Republicans: Schools Are Violating Parents' Rights by Teaching Kids Racism Is Bad

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Levin Report
Republicans: Schools Are Violating Parents’ Rights by Teaching Kids Racism Is Bad
The GOP wants to introduce a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” so parents can abuse teachers for not telling kids all white people are perfect.
By Bess Levin
November 5, 2021

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Of course, out here on planet Earth, parents haven’t been stripped of anything. Masks are required in schools where responsible adults want their staff and students to live, while only one state in the country has announced a vaccine mandate for schools, also in an effort to help prevent its constituents from getting sick and dying. (Incidentally, schools already required students to get a whole host of inoculations well before COVID-19 came along). And when it comes to talking about things like slavery, systemic racism, and the Holocaust, the parents who are against it simply can’t stand the idea that their children are learning that sometimes, white people do bad things. Meanwhile, there is nothing preventing parents from involving themselves in their children’s education in a reasonable way—emphasis on reasonable—or from pulling their kid out of a school if that’s what they decide to do.

Nevertheless, conservatives have whipped their base into such a frenzy over things like critical race theory, which most of them completely mischaracterize, and the coronavirus, which they also don’t understand, that parents have taken to violently airing their grievances as though their children have been subject to human rights abuses. Here’s a fun story from The New York Times:

It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was reelected to the school board in Corvallis, Oregon, that the text messages arrived. The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs—“Re-Elect Sami”—riddled with bullet holes. The second was a warning from a friend. This one said that one of their neighbors was looking for Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.

Like many school board races this year, the one in May in Corvallis, a left-leaning college town in the northwest corner of the state, was especially contentious, swirling around concerns not only about the coronavirus pandemic but also the teaching of what Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh called the “dark history” of America’s struggle with race. Even months later, Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh, the chairman of the school board, is still taking precautions. He regularly speaks to the police and scans his driveway in the morning before walking to his car. He often mixes up his daily route to work. “I love serving on the school board,” he said. “But I don’t want to die for it.”

“I don’t want to die for it”? Is there a sentence that was less likely to be uttered by a school board member prior to the past year? Thanks, Republicans!

more...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/11/republicans-parents-bill-of-rights

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