It was an interesting experience for me, after mostly being homeschool (with a little public and private schooling some years) to go into working in a public special ed school in the heart of Minneapolis (just a few blocks from where George Floyd would be killed). I spent about 3 years there, and in special ed there is way less opportunities to get too controversial. It still was probably a little more overtly liberal then your experience... LGBT safe space signs on every door and a LGBT club that met every week, and a lot of (awesomely kind and caring) LGBT teachers, but in general it was easy for me to have all sorts of conversations with the diverse group of teachers. We had a lot of Somali Muslim teachers who I ended up having great convos after school about what our faiths mean and important differences, and misconceptions. Interestingly enough they were more open to Christianity then the white liberals. The school was cool with them going around with candy on Ramadan with little notes explaining the holiday... which I think was important having so many Muslim students at our school. However once one of the older teachers had his class sing together the song "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" and I overheard the principal deeply apologizing, saying how angry he was about it, to a confused Muslim coworker who didn't understand what the big deal was, saying hey it's your culture, it's fine. He said well next time you should also do something from your culture, which she didn't seem very excited about since she wasn't exactly a performer type. So it mostly just little things like that I observed. But the teaching itself was always walking on eggshells to make sure we don't step into anything controversial... which was pretty easy since we mostly were taking kids to job skill development places or teaching them sign language or days of the week and one or two signs for the higher severely disabled. I do remember some of the big school district teachers meetings have a left leaning slant... but it is Minneapolis after all and I saw it more reflective of the city in general.
But a lot of my stereotypes of liberals were also deconstructed too as I got to meet the wide diversity of people who were not a monolith. Who had genuine curiosity about faith or faith themselves and open to discussions. Amazing what happens when you are willing just to talk and get to know people as actual humans and not as a group of heathens to avoid.
Love this SO much. I AM a current public school educator and al though I am sure there are places where it is much different, I cannot imagine what my poor rural Appalachian community would do without public schools. I am in WNC where many towns just got obliterated by Helene and schools won’t be open for a while. For these communities that is beyond tragic. I was on the “public school is evil” side until I actually taught in public school. Teachers matter. Schools matter. Okay, off my soapbox now, but thank you!
Thank you, Mary! I'm so sorry to hear about what Helene has done to your community.
This might sound weird, but I find myself wanting to say it to teachers as of late, so thank you for your service! As you can tell from my post, I had several teachers who made a big impact on my life. It only takes one. I know it can be thankless or even vilified, so I appreciate your work.
Public education is not monolithic, and some schools and experiences obviously are better than others. It’s always a mistake for any of us (self included) to make our personal experience the basis for a universal claim. Another mistake we could easily make, however, is to assume that things aren’t shifting fast. You’ve been out of school for a while now, it hasn’t frozen in time to be just as you remembered it. I would recommend the book The Battle for the American Mind as one source for thinking more about the state of public education in America. Thanks for including me in your post in a congenial manner. Have a great day!
Yes, I figured I'd be met with this point. To my knowledge, the topics I discussed haven't been included in any U.S. curriculums in a manner of absolute truth and I believe we'd know about it if it were the case. But I could certainly do more research. I've heard of that book, so I'll bump it up on the list. Thanks for the recommendation!
I did spend some time considering what difference it makes that I graduated 8 years ago. I believe the paternal panic about CRT took off in 2020 and that's when I really began to hear claims that not only were kids being indoctrinated then but it was implied that it had been going on for some time. At that point, it had only been 4 years since I graduated so I heard claims implicitly and explicitly that my class had been part of it. Also, to be political about it, almost my entire education was conducted during the Obama administration and many making these claims would posit that he is no different (or perhaps worse) than Biden and Harris. I remember the conservatives who compared him to Hitler. Then again every major politician gets compared to Hitler by someone at some point 🤷♂️ All said, I take your point about the exponential rate of change that we are all trying to adjust to and make sense of. I'm open to discovering any major instances of indoctrination since 2016 and I may write a follow-up to this post at some point.
Thanks for the input and you have a great day as well!
Hey Jacob! I've been working on a follow-up post to this one which will address some of your comments here, mostly validating them. The points about education not being a monolith and personal experience not being a basis for universal claims have pushed me to dig in on research beyond my experience about what exactly public schools are teaching right now.
Anyway, it has got me wondering what your opinion would be on something. The most extreme examples I've found of "woke" ideologies being taught in schools have been in ethnic studies classes for high schoolers. Most are optional electives, but some bluer states have been pushing to make them required. Anyway, these classes strike me as wading into "moral education" with topics like anti-racism. I think that's why they are getting a lot of pushback because generally, the public has advocated for fact-based learning, knowledge acquisition, and skills development. That's a big movement away from classical liberal arts education, which, as I see it, focuses on the cultivation of virtues and good character. In that sense, couldn't an ethnic studies class be in line with classical liberal arts education since both concern themselves with moral education? I assume you would be against most of the content in these ethnic studies classes, so how would you reconcile the seeming congruence between their goals? I'm curious to hear your thoughts and, in transparency, I may include some of your response in the coming post.
This is a great read. My best friend my whole life was public schooled through and through and is one of the sweetest, most intelligent people I know. I was homeschooled through and through. When I (along with my ex) made the choice to put our son in elementary school, my dad FLIPPED out and spewed all sorts of fear mongering hate speech about how oublic schools are taking children away from parents & turning them into terrorists and worse things I will not mention. I love my dad. He is exceptionally smart and living and thoughtful. These comments shook me and I do still have shreds of fear that I'm "ruining" my child with public school. As someone who views public school as a giant mystery that I will never solve for myself, thank you for sharing this slice of normal.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I’m working on a follow up post to this which responds to some criticisms it’s received. The TLDR is: yes, education is not a monolith and yes, things have changed since I graduated. After some research, I’ll concede I’ve found both those to be more true than I expected, but I still don’t see enough evidence for systemic and coordinated indoctrination on a national level. There may be a higher chance of people trying to influence kids in certain schools, but welcome to life! Most people are trying to influence others in some fashion or another. A healthy dose of suspicion and continued inquiry is fine, but intense outrage and fear seems unmerited and unhelpful. For the most part, most of the positive influences I mentioned are still taking place and possible. I think I’ve seen you write elsewhere that school has been going well for your child and I’m happy to hear it!
This was gold. As somebody who attended a charter-school that was arts-based that was much more progressive than even my public school counter parts, yes to everything. We were required to share our pronouns and had a transgender class president and while I disagreed with certain things, it never was that deep...I don't know how else to put it?
I grew up in a *very* right-wing Christian family which meant I was living in these two cultural extremes all the time and looking back, it really helped de-radicalize my beliefs to be engaged in both of these communities and a church. My siblings who stayed homeschooled have never really befriended somebody identifying as LGBTQ+ or just been in close relationship with somebody they had been taught to dehumanize or see as less than. Because of public school, I made friends with people that I otherwise was taught to avoid.
Kudos to you on speaking about such a red-hot topic. Your voice is refreshing!
Oh that’s cool that you got such widely different side-by-side experiences. I’m sure that gives you perspective that not a lot of people have, at least at young ages.
Because of Jacob’s comment, I am looking into this beyond by own experience. I’ll admit, I’m finding more than I thought, but (so far) no real smoking guns. A lot of claims about indoctrination are coming from things like requiring the sharing of pronouns, so I’m interested in that experience of yours. It’s of course very normal for me in my job these days, but did you feel like it was suggesting or pushing an ideology on you or did it just feel like a matter of respect?
Thanks so much for sharing your experience & commenting!
It was an interesting experience for me, after mostly being homeschool (with a little public and private schooling some years) to go into working in a public special ed school in the heart of Minneapolis (just a few blocks from where George Floyd would be killed). I spent about 3 years there, and in special ed there is way less opportunities to get too controversial. It still was probably a little more overtly liberal then your experience... LGBT safe space signs on every door and a LGBT club that met every week, and a lot of (awesomely kind and caring) LGBT teachers, but in general it was easy for me to have all sorts of conversations with the diverse group of teachers. We had a lot of Somali Muslim teachers who I ended up having great convos after school about what our faiths mean and important differences, and misconceptions. Interestingly enough they were more open to Christianity then the white liberals. The school was cool with them going around with candy on Ramadan with little notes explaining the holiday... which I think was important having so many Muslim students at our school. However once one of the older teachers had his class sing together the song "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" and I overheard the principal deeply apologizing, saying how angry he was about it, to a confused Muslim coworker who didn't understand what the big deal was, saying hey it's your culture, it's fine. He said well next time you should also do something from your culture, which she didn't seem very excited about since she wasn't exactly a performer type. So it mostly just little things like that I observed. But the teaching itself was always walking on eggshells to make sure we don't step into anything controversial... which was pretty easy since we mostly were taking kids to job skill development places or teaching them sign language or days of the week and one or two signs for the higher severely disabled. I do remember some of the big school district teachers meetings have a left leaning slant... but it is Minneapolis after all and I saw it more reflective of the city in general.
But a lot of my stereotypes of liberals were also deconstructed too as I got to meet the wide diversity of people who were not a monolith. Who had genuine curiosity about faith or faith themselves and open to discussions. Amazing what happens when you are willing just to talk and get to know people as actual humans and not as a group of heathens to avoid.
Love this SO much. I AM a current public school educator and al though I am sure there are places where it is much different, I cannot imagine what my poor rural Appalachian community would do without public schools. I am in WNC where many towns just got obliterated by Helene and schools won’t be open for a while. For these communities that is beyond tragic. I was on the “public school is evil” side until I actually taught in public school. Teachers matter. Schools matter. Okay, off my soapbox now, but thank you!
Thank you, Mary! I'm so sorry to hear about what Helene has done to your community.
This might sound weird, but I find myself wanting to say it to teachers as of late, so thank you for your service! As you can tell from my post, I had several teachers who made a big impact on my life. It only takes one. I know it can be thankless or even vilified, so I appreciate your work.
It’s a tough gig, not gonna lie, but I really love my job and my students.
Public education is not monolithic, and some schools and experiences obviously are better than others. It’s always a mistake for any of us (self included) to make our personal experience the basis for a universal claim. Another mistake we could easily make, however, is to assume that things aren’t shifting fast. You’ve been out of school for a while now, it hasn’t frozen in time to be just as you remembered it. I would recommend the book The Battle for the American Mind as one source for thinking more about the state of public education in America. Thanks for including me in your post in a congenial manner. Have a great day!
Yes, I figured I'd be met with this point. To my knowledge, the topics I discussed haven't been included in any U.S. curriculums in a manner of absolute truth and I believe we'd know about it if it were the case. But I could certainly do more research. I've heard of that book, so I'll bump it up on the list. Thanks for the recommendation!
I did spend some time considering what difference it makes that I graduated 8 years ago. I believe the paternal panic about CRT took off in 2020 and that's when I really began to hear claims that not only were kids being indoctrinated then but it was implied that it had been going on for some time. At that point, it had only been 4 years since I graduated so I heard claims implicitly and explicitly that my class had been part of it. Also, to be political about it, almost my entire education was conducted during the Obama administration and many making these claims would posit that he is no different (or perhaps worse) than Biden and Harris. I remember the conservatives who compared him to Hitler. Then again every major politician gets compared to Hitler by someone at some point 🤷♂️ All said, I take your point about the exponential rate of change that we are all trying to adjust to and make sense of. I'm open to discovering any major instances of indoctrination since 2016 and I may write a follow-up to this post at some point.
Thanks for the input and you have a great day as well!
Hey Jacob! I've been working on a follow-up post to this one which will address some of your comments here, mostly validating them. The points about education not being a monolith and personal experience not being a basis for universal claims have pushed me to dig in on research beyond my experience about what exactly public schools are teaching right now.
Anyway, it has got me wondering what your opinion would be on something. The most extreme examples I've found of "woke" ideologies being taught in schools have been in ethnic studies classes for high schoolers. Most are optional electives, but some bluer states have been pushing to make them required. Anyway, these classes strike me as wading into "moral education" with topics like anti-racism. I think that's why they are getting a lot of pushback because generally, the public has advocated for fact-based learning, knowledge acquisition, and skills development. That's a big movement away from classical liberal arts education, which, as I see it, focuses on the cultivation of virtues and good character. In that sense, couldn't an ethnic studies class be in line with classical liberal arts education since both concern themselves with moral education? I assume you would be against most of the content in these ethnic studies classes, so how would you reconcile the seeming congruence between their goals? I'm curious to hear your thoughts and, in transparency, I may include some of your response in the coming post.
This is a great read. My best friend my whole life was public schooled through and through and is one of the sweetest, most intelligent people I know. I was homeschooled through and through. When I (along with my ex) made the choice to put our son in elementary school, my dad FLIPPED out and spewed all sorts of fear mongering hate speech about how oublic schools are taking children away from parents & turning them into terrorists and worse things I will not mention. I love my dad. He is exceptionally smart and living and thoughtful. These comments shook me and I do still have shreds of fear that I'm "ruining" my child with public school. As someone who views public school as a giant mystery that I will never solve for myself, thank you for sharing this slice of normal.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I’m working on a follow up post to this which responds to some criticisms it’s received. The TLDR is: yes, education is not a monolith and yes, things have changed since I graduated. After some research, I’ll concede I’ve found both those to be more true than I expected, but I still don’t see enough evidence for systemic and coordinated indoctrination on a national level. There may be a higher chance of people trying to influence kids in certain schools, but welcome to life! Most people are trying to influence others in some fashion or another. A healthy dose of suspicion and continued inquiry is fine, but intense outrage and fear seems unmerited and unhelpful. For the most part, most of the positive influences I mentioned are still taking place and possible. I think I’ve seen you write elsewhere that school has been going well for your child and I’m happy to hear it!
This was gold. As somebody who attended a charter-school that was arts-based that was much more progressive than even my public school counter parts, yes to everything. We were required to share our pronouns and had a transgender class president and while I disagreed with certain things, it never was that deep...I don't know how else to put it?
I grew up in a *very* right-wing Christian family which meant I was living in these two cultural extremes all the time and looking back, it really helped de-radicalize my beliefs to be engaged in both of these communities and a church. My siblings who stayed homeschooled have never really befriended somebody identifying as LGBTQ+ or just been in close relationship with somebody they had been taught to dehumanize or see as less than. Because of public school, I made friends with people that I otherwise was taught to avoid.
Kudos to you on speaking about such a red-hot topic. Your voice is refreshing!
Oh that’s cool that you got such widely different side-by-side experiences. I’m sure that gives you perspective that not a lot of people have, at least at young ages.
Because of Jacob’s comment, I am looking into this beyond by own experience. I’ll admit, I’m finding more than I thought, but (so far) no real smoking guns. A lot of claims about indoctrination are coming from things like requiring the sharing of pronouns, so I’m interested in that experience of yours. It’s of course very normal for me in my job these days, but did you feel like it was suggesting or pushing an ideology on you or did it just feel like a matter of respect?
Thanks so much for sharing your experience & commenting!
Ignore the typos, I'm a busy dad now ;P
Haha, single dad of 2 over here so I totally get it.