Cancel culture

 with added fairness and balance: 

SOUTHLAKE, Texas — A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News.

Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom.

 

This all grows out of the right wing astroturf freakout over "critical race theory." In actual fact, a concept which means nothing to the modern conservative movement, critical race theory is taught in law schools and graduate sociology programs. The basic idea is that disparate racial outcomes result from complex social and institutional factors, and are not best explained by racial biases of individuals.  Whatever its merits, conservatives invoke the term to mean any instruction at any educational level about racism, including slavery. It seems learning about slavery and racism makes Muffy feel bad, and anyway there's no such thing. 

 

Texas House Bill 3979 emerged from this phony campaign. Along with banning teaching of Critical Race Theory in Texas schools, by which we are meant to understand any teaching about racism, it requires "teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues." It turns out that the Nazi holocaust is among them.

 

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said in response. 

“Believe me,” Peddy said. “That’s come up.”

Another teacher wondered aloud if she would have to pull down “Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry, or other historical novels that tell the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of victims. It’s not clear if Peddy heard the question in the commotion or if she answered. . . .

“Teachers are literally afraid that we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes,” an elementary school teacher said. “There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposing perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposing perspective’ of slavery. Are we supposed to get rid of all of the books on those subjects?”

 

Say it loud: They are fascists. The Republican party is a fascist party.