As history has shown time and time again, racism is real and causes real harm to real people.
If two sets of GOP lawmakers have their way, Ohio's children would be shielded from that horrible, but necessary fact and made more vulnerable to believing hateful ideology that is often easier to find online than truth ...
“Teaching kids the truths of racism is not about making them feel guilty. It is partly about informing them so they can help prevent the sins of the past from repeating and protecting them from falling for the true divisive concept – white supremacy.
“It is about building a future where people are not targeted in a grocery store because they are Black.”
(Editorial Board. “Our view: Proposed laws open Ohio kids up to hateful ideology, racist conspiracies.” Columbus Dispatch. May 22, 2022.)
Ohio House Bills 616 and 327 would bar teachers from discussing racism – a national sickness that officials say led to the massacre of Roberta A. Drury, Margus D. Morrison, Andre Mackneil, Aaron Salter, Geraldine Talley, Celestine Chaney, Heyward Patterson, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young and Ruth Whitfield May 14 at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo.
House Bill 327 would also restrict how public colleges and other public entities such as police departments and libraries offer training or instructions to employees, contractors or outside groups about so-deemed "divisive concepts" such as racism, sexism, inequality and religious intolerance.
Editors of the Columbus Dispatch explain …
“Last week, the News Literacy Project – a nonpartisan national education nonprofit – called on educators to help students understand racist conspiracy theories – something that would be impossible to do if House Bills 616 and 327 are approved.
"'Our education system must teach young people about conspiracy theories that can lead individuals to fall for false narratives that have violent, real-world consequences. News literacy education helps people learn to think critically and gain the skills to be smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged participants in a democracy,' the organization said as part of a statement.
“Aside from restricting what kids can learn about gender and sexuality, House Bill 616 would also specifically ban Critical Race Theory, intersectional theory; The 1619 Project, diversity, equity, and inclusion and so-called inherited racial guilt from public and private schools.”
(Editorial Board. “Our view: Proposed laws open Ohio kids up to hateful ideology, racist conspiracies.” https://news.yahoo.com/view-proposed-laws-open-ohio-093200924.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall. Columbus Dispatch. May 22, 2022.)
As hate crimes targeting Black people jumped to 2,871 in 2020 from 1,972 the prior year, and the number of such crimes against Asians increased to 279 from 161 (a statistic advocates say is low due to under reporting), lawmakers supporting the Ohio bills open avenues for White youths to absorb lies.
(“FBI Releases 2020 Hate Crime Statistics.” https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-hate-crime-statistics. Federal Bureau of Investigation. August 30, 2021.)
Many of these young people access bigoted information online and from unscrupulous media personalities pushing their false narratives that white people should be afraid of other races.
Beauty = The Truth
In Howard Gardner's book, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed (2011), he explores how teachers can approach the three principles “in an age when information overload and postmodern cynicism threaten good judgment and reason.”
Gardner believes education needs to focus on the methods that people use “in order to make the assertions that they do.”According to Gardner, the principle of goodness can be broken down into the categories of “neighborly morality” and “the ethics of roles.” Neighborly morality “is about how we deal with people we see every day,” he said, embodied in the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.
His concept of the “ethics of roles” is more nuanced and involves “how we relate to people in a modern, complex, highly differentiated, division-of-labor kind of society.”
Unlike neighborly morality, which addresses the purely personal realm, he said the ethics of roles can be applied to good work and good citizenship. Good work, which he deemed technically excellent, personally engaging, and carried out in an ethical manner, also characterizes good citizenship.
“The good citizen doesn’t just ask, ‘What’s good for me?’ He or she asks, ‘What’s good for the polity (the political organization)?”
Gardner tries to help young people develop “ethical muscles” by getting them to engage with examples of real ethical dilemmas and the means of working through them.
(Colleen Walsh. “How to teach students about truth” The Harvard Gazette. December 02, 2022.)
“We’re no longer going to have a single canon where a central authority will be able to decide what’s great and what’s not.” But, Gardner contrasted, “Everybody can make his or her judgments about beauty, and it doesn’t impinge on anybody else.”
Still, judgments can’t be made just on a whim, he said. “The crucial thing in making judgments of beauty is whether you can perceive the distinctions between experiences: one work of art and another, one performance and another … because then you can decide which one you think is more beautiful.”
The test now for a citizen, said Gardner, is how to behave not just for “numero uno, or for your neighbors, but for a wider public.”
Howard Gardner concludes:
“We have to revisit things like truth, beauty, and goodness all the time. What would a world be like where no one had any agreement about truth, where there were no longer any experiences that people called beautiful, and where good and bad were indistinguishable?”
(Sarah Sweeney. Truth, beauty, goodness.” The Harvard Gazette. May 12, 2011.)
The Bottom Line
The educational insight is apparent: both our neighborly reality and how we relate to others delivers truths – understandings and respect for inherent beauty that nurture diversity. When we realize our personal role in making good judgments, we are able to live more comfortably within that universal reality. We pass the “citizen test.”
Teachers must have the freedom to present alternatives and to provoke thought to stimulate students' needs to find beauty in their challenging and often confusing world. The accusation that these teachers are somehow programming political and social views is unfounded. In fact, developing higher level thinking requires that instructors give students the tools to question and research.
Effective question strategies capture students' attention, foster student involvement, and facilitate a positive, active learning environment. Asking questions, responding to questions, and listening can help instructors promote critical thinking. As students encounter varying opinions, they must use this thinking to rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They must determine whether the ideas, arguments, and findings represent the entire picture and are open to finding that they do not.
That “Big Picture” is rooted in truth, not in slanted opinion or in limited presentation of the facts. Students seek this truth in a broad and balanced curriculum that challenges them to use their intellect to understand the world around them. They have that much-desired component of intellectual freedom. So many take it to great heights and simply “fly” with the liberty.
Can't students just “Google” their way to the truth without the help of their teachers? Seems possible, doesn't it? Not so fast. Even college students develop bad habits …
In a study conducted by Eszter Hargittai and her colleagues at Northwestern University, 102 college students went online to answer questions about things that matter to them – like how to advise a female friend who’s desperate to prevent pregnancy after her boyfriend’s condom broke. How did students decide what to believe?
One factor loomed largest: a site’s placement in the search results. Students ignored the sponsoring organization and the article’s author, blindly trusting the search engine to put the most reliable results first.
(Sam Wineburg & Sarah McGrew. “Why Students Can’t Google Their Way to the Truth.” Education Week. November 01, 2016.)
How much does blind faith influence decision making? I think you would agree that it happens much, much too often. Without educational direction, a student's best intentions for finding accurate information often simply follows the crowd (a peer or popular view) or passively accepts the family (tradition) viewpoint. Is this how society really wants to solve pressing issues – by shortchanging exploration and preferring shallow and tacit agreement? I hope not, but these days, I wonder.
Personal Note:
Last night I attended by granddaughter's graduation from high school. Of course, some of the ceremony was admittedly tedious on the crowd composed of people of all ages. It seems a constant stir of conversions and people getting up and down occurred during the speeches, music, and other parts of the program. There was a very noticeable, low buzz of disinterest throughout the proceedings. The low attention span of the mass was on full display although the entire program was only a little over an hour long.
But, more than anything, I saw so many attendees fiddling with their smart phones during most of the graduation exercises. I have no idea how many in the crowd did so; however, I would guess somewhere around 35-45% relied upon their devices to get them through the evening. It hit me that they saw this as perfectly normal behavior for the event – that is, until the object of their attendance, their graduate, marched onstage to receive a diploma. Of course, then they employed the phones to take photos.
I'm a geezer and an ex-teacher, so I admit to being old fashioned and fuddy-duddy in my views. Still, what does this say not only about the short attention span of so many but also about the ongoing desire for a glut of trivial information to bombards the “need-to-know” minds of breathing souls these days? (All of this despite the pleas of the superintendent of schools to deactivate the mobile devices during the ceremonies.) I guess anything short of hundreds of phones ringing to interrupt is just what “people do these days.” Respect? You decide.
I have no doubt parents want the best education for their children. Public education is the Great Leveler of the Playing Field For Future Success. Those private schools that present an admittedly bias curriculum play an important role in preparing students for what's to come. Yet, twisting and limiting and choking thought in public schools because one political party fears that diversity threatens their way of life is prejudiced in itself.
The beauty of which Gardner spoke is realized through thought and study of the changing world. Stubborn adherence to the antiquated views of the past – no longer supported and no longer relative – diminish progress and promote conspiracy. I have every faith that intelligent students understand this. It is imperative that teachers give them the ability to find the truth themselves. In fact, I believe children, in most cases, eventually see through attempts to shield them from reality.
I'll end by relating the words of an ultra-conservative theorist I know who once said to my wife, “Can you believe what schools are trying to teach our children?” Of course, she was referring to her understandings of critical race theory and what she considered to be divisive concepts about race, gender, and religious intolerance. And, of course, the lady continued with the obligatory, “This is what happens when they take God out of the schools and minority views take over.”
Realizing there was no way to get her own opinion through to such a true believer of conspiracy, my wife simply did one of those questioning “Oh, yeah's?” and walked away.
At first, when my wife told me about her encounter, I said, “Why didn't you tell her how you really feel?”
She replied: “What's the use? I would be wasting my time.”
And so, I thought about what my wife said. It was the truth. Guess what? If my wife had never been exposed to the truth, she wouldn't have been able to make that very wise judgment – a call I later respected and completely understood. Thank God we both were allowed to use our curiosity and our brains when we were young to allow us to find beauty in places we might never have seen otherwise.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
– From ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats (1795 –1821)
The figures carved on the marble urn are the work of art. They lack one thing-reality. But, on the other hand, they are not subjected to death, decay and destruction. In the real world, love passes away; trees shed their leaves and the fashion in music changes. But the world of art always remains true and happy in its suggestiveness and silence.
Beauty, then, is an order, a structure, a relation of parts that form a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. And this also is a definition of truth. Truth and beauty are, in this essential respect, the same. Of course, they are not entirely the same. Truth speaks to the intellect, beauty to the emotions. But they are the same in that they are both revelations of the order of existence which is larger than ourselves. They both bring us into a relationship with, and a participation in, the order of being.
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