The GOP’s, White Christian Nationalist assault on Public Education, is not only murdering our founding values, but our future.
Texas is driving, in the race to the bottom
Here in TX and elsewhere, the far-right MAGA-controlled ideology of today’s GOP, is attempting to replace professionally designed curriculum with their own violent, right-wing extremist ideology, that underpinned January 6th. I will not stand still for this and am hoping that others will also stand up for true American, constitutional principles, rather than the fake patriotism of Christian White Nationalism.
Let’s take a deeper look
First and foremost, as I have often written, I have a deep personal dedication to public education. You can find the details to my personal dedication, at the embedded links to a couple of these earlier articles. To be blunt, I believe that quality public education is foundational to our founding principles and that educators, are the some of my most highly regarded heroes.
So my friends, the article that inspired today’s TAT was how Houston Independent School District recently taken over by the state, is now removing public school libraries and librarians from 28 schools and replacing them with “disciplinary centers.” There are 276 schools in the district while that only 28 of that number, allegedly triggered the state-takeover of the district. For some relevant background, our Confederate 2.0 governor, Greg Abbott and his MAGA henchmen controlling our legislature, have been chipping away at the voting districts and control of large cities in TX, in order to diminish the power of honest Texans who don’t vote by party addiction to the TX GOP. Also for the record, the TX GOP is MAGA on steroids, not principled conservatism.
Attacking public education is but one tactic in their strategy to dominate the state with Confederate values, or what modern Texans know, as WCN or White Christian Nationalism and oligarchical-based, authoritarianism. What is most terrifying to those who honestly understand our constitution, is that WCN and an assault on public education, is unconstitutional and grotesquely anti-American. The made up RWE or right-wing extremism of the TX GOP, regularly spews all manner of propaganda about the constitution that is false. Look to the TX GOP’s 2022 platform for the midterms and several items will leap off the page and clobber you, right across your face and your patriotic heart.
Allow me to make a couple of points regarding this un-American agenda:
Parental rights is a pile of horse manure and smells worse every day.
Parents have always had a say in public education yet only a small percentage come to back to school night or to meet the teachers. Even fewer respond to educator’s emails requesting a parent conference
School boards or board of trustees are elected posititions
Imposing abstinence only, on students regarding sexual health and education is a death sentence for many at childbearing ages. This is in a state that legislated vigilante justice with rewards, for those who invade others’ privacy to report them to authorities regarding abortions. Texas is always a top offender in national rankings for teen pregnancy and quite literally, has a rape epidemic.
Historical revisionism regarding slavery, the confederacy and the holocaust, is simply lying, under color of state authority. This curriculum is often straight from a far-right organization with no experience in developing curriculum.
School safety in Texas means more guns, armed school guards and a prison-like atmosphere for students we depend on to lead us in the future. Hardly an environment for productive learning.
Banning health access for minority students with gender issues in just plain, state-sponsored cruelty
Oh… let’s not forget book banning by the same school boards who approved them in the first place.
This my friends is just the short list.
Any American that can read can see for themselves that there is nothing patriotic about this platform, despite Abbott and his fellow Confederates falsely using patriotism to frame their aberrant interpretation. This brings us full circle to their aggressive assault on public education and indirectly, the US and TX constitution. Here are just a couple examples of their disgraceful assault:
The Campaign to Sabotage Texas's Public Schools
Who is behind the attacks on Educators and Public Schools
Texas guts 'woke civics'. Now kids can't engage in a key democratic process
This my friends, are but a handful of examples of the Confederacy 2.0/ WCN that is being imposed on Texas. None of this would be constitutional with a Normal, non-activist TX SCOTUS Supreme Court; nor the US SCOTUS. WCN is the underlying ideology of this assault. All of this is based on WCN. In fact, it is specifically unconstitutional to impose religious values on Americans. This is one of our most closely held founding principles.
There is so much more but the above makes my point. Texas is not the only state behaving so immorally and unpatriotically. The so-called red states are all taking similar measures. Texas though is a leader to the bottom with Florida. Other red states are in the race but still a bit behind. In fact, the National GOP regularly advocates for the same agendas by dressing them up in ambiguous, euphemistic language to fool their base into believing that they are doing something ethical. My British friends would call their efforts “bollocks” which would be interpreted in US English as Bullshit! I fully concur with whichever term you apply. As I have also pursued at TAT, is just how completely the remaining, MAGA controlled GOP has been conditioned by professional influencers. They now are now, quite controlled by far-right propagandists like FOX, GOP leadership and the endless vomitus of far-right extremist media.
Without dedicating our public education system to innovative and accurate, full-spectrum curriculum, we will continue to increase speed, in our race to the bottom in education, globally. When it comes effective education, an issue we once led the world with, we have fallen to the middle of the pack in reading, math and science. This is hardly the image of a nation with a prominent leadership in the world. Science, technology, solving complex US and global threats, requires the very best in scholastic and operational achievement. Our current GOP assault on public eduction is pursuing instead, slovenly, extremist, ideological curriculum, that keeps oligarchically underpinned and anti-American slugs in office.
Today I will leave you with a few relevant quotes from our brilliant founders, regarding education. Please consider them relative, to what we are currently experiencing from today’s GOP.
My very best for your week,
Paul