious Kevin McCarthy and devil-incarnate Mitch McConnell could bring an end to the American experiment as we know it. And TRG, for one, doesn’t have enough hours in the day to go up against a disaster of that size and scope.