On Divisiveness

This post is so short! 

As I wrote about anti-anti-racism education (and that two 'anti's don't necessarily make a 'pro') yesterday, a connection became crystal clear to me. It's often the same people who are, to various extents....

• anti-CRT in schools and against any diversity training or lessons on discrimination in class
• anti-2SLGBTQ books in the libraries or discussion of same sex marriage or trans experiences
• anti-abortion
• anti-sex education in the schools (pro-parents' rights)
• bring back prayer and Bibles in schools (but only Christian ones)
• climate change isn't caused by humans
• anti-mask and anti-vax

It's curious to me how often those views seem to coincide. I noticed the anti-sex education stance fitting in there from a request for my opinion on a dubious list of items including "Should education get back to reading and math and stop talking about personal issues?" and "Should parents have the right to decide what's taught in classes?" 

This is a position that hopes to care for kids by not educating them. It hopes teachers won't tell kids about anything perceived as bad or dangerous. Ignorance is bliss, and we all want our children to be happy, right?  

Perhaps it's all in a quest to hang on to childhood innocence, and proponents are either unwittingly naive or aggressively in denial enough to be blissfully unaware that their children will find out about racism and sexual orientations and abortion and that Covid is still with us. If we don't tell them anything, it won't give them any ideas! 

But isn't school about giving kids all sorts of ideas to engage with, consider critically, and synthesize into their own unique views? 

Twenty years ago we had to convince parents that telling kids about homosexuality wouldn't make them all gay. Now we're doing the exact same thing with transgender books and discussions, as if not saying anything will make all those "alphabet people" just disappear and not inflict more children! Except homosexuality and transgender have been around throughout recorded history, long before the first public school opened its doors. Kids don't become gay or trans because of teachers; what happens is that they become more accepting of themselves and others! Some people seem to think that's a bad thing.

It reminds me of old lessons on the evils of marijuana: Just say 'no' or you could end up jumping off a roof. That was the whole lesson. For people brave enough to try it, they soon found out that smoking a joint doesn't lead to hallucinations. Their teachers were wrong, and this may have led to indulging more than is good for them instead of learning the harm it can cause and setting limits. All or nothing leaves out those nuances, the details that are necessary for a thorough understanding. Now we know to teach all about what drugs actually do to kids, even the illegal ones, so they can know true risks instead of the previous all or nothing approach. Sex education was approached in the same way in the old days with gruesome pictures of infections to try to keep kids from ever touching each other. We know that abstinence-only education increases teen pregnancy rates. Ignorance of 'evil' doesn't get rid of evil. Only knowledge does that.

We're regressing so much that people are going to start dragging their knuckles when they walk soon.

It's also a stance that puts parents first, even parents who don't want their children to understand the basics of reproduction and parents who will disown their children if they don't fit with their beliefs. If we can gauge this movement by looking at some southern states, soon they'll be objecting to lessons on evolution too. The reason we started teaching reproduction in schools is because it wasn't being taught, or taught correctly, in homes. Now that the internet tells all, it's more important than ever to teach sex ed, anti-racism -- and all the rest on the list -- to clear up all the misconceptions that run wild in online forums. 

When I've come face to face with people arguing for this pernicious rhetoric, and tried to show them errors in their arguments, their only rebuttal, in my personal experience, has been to insult me and threaten me. I've had a disgruntled parent of one of my students ask me in detail about how well my vagina works! Another threatened to destroy me and my entire family because I support masks and fresh air in the classroom. These incidents are new to the past two years as the ideologies of the extreme far-right in the states have made their way north. They don't want to scrutinize my research or arguments to show me where I might have erred or even explain their own position so that I can better understand it. They just want to yell enough to force me to teach what they want and how they want. They want to end all this "divisiveness" by making teachers do what they say, and they've won on the mask mandates front, to the detriment of all the kids who will get infected this fall, risking permanent disability or even death. 

The other side of this mess promotes anti-racism education, promotes understanding a variety of family types, orientations, and gender expressions, promotes learning the laws and biological facts around abortion, promotes understanding everything from how their bodies work to how the world works, and promotes a thorough understanding of what's necessary in order to stay safe from this ongoing pandemic. It's all about educating people to let them know the facts of the matter. Instead of bending to the whims of 30 sets of parents and guardians per class, it acknowledges the expertise of teachers or, at the very least, questions that expertise with relevant peer-reviewed research. In high schools, most teachers have at least four years of university education in the subject matter being taught. They might actually know something!

In short, keeping kids ignorant is about maintaining control over them. But that always backfires. We need to give students knowledge about how the world works to help them better navigate their way through their future. 

ETA: Anti-Hate.ca just posted an article about the specific tactics of the CLC (Campaign Life Coalition, which focuses primarily on abortion). They describe them as a "reactionary far-right lobbying group" that's been around since 1987, and has recently been joined by Blueprint for Canada and Take Back Catholic Education, and Parents as First Educators (PAFE). They're learning tactics from the extreme far-right "moral panic raging in the United States."