(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Public school taught me so much, and now Republicans want to rob others of that experience [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-23 Rather than talk only about those bills, I thought I’d take a second to reminisce about what education meant to me personally, and what we lose when we forgo public education. I will never forget attending school on a Tuesday morning as a teacher played “Imagine” and we all sat in silence while she cried and explained what it and John Lennon’s death meant to her. I was in early elementary school when this occurred, but the impact? We talked about our feelings openly because the teacher didn’t try to hide her own emotions from us. This was in Mountainburg, Arkansas, not some liberal bastion, and it was during the Reagan administration. Our society is in the middle of a period right now where we have come to despise public education to such a high degree that we are intolerant of just learning: learning about each other, learning about culture, about art, about where we come from, and our shared dreams. RELATED STORY: Education means everything I was in junior high when I read a lot of books on different philosophies from Zen to Judaism to Buddhism. Thanks to Pizza Hut’s Book It reading program and my brothers and sisters also reading voraciously, on Sundays we could eat out with our personal pan pizzas. It was a treat, a joy that we could read books that told us about different worlds, different ideas, and sometimes about our own world and about how things were and what they could be. My parents were conservative, but they were advocates for disability care before the American Disability Act, and they were forced to sue and fight at every step of the way to defend their children. What united all of us through it was the classroom and the library. The glory of a public library and a school library that could order books for us from anywhere in the world. When we wanted to learn something we didn’t know anything about, all it took was for the library interchange to ask if another library had it and they would ship it to us, free, in our small corner of Southeast Kansas. It is clear that conservatives are moving against public education through their use of vouchers, book bans, and generalized antagonism toward public schools and teachers. I remember watching the Challenger explode live as my entire middle school gathered to watch on a small TV on a cart. Although devastating, this led to meaningful discussions about our feelings and about science. Now teachers are seemingly cut off from having those discussions. RELATED STORY: Florida substitute fired after video of empty bookshelves goes viral—and gets Republican attention We are moving in a dangerous direction of just turning out students and young people who lack the critical thinking skills and empathy needed for the future because they have been removed from public schools. There wasn’t a private school within an hour of where I lived. Rural communities would find that vouchers lead to quick deaths of their small towns because a stripped down education would lower opportunity for their own children, and then they would have to move. Beyond that, however, parents would understand that having a galvanized school experience where singular viewpoints are all that is allowed does not create the mental strength needed to succeed: a child needs diversity of opinion. I was in college when I met a history professor who told us his unique story. Born in Germany, he was forced to join the German military at a very early age to carry a flag. At his first battle, he ran across the field, screaming that he wanted to quit, and fought the rest of the war for the British. He displayed for the class both of his uniforms. These are learning experiences. They shape who we are. While conservatives seek to gaslight us about the past, we have to remember it is the way we remember the past and move to be better that makes us a “more perfect union.” We are not perfect, we are a nation striving to become better every day. The only way we get there is by looking back honestly at our own mistakes and faults and being vulnerable to them and saying we can do better. If we expect everyone around us to learn from their own mistakes, why are conservatives so intent on deciding that there are never any mistakes to ever learn from? You can say that I’m a dreamer, but in a small, rural, Arkansas classroom as a young boy, I wasn’t the only one touched by John Lennon’s lyrics and my teacher’s tears. I knew that we can all learn something about who we are when we share experiences together. RELATED STORIES: DeSantis considers replacing SAT exams with 'Christian' alternative that focuses on white guys Republicans introduce bill to ban teachers, nurses, and coaches from discussing LGBTQ issues Book publisher offers free e-books while ‘racist governor of Florida’ tries to erase Black history The conservative 'parental rights' campaign is just bigots being bigots, and even the press knows it [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2154415/-Public-school-taught-me-so-much-and-now-Republicans-want-to-rob-others-of-that-experience Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/