When Conservatives Debunk Their Own Arguments
Do these folks even pay attention to themselves?
I picked a good day for a recreational Percoset.
Pistol Annies
I understand that Conservatives don’t think as I do, and that’s OK. Sometimes I learn something, and now and again, I learn something. It’s called being open-minded, which is more than I usually encounter in most Conservatives.
In this case, it’s Right-wing cartoonist Dick Wright, who manages to make an argument and refute it in the space of one short paragraph. I’m not sure if he even realizes that’s what he’s done, but the fact that it took him one paragraph to blow up his argument in his last sentence is a thing of beauty.
It’s a triumph of lack of self-awareness, if nothing else.
Let’s start with Wright’s breathless attack on “the flawed Leftist CRT curriculum that was so explosive.” Critical Race Theory, or CRT, isn’t taught in public schools or even in many undergraduate curricula. It’s generally a graduate-level curriculum that exists in our public schools in the same way the indoctrination of children in Marxist dialectical thinking does- which is to say it doesn’t.
Dick Wright and other Conservatives are chasing a bogeyman that doesn’t exist, save for in their overheated collective sense of righteous outrage.
Wright is also upset that “the school board, administrators, teachers, and unions took precedence over parents in what the students would be taught. That is not the role of educators.” Well, of course, it’s the role of educators, silly wabbit. Why do you think educators attend school to get certified in their trade?
Parents aren’t qualified to determine what should be taught to their children. That’s where professional educators come in. If parents object to that, they can homeschool their children or send them to private schools. But it’s not their place, their role, nor their right to overrule professional educators.
I wouldn’t dream of walking into Dick Wright’s office and telling him how or what to draw, so why does he think he can tell teachers what to teach and how to teach it? Why is teaching perhaps the only field where parents believe they know more than professionals?
No, educators are in their roles BECAUSE they’re trained professionals, and the school board and administrators are the ones who should be determining what students should be learning and what the standards should be. Teachers are the ones who should execute that plan. Unions exist to ensure that teachers are treated fairly and equitably regarding compensation and working conditions.
Too many parents believe in the “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” fallacy. As someone who HAS taught, I can tell you that’s one of the most insulting bromides you can toss at a teacher. Too often, it’s employed by someone who’s never spent a day in front of a class and knows nothing about teaching.
I’d wager that most of those who disrespect teachers wouldn’t last a week in the role.
Then there’s “Instead of influencing and even indoctrinating children….” A teacher's job is to provide children with information and context that allows them to make informed decisions. I’d suggest that the issue here is that Wright feels that parents are the ones who should be the ones “indoctrinating children.” He appears to resent that children are provided information from another source that may be impartial and may contradict the indoctrination their parents are forcing upon them.
“….in racial ideology that suits Woke culture.” There are two problems with this:
What “racial ideology” is Wright referencing? The idea that all men were created equal? That they have equal rights under the law? That America is not the “property” of the White race? Yeah, those sure some problematic, don’t they?
I’m not sure Wright could define “woke” if you spotted him Ibram X. Kendi and an Urban Dictionary. So I’ll make it simple for him. At its most basic, “woke culture” can be reduced to treating ALL Americans with kindness, respect, and dignity- regardless of their skin color, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, or any other potentially divisive factor. That’s it. That’s all.
“They should be doing their job of teaching our children things that will serve them well when they graduate into the real world.” BOOM. And this is where Dick Wright blows up his argument.
Sorry, but this is EXACTLY what schools should be doing, and it has nothing to do with CRT, racial ideology, woke culture, indoctrination, influencing, or any of the other “problems” about which Dick Wright and other Conservatives obsess.
I was a history teacher for two years. When students sat in my class, I wasn’t primarily concerned about how I could turn them into America-hating godless socialists who despised their parents. No, I figured they could do that on their own time, and some did.
I strove to find new and unique ways to make history interesting and exciting to them. I didn’t want history to be “one damned thing after another,” and for the most part, I did a decent job. Students were enthusiastic, they laughed, and they asked questions. If they asked questions about socialism or godless communism, it was because that was part of the period I was teaching.
No child ever asked me for the complete works of Karl Marx or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Nor did anyone ever inquire as to how they could go about joining a worker’s collective. That they were talking about those things was pretty amazing to a young teacher who just wanted to engage his students.
And then, at the end of each day, I went home, called my KGB handler, and got my instructions for the next day’s lessons. Man, you should’ve seen me on International Worker’s Day and Lenin’s birthday!! I was en fuego!!
