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When the MAGA Movement Comes for Your School

BlueTex

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Cancel culture indeed...

Phillips’ fight with Collin College is part of a broader struggle over education here in the swath of suburbs and exurbs of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, once conservative strongholds that in recent years have become more diverse — racially, culturally, and politically — as business-friendly tax policy draws emigration from across the nation and abroad. But the influx of new people and ideas has produced a backlash: The area was home to an unsettling number of Jan. 6 defendants, and in recent years, Philips says, there has been a resurgence in far-right extremism.

Much of the struggle is playing out in schools. Despite right-wing pundits’ continued braying about “censorship” and “cancel culture,” the local brand of revanchism has pushed to penalize educators who speak their minds and ban books that challenge conventional wisdom or present uncomfortable truths.

At Collin College alone, four professors have been let go amid controversial circumstances over the past two years, including one who lost her job after a mean tweet about Mike Pence. Across the region, at least nine superintendents at public schools have announced plans for resignation in just the past few months, according to The Texas Tribune. In a nearby town, a high school principal made local history as the first Black person in his post — and then lost his job amid a panic over “critical race theory.” Meanwhile, conservative activists push for a mass purge of objectionable reading material from public school libraries.

These are local stories that, together, have national implications. They serve as representative cases of what it looks like when the MAGA movement, having lost power at the national level, establishes effective control over the very institutions that ensure a baseline understanding of political history — local public schools. And in doing so, the movement is able to push out educators and ban books that do not suit its ideological views.


 
Cancel culture indeed...

Phillips’ fight with Collin College is part of a broader struggle over education here in the swath of suburbs and exurbs of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, once conservative strongholds that in recent years have become more diverse — racially, culturally, and politically — as business-friendly tax policy draws emigration from across the nation and abroad. But the influx of new people and ideas has produced a backlash: The area was home to an unsettling number of Jan. 6 defendants, and in recent years, Philips says, there has been a resurgence in far-right extremism.

Much of the struggle is playing out in schools. Despite right-wing pundits’ continued braying about “censorship” and “cancel culture,” the local brand of revanchism has pushed to penalize educators who speak their minds and ban books that challenge conventional wisdom or present uncomfortable truths.

At Collin College alone, four professors have been let go amid controversial circumstances over the past two years, including one who lost her job after a mean tweet about Mike Pence. Across the region, at least nine superintendents at public schools have announced plans for resignation in just the past few months, according to The Texas Tribune. In a nearby town, a high school principal made local history as the first Black person in his post — and then lost his job amid a panic over “critical race theory.” Meanwhile, conservative activists push for a mass purge of objectionable reading material from public school libraries.

These are local stories that, together, have national implications. They serve as representative cases of what it looks like when the MAGA movement, having lost power at the national level, establishes effective control over the very institutions that ensure a baseline understanding of political history — local public schools. And in doing so, the movement is able to push out educators and ban books that do not suit its ideological views.




This is funny.

Liberals bitching about someone else having control over education. Lmao.

This is push to place education solely under federal government control instead of state and local municipality.

Because to liberals, the holy God of federal government should be in charge of everything
 
This is funny.

Liberals bitching about someone else having control over education. Lmao.

This is push to place education solely under federal government control instead of state and local municipality.

Because to liberals, the holy God of federal government should be in charge of everything

Liberals don't pass laws criminalizing teaching.
 
there is no MAGA coming for schools. that is a lie. if you can prove it is do so.

you don't even understand what MAGA means... its not what you say it is, that's for sure.

NO SCHOOL IS TEACHING MAGA, and you cannot prove otherwise.
 
Liberals don't pass laws criminalizing teaching.
Neither has the GOP.

The GOP legislatures have banned teaching certain topics at levels that aren’t age appropriate. The responsibility falls to the BOE. No teachers have been “criminalized”
 
Neither has the GOP.

The GOP legislatures have banned teaching certain topics at levels that aren’t age appropriate. The responsibility falls to the BOE. No teachers have been “criminalized”

Thank you for supporting my point even as you think you are contradicting it by adding qualifiers. Legislatures should not be dictating curriculum. that's what authoritarian government do.
 
there is no MAGA coming for schools. that is a lie. if you can prove it is do so.

you don't even understand what MAGA means... its not what you say it is, that's for sure.

NO SCHOOL IS TEACHING MAGA, and you cannot prove otherwise.

Love this!! "Show me a lesson plan where MAGA is being taught to school children".
 
Cancel culture indeed...

Phillips’ fight with Collin College is part of a broader struggle over education here in the swath of suburbs and exurbs of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, once conservative strongholds that in recent years have become more diverse — racially, culturally, and politically — as business-friendly tax policy draws emigration from across the nation and abroad. But the influx of new people and ideas has produced a backlash: The area was home to an unsettling number of Jan. 6 defendants, and in recent years, Philips says, there has been a resurgence in far-right extremism.

Much of the struggle is playing out in schools. Despite right-wing pundits’ continued braying about “censorship” and “cancel culture,” the local brand of revanchism has pushed to penalize educators who speak their minds and ban books that challenge conventional wisdom or present uncomfortable truths.

At Collin College alone, four professors have been let go amid controversial circumstances over the past two years, including one who lost her job after a mean tweet about Mike Pence. Across the region, at least nine superintendents at public schools have announced plans for resignation in just the past few months, according to The Texas Tribune. In a nearby town, a high school principal made local history as the first Black person in his post — and then lost his job amid a panic over “critical race theory.” Meanwhile, conservative activists push for a mass purge of objectionable reading material from public school libraries.

These are local stories that, together, have national implications. They serve as representative cases of what it looks like when the MAGA movement, having lost power at the national level, establishes effective control over the very institutions that ensure a baseline understanding of political history — local public schools. And in doing so, the movement is able to push out educators and ban books that do not suit its ideological views.


It is amusing to watch the liberal reaction to parents having a voice in their children’s education.

Liberals want to indoctrinate, not teach.

If they actually cared about actual education and outcomes, they’d be screaming about how poorly public school funding is designed, they’d be advocating for teacher unions to stop protecting teachers that are inappropriate in classrooms, they’d be demanding that teachers produce better educational outcomes…

Note you aren’t seeing that. You’re simply seeing name calling and criticizing of parents and communities that are using their voices and votes to change materials taught in classrooms.
 
Thank you for supporting my point even as you think you are contradicting it by adding qualifiers. Legislatures should not be dictating curriculum. that's what authoritarian government do.
Even a BOE is a version of “legislative” government…with a superintendent acting as the executive in charge of implementing what the BOE decides.

Your premise is wrong.
 
MAGA movement - That's what happens when ultra-conservatives metaphorically shit on people who don't agree with them.
 
Even a BOE is a version of “legislative” government…with a superintendent acting as the executive in charge of implementing what the BOE decides.

Your premise is wrong.

The superintendent is not part of any legislature. BOEs do not pass laws.
 
This is funny.

Liberals bitching about someone else having control over education. Lmao.

This is push to place education solely under federal government control instead of state and local municipality.

Because to liberals, the holy God of federal government should be in charge of everything
This is funny, someone who never went to college bitching about how colleges should be run.

Your ignorance of the subject is nothing to be proud of.
 
Free speech! Free speech!

Then, this school year, Phillips defied the administration’s recently issued ban on talking to students about masks or other public-health measures related to Covid-19. “I went ahead on the first day of class after that announcement and told them I think they ought to wear masks, not just for themselves, but for others,” Phillips says. “That caused me to be summoned to a meeting with my dean and associate dean. They said that allegedly conservative students had complained about making them feel bad by talking about masks. I was given a disciplinary warning, and a few days later, I was told I was not getting recommended for contract renewal.”
 
It is amusing to watch the liberal reaction to parents having a voice in their children’s education.

Liberals want to indoctrinate, not teach.

If they actually cared about actual education and outcomes, they’d be screaming about how poorly public school funding is designed, they’d be advocating for teacher unions to stop protecting teachers that are inappropriate in classrooms, they’d be demanding that teachers produce better educational outcomes…

Note you aren’t seeing that. You’re simply seeing name calling and criticizing of parents and communities that are using their voices and votes to change materials taught in classrooms.

This is simply propaganda. There is a role for parents to play. You are calling for a small, loud group of parents dictating what a BOE can do. What is interesting to me is we all passed through education ourselves and I don't see anyone complaining that their education should have had more parent involvement. Its simply a bogus issue to tear down public education.

Thus, your own expressed desire to see public education torn down does not give your voice much credibility when it comes dealing with it. Quite the opposite.
 
Free speech! Free speech!

Then, this school year, Phillips defied the administration’s recently issued ban on talking to students about masks or other public-health measures related to Covid-19. “I went ahead on the first day of class after that announcement and told them I think they ought to wear masks, not just for themselves, but for others,” Phillips says. “That caused me to be summoned to a meeting with my dean and associate dean. They said that allegedly conservative students had complained about making them feel bad by talking about masks. I was given a disciplinary warning, and a few days later, I was told I was not getting recommended for contract renewal.”
The brown shirts have found another way to undermine our rights without using violence. The constitution they claim to love, states like texas find ways around the parts they don't like and the supreme court allowed them to do it. Did I mention the conservative supreme court, the neutral one?
 
This is funny.

Liberals bitching about someone else having control over education. Lmao.

This is push to place education solely under federal government control instead of state and local municipality.

Because to liberals, the holy God of federal government should be in charge of everything

Yes, the desire for total centralization of political power is yet another commonality they have with fascism. One of the first things Hitler did was to eliminate Germany's state governments:

Thus, within a fortnight of receiving full powers from the Reichtag, Hitler had ... abolished the separate powers of the historic states and made them subject to the central authority of the Reich, which was in his hands. . . . "Popular assemblies" of the states were abolished, the sovereign powers of the states were transferred to the Reich, all state governments were placed under the Reich government, and the state governors were placed under the the administration of the Reich Minister of the Interior. As this Minister, Frick, explained it, "The state governments from now on are merely administrative bodies of the Reich."

--The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, William A. Shirer, page 200
 
Yes, the desire for total centralization of political power is yet another commonality they have with fascism. One of the first things Hitler did was to eliminate Germany's state governments:

I think you're barking up the wrong tree, State governments dictating curriculum is totalitarian, who is calling for the feds to do this?
 
This is simply propaganda. There is a role for parents to play. You are calling for a small, loud group of parents dictating what a BOE can do. What is interesting to me is we all passed through education ourselves and I don't see anyone complaining that their education should have had more parent involvement. Its simply a bogus issue to tear down public education.

Thus, your own expressed desire to see public education torn down does not give your voice much credibility when it comes dealing with it. Quite the opposite.
The only thing I remember my parents complaining about was the school district spending money on a new stadium. They would have never dreamed of marching into a school board meeting and finger-wagging 'cause curriculum.
 
This is simply propaganda. There is a role for parents to play. You are calling for a small, loud group of parents dictating what a BOE can do. What is interesting to me is we all passed through education ourselves and I don't see anyone complaining that their education should have had more parent involvement. Its simply a bogus issue to tear down public education.

Thus, your own expressed desire to see public education torn down does not give your voice much credibility when it comes dealing with it. Quite the opposite.


Why do you have a problem with local community and parents deciding how local schools should be run?
 
I think you're barking up the wrong tree, State governments dictating curriculum is totalitarian, who is calling for the feds to do this?


You are!

Aren't you suggesting that the government step in and tell these communities they can't set thier own schools curriculum?
 
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