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The Folly of "Those Who Can't, Teach"--and an Exchange with a Republican on the CRT Nonsense [1]

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Date: 2023-05-02  

My weekly op/ed piece appearing this past weekend (in newspapers in my very red congressional district — VA-06) is mostly written to argue the importance of good teaching, and the need for our society to pay good teachers what they are worth. (And they are worth a surprising amount, in a variety of ways, economic and otherwise.)

But, these being the times they are -- with a destructive force having taken over the political right, with our educational system being one of the domains that this Republican force is degrading with its destructive campaigns, and with the survival of American democracy now visibly among the stakes in the battle against the destructive force the Republican Party has become, and with Republicans getting more than 2/3 of the votes in the regions where my weekly columns appear — I felt called to end the piece with some relevant political argument.

So, as you’ll see in the piece below, I end by calling attention to the ways that the right-wing crazies are making the profession of teaching still less attractive to the kind of creative and dynamic teachers that we as a society should be attracting into that profession, for the good of the children and the well-being and prosperity of the nation in the years to come.

One part of that political argument at the end calls attention to how the right-wingers have succeeded in compelling teachers to distort American history on the subject of race, to leave out much that’s real, important and true about relationships between the races in American history, to avoid teaching one of the most essential dramas pervading American history,

Where that piece appeared online, a Republican, conservative man ventured a comment.

Here’s the fellow I introduced in a previous piece here, a man of whom I have become very fond, a person of goodwill and some intellect, who retired from a career in the military with the rank of colonel, and who comes forward publicly to interact with me most weeks about the piece I have published.

(This man exemplifies what mystifies me more than anything else I’ve encountered from following world events closely since 1976 and during a career of more than a half century of trying to understand such things: I am mystified how a good and decent man can support a political force that’s so grotesquely indecent, and how so intelligent a man can be hoodwinked into believing so much that is so manifestly unbelievable.

(So I feel very positively about him, with his truly admirable qualities, but he also mystifies me.)

Anyway, I welcome his engagement, because it not only allows me to flesh out the picture I want him — and all the other decent conservatives who might read this online exchange — to see, but also because it gives the two of us the opportunity to model a civil and (one hopes) constructive form of interaction. That is so rare in America in these times.

Back in the 1990s, I did talk radio conversations with conservatives of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and it was a wonderful experience.

But then the conservative world got more and more toxic, and got taken over by the ugly spirit we now see in so many ways with this Republican Party.

Good conversation became impossible. The “conservatives” who came forward to interact with me were now the right-wing trolls, who insisted that our interaction be unconstructive and unpleasant.

So my involvement with them changed over time from the delights of good dialogue to the less happy forum of a monologue, of a weekly series of op/eds that continually challenge those people to return to the better angels of their nature.

So I am grateful to this Republican gentleman who somehow is ready to have the kind of conversation that can do some good— one that’s civil, that actually engages in the issues that divide us, and that is filled with goodwill.

He uniquely has made it possible for me to again have some kind of dialogue, though this time I am far more coming from a prophetic place — calling out evil — than I was in the 1990s, when I opened by program by saying we should talk with each other as if we actually might learn from each other.

I can’t say that now to the crazy, Lie-dominated Republican base.

************

This week, he came back with words of praise and agreement with the bulk of the piece along with a request that I spell out more fully what I had in mind about what right-wingers were doing regarding how we teach our children about “Race” as a difficult matter in American history.

He pitched it right down the middle of the plate, and here’s how I hit that pitch:

Not to take anything away from the glories of American history -- e.g. the significant contribution to human history represented by the Founders' construction of a democratic polity, and e.g. the role this nation has played in protecting the world from being taken over by totalitarian regimes (the German one we fought in World War II, and the Russian one we ultimately defeated in the Cold War) -- American history also has its dark sides. And central among them has been the problem of racism. As you no doubt know, a variety of states -- Republican-controlled -- have used the powers of government to forbid teaching aspects of American history that manifest racism. Including any teaching of history that indicates that racism has been -- and is -- a major aspect of this nation. (BTW, I read last night that a new poll asking Americans if they think American society is racist found that 59% said yes.) It is not that we are the only society that is marred by racism, but we've got a particularly difficult history of racism because: 1) we founded a nation on land that already belonged to peoples of another race; 2) a major section of the nation had an economy -- and a power-structure -- based on the dominant race treating another race as property; and 3) we have built our population largely with immigration, including people of other races. (European nations have only recently had significant non-white parts of their population. But their racism was already a major part of their empire-building around the world in previous centuries.) In America, the treatment of Native Americans was permeated by racism. (Think, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian.") The history of the 19th century saw this nation treating Chinese immigrants shamefully. (Think the "Chinese Exclusion Act.") We can see racism also in how during World War II, government rounded up Japanese Americans into camps, but didn't do the same with white German-Americans, even though we were at war with Germany just as much as with Japan. But of course, when it comes to racism, the overwhelmingly most important piece of the picture involves how white have dealt with blacks. It is a terribly FALSE picture of our history that ignores that. It has not been confined to the South (think of the draft riots in New York during the Civil War, when 119 black men were murdered, hung from lamp posts.) But racism was especially powerful -- for understandable reasons -- in the region whose wealth consisted mostly of its black slave population. Here's what the Confederacy's # 2 leader said about the new nation the seceeding states were establishing. Contrary to the old government's being founded on the idea that "All men are created equal," Alexander Stephens wrote in his famous Cornerstone Speech: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." In our lifetime in Virginia, the issue of race has loomed large. It was in VIRGINIA VS. LOVING that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law that forbade blacks and white from marrying each other. And when the Supreme Court said that it wasn't OK for blacks to be given an inferior education under the false notion of "separate but equal," a great many white Virginians did everything they could to make sure that their children did not go to school with black children. When teachers are required to teach American history in a way that's been cleansed of the role of racism, they are teaching FALSEHOODS. And such requirements have been imposed in many (Republican-controlled) states. I have taught American history to bright 16 and 17 year-olds. I believe firmly that what we want our children to grow up to understand is the Big Reality of the nation they live in, and for which they will have responsibilities. The truth shall empower them-- both the truth that legitimately makes us proud to be Americans, and the truth that should make us humble, too, since our nation also partakes of the human failings that are everywhere evident in human history, not to mention in the world around us now.

The interaction continues from there, and after we’ve done a bit of sparring, this exceptional conservative has the grace to post this final comment:

Andy, as always i appreciate and admire your integrity candor, and intellectual honesty. I understand completely where you are coming from and respect you for your position. It would be a dull world if we all thought the same. A little respectful "friction" is a good thing !

I appreciate that praise greatly. Also praiseworthy, in my eyes, is the willingness of this gentleman to come forward and subject himself to my challenges, and then — rather than responding with enmity like Conservative America generally — say supportive words to me about what I’m doing with him.

I cannot tell that interacting with me in the ways over a lengthening stretch of time has moved him in any way toward withdrawing his support for a political party that represents the very opposite of the values he seems to hold most sincerely, but at the least, the exchange we enact there online greatly magnifies the opportunity those op/eds give me to put some ideas out into a world where a lot of conservatives with Goodness in them are nonetheless supporting Evil.

*********************

The piece — written to declare that “teaching” isn’t an alternative to “doing” but is itself a noble and challenging and valuable kind of doing — and the rest of the exchange between that Republican gentleman and me, can be found here.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/2/2166625/-The-Folly-of-Those-Who-Can-t-Teach-and-an-Exchange-with-a-Republican-on-the-CRT-Nonsense

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