As many of you know, I have lived and worked in Europe off and on for the last few years. When it comes to current educational standards and philosophy I feel we Arte moving in the wrong direction. As a gymnastics coach I tell my athletes that they do not start REALLY learning until they get out of their comfort zone. The same is true with HISTORY. While many states in the USA right now do not want to make any white student uncomfortable with our past, many countries in Europe take on their past head on .
In Germany and Italy, the teaching of fascism, Nazism, and World War II is approached with a commitment to confronting historical truths, ensuring that students understand the complexities and atrocities of their past. This educational philosophy contrasts sharply with current trends in several U.S. states, where legislative measures are restricting discussions on racism, sexism, segregation, and the Civil War. Such limitations hinder students’ ability to engage critically with history, depriving them of essential knowledge and understanding.
Educational Approaches in Germany and Italy
In Germany, the education system mandates comprehensive coverage of the Nazi era and the Holocaust. Students visit concentration camps, engage with survivor testimonies, and analyze the socio-political factors that led to the rise of Nazism. This immersive approach fosters a deep understanding of the consequences of totalitarianism and the importance of democratic values.
Italy’s educational system also addresses its fascist past, though with some differences. Post-World War II, Italy underwent a less extensive de-fascistization process compared to Germany. However, contemporary Italian textbooks strive to present an objective analysis of Mussolini’s regime, its alliance with Nazi Germany, and the impact on Italian society. This includes discussions on the implementation of antisemitic laws in 1938 and Italy’s role during the war. RedditHolocaust Encyclopedia
The Consequences of Ignoring Difficult Histories
In contrast, numerous U.S. states have introduced legislation that restricts teaching about racism and related issues. As of early 2023, only California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Vermont have not attempted such bans. These legislative actions often stem from misunderstandings about critical race theory (CRT), an academic framework that examines systemic racism within legal and social contexts. Opponents fear that CRT admonishes all white people for being oppressors while classifying all Black people as hopelessly oppressed victims, leading to bans in states like Tennessee and Idaho. World Population ReviewBrookings+5ABC News+5Statista+5Brookings
By limiting discussions on these critical aspects of American history, students are deprived of the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and to understand the roots and ramifications of social injustices. This educational censorship undermines the development of critical thinking skills and the ability to engage in informed civic discourse.
IF YOU KNOW YOUR HISTORY THEN YOU WOULD KNOW WHERE YOU COMING FROM. Bob Marley
The Role of the Department of Education
The Department of Education played a crucial role in setting national educational standards and ensuring that curricula are comprehensive and inclusive. Abolishing this department will exacerbate the current trend of educational censorship by removing a centralized body that advocates for balanced and thorough historical education. Without federal oversight, states may have greater latitude to implement restrictive educational policies, further hindering students’ understanding of complex historical and social issues.
The experiences of Germany and Italy demonstrate the importance of confronting and teaching difficult historical truths. By contrast, the current trajectory in parts of the United States toward restricting discussions on racism and other critical topics threatens to deprive students of essential knowledge and critical thinking skills. Maintaining robust educational standards through institutions like the Department of Education is vital to ensure that future generations are well-informed and capable of contributing thoughtfully to society. We must do better in embracing our full history, acknowledging its complexities, and learning from it to build a more just and equitable future.
Public education is one of America’s greatest superpowers.
It has paved the way for our nation’s astronauts and authors, engineers and musicians, nonprofit advocates and government leaders. At its very best, it opens doors of opportunity for Americans all over this country ― showing students they can achieve big dreams regardless of their race, place or economic standing ― creating a powerful foundation for our nation’s global leadership and competitiveness. That promise is what motivates me ― as the parent of two children who learned and grew up in local public schools, a lifelong teacher and now as secretary of education.
But as we commemorate American Education Week this week, we also know that our current education system has been falling far short of that promise for decades, failing too many of our students. That’s unacceptable. Our Raise the Bar: Lead the World agenda at the U.S. Department of Education calls for raising the bar for our education system to the level our nation needs if we want to lead the world instead of returning to the low bar of our education system as it was in 2019 ― by focusing on substance, not sensationalism, in education.
Here’s what that looks like.
Speaking as a parent myself, I know one of the first things you want to know as your children start their educational journey is if they are learning reading and math at high levels? Do they have a highly qualified teacher in their classroom who is trained in rigorous literacy and numeracy approaches? That’s why we need to invest in building up the teacher pipeline alongside tutoring, mentoring, after-school programs and other investments that can support students’ academic excellence. We have seen 28 states and Puerto Rico embrace registered teaching apprenticeships that provide student teachers with crucial on-the-job experience while getting paid. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have also increased teacher salaries ― absolutely critical if we want great teachers to join, and stay in, this profession.
As parents well understand, learning conditions also matter a great deal. If your child doesn’t feel safe or healthy, mentally or physically, it’s much harder for them to focus and learn. At a time when the surgeon general has called mental health the “defining public health crisis of our time” and about 1 in 3 high school girls has seriously considered suicide, there can be no serious vision for education that doesn’t make student health and mental health a top priority.
Under our watch, we’ve seen states and school districts leverage the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to hire more school counselors (resulting in a 43% increase in school social workers), build mental health clinics within schools and integrate mental health and wellness periods into school days. We’re working with states to ensure they can receive long-term Medicaid reimbursement that is available for school-based health and mental health services. So far, 25 states have done so.
As a parent of one student in college now and another graduating soon from high school, I also know from experience that a big question on your mind may be if your child will graduate from high school with great options for a rewarding life and career? Too many of our high schools are stuck in the broken model of the last century, designed around the narrowest of pathways: four-year college or bust.
It’s far past time to evolve our high schools so students have more options, not less, to pursue their passions and their careers. We see a future where every high school has a dual enrollment program with a local university so students can explore advanced college classes and gain credits ― alongside opportunities for workforce internships, credentials in high-demand skills, career-connected courses, college and career advising, developing multilingualism, and more.
It’s also why this administration has been fighting to fix a broken higher education system and make college more affordable and accessible ― so more students can take advantage of a college education if that is the right choice for them. College should not be a life sentence of debt. We are fixing that!
Some wonder why our educational agenda does not have the sensationalism of the shiny new top-down federal initiatives of the past that have come and gone. As a former teacher and school principal, I know that we do not need someone from Washington giving local districts more to do while parents and educators urgently address the academic and mental health needs of our students. What schools need is substance in those areas that we know work to improve student outcomes. That’s what we deliver with Raise the Bar: Lead the World.
If we can collaborate and invest at the federal, state and local levels in each of these areas ― academic excellence, learning conditions and pathways to college and careers ― we have the chance to dramatically transform public education in America for the better ― to raise the bar. That will position our nation to compete globally and lead the world for years to come.
We will do it.
We must do this in New Hampshire. An educated public is the only way we will continue to grow.
As Dover celebrates its 400th anniversary I am proud and excited to announce my candidacy for City Council representing Dover’s Ward 3. I have been a resident of Dover for more than 30 years and I am currently on the city’s ethics commission. Debbie Thibodeaux has decided to not seek another term. She has been our representative on the council for 10 years and is leaving some big shoes to fill!
I grew up in New York and then attended the University of New Hampshire where I graduated with a degree in History. My wife,Stephanie, and I opened up Atlantic Gymnastics Training Center in 1994 in Portsmouth before opening up a second location in Dover in 2004. Our two children both graduated from Dover High School and the University of New Hampshire.
As a business owner for nearly 30 years, I’ve seen the direct impact of policy decisions on students and their families. Whether it’s as global as COVID, or as local as whether our students have the resources at school and home to allow them to focus on success when they’re competing, I heard of the wins and losses in our community. I have worked with teachers, families, and other businesses to try to make Dover a community wherewe can work and live. As Dover continues to grow we need to work together to fund our schools and other city programs and services without pricing residents out of their homes.
In the gymnastics world, I have coached internationally for more than 25 years. I have lectured and taught courses through out the world on gymnastics technique, safety and risk management as well as ethics and good business practices. I recently returned from Switzerland where I was the Head Coach for the Swiss Senior National Team in Magglingen, Switzerland where I placed gymnasts at the Olympics and World Championships. I currently consult with Italian National Team members in Civitavecchia Italy, and will be visiting Ireland this fall to provide consulting services for the Irish Gymnastics Federation. Through gymnastics, I’ve learned – and taught – that you are going to make mistakes but you must recover! If you slip or stumble, you make corrections and keep moving forward. What works on the beam and bars works in life: you never stop doing the work to succeed. I want to serve Dover and keep our community moving forward as well.
As a parent and educator, I understand that educating our children is the foundation from which we build solid, strong communities. As a businessman, I know the importance of operational experience and fiscal responsibility. Dover has a bright and vibrant future; but that future must be carefully and thoughtfully built to preserve what makes Dover, Dover. We can be not just A place where families want to live and grow, but THE PLACE. I am excited about the opportunity to connect with members of our community and to ask for their support in November. It would be my honor to serve on the City Council of Dover representing Ward 3.
Tony Retrosi can be reached at Retrosi4Dover3rd@gmail.com or by phone at 603-512-8142
A Tallahassee Classical School teacher showed a sixth-grade art history class a photo of Michelangelo’s “David” in all his glory, and that’s when everything went south.
Florence is one of my favorite cities. Beautiful architecture, beautiful art, an amazing history. There is something fascinating to watch at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy. The museum is home to Michelangelo’s marble sculpture of the biblical David, naked with a sling over his shoulder and a rock in his hand, preparing to battle the fearsome Goliath.
Upon entering the museum, you make a quick left, then an immediate right. Ahead, roughly 50 yards in front of you, stands “David.” From this point, these 50 yards away, you can stand and listen to the audible gasps of visitors as they first gaze upon the sculpture from this distance. It tells you two things: No photograph can do justice to seeing the real thing; the real thing is a stunning artistic achievement.
“David” is the height of classic Renaissance art culture, sculpted by the man who also painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which features biblical imagery of all kinds, both nude and clothed.
Michelangelo wanted to show the power of God in the empty hand of a young David, who would use a single rock to defeat a giant. Many called it a miracle. Nobody called it controversial, let alone pornographic.
The plan was to position the sculpture aside a series of prophetic statues some 90 feet above ground along the roofline of the Florence Cathedral, which is why the hands, feet and head are oversized. In perspective, viewed from below at that distance, the appendages would appear normal in size. But authorities at the time deemed the sculpture too magnificent to be that far from public view. Of course, the statue weighing 6 tons, made matters academic as it would have been nearly impossible to raise the sculpture to that height. Instead, it was placed at ground level in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of government in Florence, for all to see. It stood there for nearly 400 years before being moved inside the museum where it is today. The story of how it was moved and then how it was incased in brick to protect it during WW2 is AMAZING.
Interestingly, David was viewed as a defender of civil liberties in Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and the Medici hegemony. This defiance is expressed in David’s eyes, the statue situated to cast a cautionary glare toward Rome — an early version, perhaps, of the “Live free or die” concept.
But only in America is art controversial, particularly in conservative bastions like Florida. Each year since its opening in 2020, the Tallahassee Classical School would show a photo of “David” to a sixth-grade art history class.
This year, a controversy erupted. Three parents complained. In response, the school fired the principal, sent an apology letter to parents and held an emergency board meeting, where many parents condemned the firing.
School board chair Barney Bishop III insisted it was not a firing and that the principal resigned.
He’s full of it.
“We didn’t remove her,” he told Slate in a heated interview. “I went to her last week and offered her two letters. One was a voluntary resignation and another a letter that said if she decided not to resign, I was going to ask the board to terminate her without cause.”
Orwellian double-speak. Slice it any way you like, that was a firing.
Bishop may be on firmer ground in explaining that multiple concerns led to the principal’s dismissal, though he couldn’t elaborate for legal reasons.
But it seems there’s blame enough to go around.
School policy requires that parents receive written notice two weeks in advance informing them of any sensitive topics their child might be learning, “and they can decide whether it is appropriate for their child to see it,” Bishop said.
The letter was written, but the administration accidentally forgot to send it, according to the principal, Hope Carrasquilla, the school’s third principal in as many years.
“I made the assumption that the letter went out, and I didn’t follow up on it,” she told NPR.
“But honestly,” she added, “we did not have to send out a letter regarding Renaissance art.”
A third problem: While showing the image of “David” in all his glory, the teacher reportedly told the students, “Don’t tell your parents.”
“That’s a huge red flag!” Bishop said.
He has a point, though no one has spoken to the teacher in question, who remains employed.
But here is the fine point of it.
Bishop boasted on the one hand that “we teach the Hillsdale Curriculum. We teach a traditional Western civilization, liberal classical education.”
Yet he argued that parents should know what students will see, hear or discuss in class. The issue, he said, “isn’t whether children should see these pictures or not. Gosh, we’re a classical school. Why wouldn’t we show Renaissance art to children?”
Further on, he said, “Parents know what that curriculum is. And parents are entitled to know any time their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture.”
Just a minute. If parents know what the curriculum is, why do they need to be notified about any of it?
Didn’t the parents know this was a classical school and that their kids would see Renaissance art? Didn’t they know that would include nudity? Isn’t classical education a selling point? Sounds like it, the way Bishop tells it. How could these parents not know that, and if they didn’t know that, why did they enter their children in a lottery hoping their child would be selected to attend? (Students are admitted by lottery drawing.)
Bishop said it was a mistake not to tell parents what the kids would see. Maybe the parents made the mistake of enrolling their kids in a classical education curriculum without knowing what a classical education curriculum is.
It’s certainly worth asking the three complaining parents. Two of the parents complained because they received no advance notice about the lesson plan. The third complained that the image of “David” was pornographic.
“Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education,” Bishop told Slate.
Apparently not, pal. Yet he seemed to give parents greater credence than the teachers.
“The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids,” Bishop said. “Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities,” he told the Slate reporter, “you’re on better drugs than me.”
So basically, you’re saying the teachers you hire aren’t all that qualified to teach the subjects they’re hired to teach. Well, why the hell would I send my kid to a school like that?
Sure, let’s put a parent in charge who thinks the statue of David is pornographic. Clearly that parent is unaware that nude portrayals have been a common practice as far back as the Babylonians and Ancient Egypt. The Greeks associated nudity with the beauty, power and perfection of the gods. It had a similar symbolic meaning for artists during the Renaissance, who were inspired by a renewed interest in classic Greek and Roman culture.
But gaining that knowledge might require reading, a subject now under fire in Florida public schools.
Put it this way: If that parent were alive in 1504 when the statue of David was unveiled, were he to call it pornography, he’d be considered backward and ignorant, and be the laughingstock of Florence.
Tallahassee Classical is a tuition-free, taxpayer-funded charter school with some 500 students, 56 of which are in the sixth grade. Like many charter schools in the U.S., its curriculum comes from Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan with ties to multiple far-right figures.
The undertones are disturbing. Hillsdale advocates its 1776 curriculum, which opposes factual teachings of history, including the 1619 Project, which explores the history of slavery, racism and the oppression of Black Americans in the U.S. The college played a crucial role in crafting Donald Trump’s “1776 Report,” which reputable historians have condemned as poppycock.
“We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board,” Bishop declared. “We’re not gonna teach 1619 or [critical race theory]crap,” echoing the suppressive policies pushed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who frequently consults the Hillsdale institution on educational issues.
“We agree with everything the governor is doing in the educational arena,” Bishop said. “We support him because he’s right. The whole ‘woke’ indoctrination going on about pronouns and drag queens isn’t appropriate in school.”
Yet, look who’s going woke over art.
Maybe the larger error in all this is the school’s failure to warn parents about the entirety of its curriculum before any of them entered their kid into the lottery system: “Caution: your children will see works of art featuring nudity.”
Gasp!
Or do one of those movie warnings. NNSFCP: Nudity not safe for close-minded parents.
Chances are those sixth-graders, with their cellphones and access to the fullness of the internet’s depravities, have seen far more graphic images than anything they saw in class that day.
A final but important point about nude depictions in classical art: The size of the male member on all these statues. (C’mon, you hadn’t noticed?) Unlike today, when “well-endowed” is typically equated with power and masculinity, the ancient Greeks and their artistic descendants never saw the phallus as a symbol of virility or manliness. Potency came from one’s intellect, reason and self-control.
I dunno about you, but the idea of putting a premium on intellect seems like an excellent lesson to associate with a discussion of “David.”
For a school founded in 2020, it’s ironic how many associated with it have so little vision, let alone wisdom.
My advice: Wake up and grow a pair. If you don’t know what that looks like, there’s this statue in Florence …
I was working in Italy when I came across the article and I cut and pasted it into my notes. I did NOT write down where I found it. If you know- please cite it.
by MARGARET MCMULLAN JANUARY 27, 2023
In January, on her first day in office, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order banning the teaching of critical race theory in her state’s K-12 public schools. She joined the parade of other mostly Southern Republican lawmakers and governors who have banned teaching CRT in their states’ schools.
Ironies abound in the CRT controversy, starting with the fact that “critical race theory,” properly understood, is an area of academic legal study not actually part of K-12 education. But for the last three years, conservative activists have been using the term as a catch-all for a variety of subjects they don’t want taught in schools.
Which leads to another irony: In some of the states where Republican lawmakers crow about having banned CRT, it is not explicitly defined in the law. For example, in my home state, our governor last year signed legislation with the aim, according to his press release, of “keeping critical race theory out of Mississippi schools.” But the law enacted in Mississippi doesn’t even mention CRT by name.
So what does the Mississippi law do? It forbids forcing students “to personally affirm” that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior or that individuals should be adversely treated on the basis of their sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin.” Which is something no reasonable, decent person can argue with.
Still, talk of banning teaching CRT excites the conservative media complex and the Republican base, who worry that students who study racism in America are being indoctrinated to hate their country.
Meanwhile, liberals worry that these Republican-led Southern states will, while making a show of rooting out left-wing bias in the classroom, limit the teaching of American history in ways that leave students with major gaps in their knowledge of their country’s past, consigning these states to remain among the poorest and most poorly educated in the nation.
Of course, the trick to teaching anything, especially history, is context.
When my young adult novel Sources of Light came out in 2010, I was invited to visit high schools in Arkansas. Set in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi in the civil rights era, Sources of Light is about 14-year-old Samantha, who sees and photographs injustices all around her. She joins marches for voting rights, she becomes involved in the sit-in at Woolworth, and she helps solve the murder of her mother’s close friend at the hands of a racist neighbor. The story is loosely based on my experiences growing up in Jackson during the 1960s and became a way for me to talk with students about the civil rights movement and race.
At the high schools in Arkansas, I showed black and white pictures taken in the 1960s of civil rights marches and sit-ins that helped inspire me to write Sources of Light. The pictures show mostly African Americans marching while white people hold up signs saying things like “Integration is Communism,” “Stop the Race Mixing,” and “Integration is Illegal.” One picture shows a white boy who looks to be 12 holding up a sign that reads “Put Me Down as No [N-word]-Lover.”
I recall one moment at Central High School when I paused on the iconic photograph of the sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter in Jackson. I read the passage I wrote in Sources of Light, focusing on that scene where Samantha watches all the white men and boys in the room taunting, cheering, punching, and pouring ketchup, mustard, and sugar on the protesters sitting at the counter.
I asked students to look closely at the photo and choose one person in the group to write from that person’s point of view about what’s happening. The idea was for them to use their imagination to experience or at least consider a different point of view, hopefully helping them to think critically and empathize.
The results were surprising. African-American girls wrote from the point of the view of the white man pouring ketchup on a black man’s head. White girls wrote about the black man sitting at the counter, while one white boy wrote from the point of view of Anne Moody, the black woman at the counter staring at a glass of water. I asked them questions: How does it feel to be that person in this scene? What in your life led you to be there in that moment?
As a white author, I admit, I was petrified talking about the civil rights movement at Central High School, where a group of black students known as the Little Rock Nine enrolled in the formerly all-white school in September 1957. Who was I to tell them anything about the history of this era?
And yet, I was flabbergasted when I discovered how few students knew about sit-ins, the famous anti-violent protest tactic used by civil rights activists. Some of these students were the children or grandchildren of people who had participated in sit-ins or marches in one way or another.
Later, when I asked the teachers about this, they said the same thing: Even though their parents and grandparents had lived through that time, nobody wanted to talk about it anymore. They wanted to move on.
After my talks at Central High School, a student’s mother volunteered to walk me through the impressive Little Rock museum run by the National Park Service. We toured the exhibits together, viewing archival news footage of the Little Rock Nine.
For a long time, we stood in front of that famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford arriving for her first day of school with a notebook in her hand as a crowd of hostile white students and adults surround her, screaming and spitting on her. We read that they called out for her to be lynched and yelled slogans like “Two, four, six eight, we don’t want to integrate!” As Eckford tried to move forward, one white girl screamed, “Go back to Africa!”
The volunteer mother told me she’d been in the same class with Elizabeth, who often sat alone at lunch and at school assemblies. When the woman, who was white, told me this, she started to cry. She said she was ashamed at how she acted and she didn’t want her children acting the same way.
Here was a woman who lived through a historical moment and regretted her actions. That regret changed her, and she volunteered to host me and other authors to visit schools to teach students about civil rights. This woman’s shame and regret is exactly what Republicans want to avoid in classrooms across the nation.
Decades after she first walked into Little Rock Central High, Elizabeth Eckford said, “True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared past.”
And it’s impossible to acknowledge without knowledge—without knowing. To teach about morality and standing up to injustices, you have to know what the injustice was. And there’s a lot of injustice to be found in history.
Last year, at the Mississippi Book Festival, I attended a discussion about a new book called Blackout. The panel was led by Jackson State University professor Ebony Lumumba, who asked the panel of authors who had contributed to Blackout about their own books, many of which are banned.
Panelist Angie Thomas, author of the 2017 novel The Hate U Give, made an important point: Banning books hurts kids. She had her dog Kobe with her, and even though Kobe jumped and licked her, making everybody laugh, as Angie talked about the consequences of book banning, she started to cry. It was a highly emotional moment.
Angie said she worried for students who wouldn’t be able to read their own stories. They were the ones being cheated. Borrowing a line from Rudine Sims Bishop, the scholar of children’s literature, Angie referred to books as “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors”—that is, books can help you better see yourself, help you better see others, or help you better see worlds different from your own.
“Kids that see themselves in my books need those mirrors,” she said.
But there are other kids who need those sliding glass doors and those windows—because when you have young people who see who don’t see lives unlike their own, who don’t understand people unlike themselves. They grow up to be narrow-minded leaders who don’t care about nobody beyond themselves.
The Hate U Give was banned in Angie’s own hometown library in Jackson. In fact, according to the American Library Association, The Hate U Give is among the most banned books in the country, supposedly for “profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda.”
I suspect the real issue with The Hate U Give is not the swearing or the violence, because those are everywhere in our culture. Rather, the book banners hate the hate in the title, which, lined up correctly on the book’s cover, spells out THUG, a reference to the musician Tupac Shakur’s philosophy: the hate society dishes out might come right back at it.
It is the book banners who are THUGs, and they will reap what they sow. Angie got it right: The hate you give will in the long run become the hate you receive.
While Angie spoke at the panel, a young African American girl from the back of the room walked to the front. She was there to tell Angie how much she loved the book, how she takes the book with her everywhere she goes so she can stop and re-read it. Presumably, she feels a connection with Starr, the main character who witnesses her cousin being shot by police after a traffic stop, a lively, funny, smart, tough, honest heroine who fights her hardest against injustices and things that are just plain wrong. People rub off on you. Characters do, too.
There’s a rule in writing young adult fiction. The young protagonist might get herself into trouble, but she has to get herself out, too. Grownups are mostly background noise and often get in the way.
If I could write that moment with Angie and her reader, the girl saves herself just by reading a banned book.
Angie signed that girl’s book, still fighting through tears.
For the last five years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a judge for the National Scholastic Writing Contest, an annual award competition for students in seventh through twelfth grades. I read essays from Indiana students, judging on content, style, originality, and voice.
In the past, these students mostly wrote about divorce; sibling rivalry; having a best friend; breaking up with a best friend; moving; cooking; sports; the loss of a family member, friend, or pet; eating; not eating; feeling too fat; feeling too thin; and failing or excelling in school.
In recent years, I’ve read more and more essays about loneliness, suicide, school shootings, and depression. This year’s batch felt significantly different.
Here were younger students wrestling with major depression. They were frustrated with the mindlessness of virtual learning. Many had no one to talk to. They wrote about domestic abuse, reconsidering one’s gender, dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, figuring out reasons to live, being deported as a new immigrant, racism, and coming out to their parents. They also wrote about getting COVID and surviving a shooting.
These students were grappling with life’s biggest challenges, often involving life or death.
This year, when I finished reading these essays, I wanted to write back to each student to tell them It’s all right, you’re going to be fine. But then I read the newspapers and I’m not so sure. Recent studies show that, even before the pandemic, teen depression was up, roughly doubling from 2009 to 2019, and so was the adolescent suicide rate. There are new viruses, increased poverty, extensive climate damage, more school shootings, and politicians are focusing on . . . CRT and book bans?
How are students supposed to learn how to deal with these weighty subjects if they can’t read about them—and read about them from different perspectives? The solution is not to take away the books that might address these issues.
We shouldn’t be afraid of students reading whatever books they can read and learning all the history they can learn. Studies show that the more you read and write, the less likely you are to go to prison and the more likely you are to finish high school, graduate from college, get a job, and volunteer in your community. Young readers are also more likely to vote—and chances are they will be better informed voters because they read and think critically.
The best young writers in the contests I judge clearly sense form and structure, and I like to think that if they know what makes good writing, they will know how to shape their lives. I give these students a lot of credit for just sitting down and mulling over complex and deeply personal subjects, topics many adults spend a lifetime avoiding.
They inspire me.
I wish the book banners and the anti-CRT folk could read these student essays and see for themselves how young people process, understand, and, often, overcome life’s traumas and injustices.
Time and time again, we find people convulsing over our nation’s uncomfortable truths, past or present, horrified at the thought of examining them, let alone acknowledging them, and fiercely determined to censor them.
Today’s targets are familiar: race, diversity, inequality, oppression, inclusion, gender and gender identity, anything that offends the sensibilities of whomever in whatever quarter.
The latest bogeyman: the College Board’s Advanced Placement history course on African American studies.
Based in New York, the nonprofit Board administers AP programs outlining concepts and skills students need for a college-level history course. High school students get college credits for taking such courses. The Board offers over three dozen courses in various disciplines — the arts, math, computer science, the sciences, world languages, U.S. and world history.
Sixty high schools across the country began teaching a pilot version of the African American course last fall, which has since been the target of conservative lawmakers seeking to limit how teachers approach discussions on history and race.
Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) threatened to block the course from being taught, saying it violated state law and was historically inaccurate. He gave no specifics. (Maybe he should take the course.)
He has also announced plans to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs at every public college in the state.
DeSantis, an expected presidential candidate in 2024, has spent his governorship signing one absurd law after another to protect the feelings of fragile conservatives, including the “Don’t Say Gay” law and the Stop WOKE Act.
“If we want transparency from our government, and surely we do, we should also insist on transparency in our history.”
Several outlets claimed the College Board caved to DeSantis’ demands. The Board vehementlydenied that, arguing it had completed its revisions last December, with time-stamped documentation to prove it.
Such opposition isn’t new. In 2014, critics objected to the AP curriculum for U.S. History — not African American studies; American history.
“Too negative,” critics cried.
Larry S. Krieger, who had already written several commentaries attacking the guidelines, argued that the framework “inculcates a consistently negative view of the nation’s past.”
Oklahoma state Republican Dan Fisher introduced a bill criticizing the framework for emphasizing “what is bad about America” and that it doesn’t teach “American exceptionalism.”
William Ligon, a Republican state senator in Georgia, said the framework painted free enterprise in a negative light and focused “more on what divides us instead of what unites us.”
Ligon, a 2020 election denier who pushed for a special session of the Georgia General Assembly to overturn the state’s presidential election results, was one of 16 state Republicans who signed on to an amicus brief for a Texas Supreme Court lawsuit that sought to nullify the results of four states in the 2020 election, including Georgia.
He’s also the subject of a grand jury investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally meddled in the state’s 2020 election.
So he’ll likely merit a historical footnote as one of this nation’s dividers.
Policymakers tried their hand, as well. Objecting to what they also thought was a negative portrayal of America, the school board in Jefferson County, Colorado, proposed a review of the AP History framework that would require teachers to “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system.” Teachers were further told to avoid lessons that “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”
Like, what, the civil rights movement? The labor strikes of the late 19th century against horrid working conditions wrought by rapacious corporate robber barons of the Gilded Age?
In response, hundreds of students from at least five high schools recognized this for the act of intellectual vandalism it was and did a very American thing: They protested, staging mass walkouts. The district had to shut down four schools briefly because teachers called in sick in protest.
For what it’s worth, the school board comprised a newly elected conservative majority. Guess them folks would have a heck of a time with that Jan. 6 thingy.
“That weren’t no danged civil disobedience, just a big cookout that got a little out of hand!”
The board quickly aborted plans for the framework review, claiming it had been misunderstood.
Wrong. Students understood you all too well. You wanted to promote a “happy history” that would have left the students positive, patriotic and poorly informed. Can you imagine a criminal trial in which the jury only got half the truth and not the whole truth?
But then, what do you expect from a party and ideology with its own sordid history of engaging in falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and creating solutions for nonexistent problems?
It is simply a whitewashing of history (no pun intended). Only “happy history” will do. Discuss nothing offensive. How ironic that critics of “wokeness” who always mock people needing safe spaces have themselves gone all woke on certain subjects and are trying to create their own safe space by omitting what’s offensive or banning it altogether.
Book burning in the digital age. Too hyperbolic? Perhaps, but it’s not exactly inaccurate. It is disturbingly “Animal Farm”-ish and assuredly hypocritical in a nation where the oft-quoted momily reminds us we learn from our mistakes.
If that momily is true, how can we learn from the error of our ways if we refuse to examine them, let alone acknowledge their existence?
As Florida U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote in declaring the state’s Stop WOKE Act unconstitutional, “If Florida truly believes we live in a post-racial society, then let it make its case. But it cannot win the argument by muzzling its opponents.”
In other words, more free speech, not less. I assume conservatives put the freedoms of the First Amendment at least on par with that of the Second.
If we want to protect speech in all its forms, good and bad, why would we not say the same thing about our history in all its forms, good and bad?
Governments exist today that hide truths from their people, nations like North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
We pride ourselves on being different from those nations. One reason is that we’re not afraid to air our dirty laundry. What makes us any different if we try to oppress the dark parts of our past?
If we want transparency from our government, and surely we do, we should also insist on transparency in our history.
Without question, America’s history is brimming with moments of monumental greatness. But that greatness coexists with abominable atrocities and indefensible violations of our founding principles. You cannot celebrate a nation’s splendor without acknowledging its shame. Censoring discussions on one side in favor of only the other is not a path to enlightenment.
Yet some of us seem unable to accept that our nation has had and continues to have growing pains and is not perfect. Some of us behave as if American history were some sort of sacred cow.
It’s not. But we attack those who cite the ugly moments of our history as unpatriotic. Sorry, but if you can’t face the music about the bad in America’s history as well as its good, you are the unpatriotic one. Such a mindset is not only unpatriotic and servile; it is also morally treasonable and ultimately perilous, a crime against knowledge and, ultimately, wisdom.
“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana wrote in his “Life of Reason.”
But he also wrote, “The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”
And that is why history — all of our history — must be embraced. It is our great teacher. From it, we can learn who we were, what made us who we are, and guide our aspirations of who we can be. Unfortunately, some of us aren’t interested.
Banning books has NEVER been about protecting our children. It has been about discrimination against others. Banning books from public libraries or schools based on nationalistic, political or religious reasons violates the first amendment. Currently they want you to believe that any book that does not center from a straight white perspective is pornographic.
When a group is trying to get a book banned they find the most explicit passages and recite them out of context.
I too am disturbed by the filth that Americans are reading. Take, for example, a story in which two daughters live alone with their widowed father. They make a pact to get him drunk and trick him into having sex with them, after which they become pregnant and give birth to sons.
I am, of course, paraphrasing from the Bible, specifically genesis 19:33. a book that has been mass-printed since the fifteenth century and relied on as the primary text of all Christian faiths for millennia.
I find it interesting, that in the very place that students should be engaged in challenges to their own thinking in order to grow as learners, some are actively trying to make sure that schools are not able to create opportunities for that thinking?
The very groups who yell so loudly about cancel culture are the same people trying to cancel discussions about ideas that come to us through books?
By restricting information and discouraging freedom of thought, censors undermine one of the primary functions of education: teaching students how to think for themselves.
I think it is important for children to read about these adult situations before they face them in person.
Banning a book from a library or curriculum implies that some ideas and experiences are valuable or worthy of discussion and others are not. It reinforces one particular way of thinking and limits others, which might not accurately reflect the lived realities of youth.
The strength in our society can be found in our diversity. Diversity of people as well as ideas.
There is no gentle way to speak or teach about certain subjects.
The Holocaust
Pearl Harbor
Civil Rights / Lynchings
Violent acts
9/11
Students deserve to learn history based on facts not feelings. Some lessons will be hard and make people uncomfortable. But if I have learned anything it is that rarely is any important lesson an easy one.
The young protesters now on the march are responsible and mature—and they’re asking adults to grow up.
Anyone used to worrying about coddled young people, their backbone eroded by oversolicitous elders and smartphone addiction, was in for a surprisingly mature show of spine at last weekend’s March for Our Lives. The Parkland, Florida, survivors-turned-prodigy-activists and their followers—along with Dreamers and other youthful protesters lately—couldn’t possibly be denounced as out-of-control “bums,” President Nixon’s epithet for (older) student protesters half a century ago.
Quite the contrary. These young people do grit and gumption with star-pupil poise and politeness. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” read one teenager’s sign at the Washington, D.C., rally. “We’re trying to change the world.” Nearby, a kid proudly waved a neon-orange poster that proclaimed, in big letters, “GPA > NRA.” The call-and-response chant that carried the day, under the direction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 9-year-old granddaughter, conveyed the same overachiever zeal: “Spread the word all across the nation, we are going to be a great generation.” The Parkland student Emma González’s feat of silence at the podium, as the writer Nathan Heller tweeted, defied category: “the fact that it was conceived—and dared—by a high-schooler is breathtaking.” The adults on hand didn’t presume to boss off-the-charts performers like these around. “If you don’t listen to them now,” read one woman’s poster, ”they won’t listen to you later.”
Last weekend’s march was not the first evidence of super-upstarts, aggrieved youths totally on top of their game in a way that few grown-ups in political life are these days. Two months ago, more than 100 sports-prodigies-turned-public-survivors made national headlines as they delivered their stunning version of the same call—protect us, and listen to us. At the sentencing hearing of Dr. Larry Nassar, convicted of serially abusing athletes under his care, his victims powerfully yoked personal trauma to a systemic indictment. “Adult after adult, many in positions of authority, protected you,” said the former captain of the phenomenal U.S. Olympic gymnastics team, Aly Raisman, staring straight at Nassar. “How do you sleep at night?… You are the person [the USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee] had ‘take the lead on athlete care.’… I cringe to think your influence remains in the policies that are supposed to keep athletes safe.”
The reverse side of the “Sorry for the inconvenience” sign at the march aptly summed up the unexpected generational dynamic on public display: “When our children act like leaders and our leaders act like children you know change is coming.” Today’s young protesters—the Dreamers have been at this for a while—aren’t extremist misfits, or out-of-control tweeters, or squabbling grandstanders. Their trademark is breaking the mold by being the ultimate model children. They win gold medals at the Olympics, write 50-page term papers on the U.S. gun-control debate, excel at the piano (as the girl who first inspired Senator Dick Durbin’s DACA mission did). They strive not just to fit in but to soar in America.
As disciplined achievers, they aren’t just a stark contrast to their shaggy 1960s forebears—viewed by their elders as “vagabond dropouts in a vaguely academic orbit,” Renata Adler wrote in a New Yorker piece about student organizers back in 1965. More relevant, they subvert stereotypes of Millennials and Gen Z kids as needy snowflakes. Young people, the refrain goes, have been hovered over at home and cosseted by “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” at school. Immersion in social media has corroded their attention spans, mental health, interpersonal relations, and agency in the real world.
Yet the recent upsurge of youthful activism doesn’t look much like a symptom of arrested development or fragility. The triggers that these kids are worried about are physical, not just psychological (guns are a leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds). No critic could construe their demand for safe spaces as a request for fainting couches; they’re talking about classrooms and doctors’ examining tables. Being traumatized hasn’t inspired this cohort to retreat. The Parkland kids were ready for more than quiet, private mourning, and student leaders wasted no time in getting busy. Savvy about social media, they have been insistent about the need for real—not just virtual—contact and action. Rallying their peers hasn’t been hard.
Especially against the backdrop of current anti-establishment fervor, what stands out are the conventional priorities that seem to unite these student activists today—and the fact that those priorities represent an endorsement of mature responsibility. Kids demand that their voices be heard, but they aren’t pushing back against adult vigilance. They want more of it, not less. They’re campaigning for higher age limits for gun ownership. They want tough and consistent oversight, in the form of universal background checks for gun sales, rigorous “athlete care,” coherent immigration laws.
Youth is impatient, of course. “We don’t like to wait for things,” a speaker at the march warned. How, Raisman demanded, could adults have blithely dismissed athletes’ complaints, year after year? Yet at the rallies, as in the courtroom, the more striking message was that adults shouldn’t assume kids are counting on instant gratification. They’re not stupid. They know first-hand how grownups stall, how distractions intervene. “Never again” is meaningless, Raisman insisted, until everyone implicated in the Nassar scandal is held accountable, however long it takes. “Vote them out” is a rousing chant, but “this will be hard,” a teenager at the D.C. podium emphasized. “Do you have the will?” Or as another put it, “This isn’t Coachella, this isn’t the Oscars. This is real life. This is reality.”
Fast-track kids are in a hurry, eager for glory—but they’ve also learned from experience (just ask Raisman) how much grueling work is entailed to get there. And the Parkland standouts need no reminders of how lucky they are to have the chance to keep slogging away, day after day. It’s the rest of us who do.
This morning I was working out when “Learning To Fly” by Foo Fighters came on my iPhone. It has always been a personal favorite and I was really getting into it (and reminding my self NOT to sing out loud in Planet Fitness). When I got home I was looking for their video on youtube to send to a friend as my “song of the day”.
What I came across was this:
The Rockin’ 1000. 1000 musicians play Learn to Fly by Foo Fighters to ask Dave Grohl to come and play in Cesena, Italy.
The Rockin’ 1000 organized in Cesena Italy in 2015 as a stunt to get Foo Fighters to play a concert there. They were originally organized in a crowdfunding effort by Fabio Zaffagnini. Their initial performance in 2015 was made under the direction of Marco Sabiu.[5]
In November of that 2015 Foo Fighters came in a played a concert there!
Lesson- If you stand together- you can do just about anything.
Those who have been to my house for dinner or those who have come to one of my camps or training camps know this familiar question. “What was the BEST part of your day?”
It is a conversation starter. A chance at reflection about your day and a chance to share a moment with those around you. One person poses the question to someone who must answer and pass the question on.
You may not know it’s origin.
On September 11, 2001 my wife and I were on our way to the airport in Boston to begin a vacation in Italy. We were nervous leaving our two young children behind even though we had two great people at our house taking care of them.
We were at our gym, Atlantic Gymnastics, when the first plane struck the World Trade Center. Phones started ringing, we did not have a TV or radio in the building so parents were crowded around a car in the parking lot listening to the news. We were sickened, worried and frightened. The news, the lack of news, the speculation was over whelming.
We called the kids school to see if they were releasing the students early. The tearful secretary said, NO. The children didn’t know what was going on and that they were going to keep their schedule as normal as possible. She asked who was calling. I told her my name and she let out a sigh of relief. She knew our travel plans and was worried that we were on one of the highjacked planes.
We closed the gym early that day and headed home. I grew up in NY and had many friends and family who I could not get in touch with. The kids came home from school and immediately could tell something was wrong. Mom and Dad were home instead of on their way to Italy. There was a tension in the house. It was hard not to cry. All I wanted to do was HUG them. All they wanted to do was go outside and play.
When we all sat down for dinner, the four of us plus our two house sitters, our neighbors came over. They were worried that we were on one of the planes. When they saw all the cars in the driveway they thought the worst. Big tearful hugs.
The tension at dinner was intense. My wife looking for a way to break the stress asked, “What was the BEST part of your day?” . My face must have betrayed my surprise. I was thinking- “are you crazy, this is a TERRIBLE day.” She said “Even on a hard day- there is one thing that happens that is good or great. So- WHAT IS THE BEST PART OF YOUR DAY?”
I cannot remember how I answered. I do remember what she said. Her reply was. “Today is my friend Joanne’s birthday! I am so thankful for her in my life”.
To this day- each night, either at dinner or as we are relaxing at the end of the day someone asks, “What was the BEST part of your day?”.
Today- start that tradition in your house, In your gym, at your school, at your place of work. Ask someone- WHAT WAS THE BEST PART OF YOUR DAY?
And because you read this far- You might as well tell me in the comments section- What was the best part of YOUR day?
