American Education: Public, Popular, and Polarizing | Eastern North Carolina Now
There are alternatives. Our best and brightest should seek them out
Jared Gould, writing at Minding The Campus reports:
We may never know what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to become Trump’s would-be assassin, but as we seek answers, we must recognize the role educators across the country have played in perpetuating a discourse that fuels animosity and normalizes political violence. Specifically, many educators have portrayed Trump as an existential threat to America. Moving forward, a narrative shift is essential.
Days before the attempted assassination, retired Seattle teacher Michael McSweeney penned an editorial in the The News Tribune, expressing concern that Trump may win the presidency again, issuing a dramatic “apology” to former students, admitting he had misled them about the U.S. government’s checks and balances. “I lied to you because I never could have imagined one person as evil and dangerous as Trump could ever be elected president,” McSweeney wrote, echoing the ideological stance many educators have taken since Trump rode the golden escalator.
In 2016, when I was a freshman history student at the University of Southern Mississippi, professor Dr. Tyler used her lecture on World War II to draw a comparison between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and Hitler’s rhetoric, alleging that Hitler said, “Make Germany Great Again.” How could impressionable students interpret this intellectually dishonest comparison as anything other than equating Trump with an evil dictator?
This sentiment wasn’t unique to my college in South Mississippi.
A year later, College Fix reported that University of Southern California professor Charles H.F. Davis defended controversial tweets that included obscenities directed at President Donald Trump and calls for the destruction of “whiteness” and the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.” Davis, then an assistant professor and Chief Strategy Officer at the USC Race and Equity Center, argued that Trump’s rhetoric and policies embody oppressive systems. His Twitter background photo showed a black woman shooting a pig dressed in a police uniform.
Even after the horrific events of this past weekend, this rhetoric persists.
Louise A. Kelly, an associate professor of exercise science at California Lutheran University, posted on Facebook her hope for another assassination attempt, even wishing to assassinate Trump herself. Stacey Patton, an associate professor at Morgan State University, wrote that she hoped the attempt was successful and argued that killing Trump would be justified because “Republicans are racist”—minorities did incredibly well under the Trump administration.
The same rhetoric surfaced in Crooks’s neck of the woods. In 2019, a Pennsylvania middle school teacher had to apologize to parents after assigning homework in which students pretended to be refugees amid a scenario where President Trump was attempting to seize control of the country.
Without a doubt, this education has profoundly warped the minds of young people everywhere.
A young TikTok user recorded herself screaming into her phone, angry that Crooks missed. In an interview by Timecast News another seemingly young woman, who claimed to be born in the Soviet Union and has a hammer and sickle tattoo on her shoulder, says, “It’s a shame the person missed.” Others have recorded themselves summoning John Wilkes Booth, whose spirit might help a future assassin.
This should surprise no one. Educators have contributed, in the most inappropriate ways, to our political discourse. If anything, the attempt on Trump’s life is a clear wake up call that educators must change their tone.
Amidst dangerous rhetoric and ideas, educators should uphold our republic’s principles. Political differences and passionate debates should not escalate to violence; instead, educators should inspire civil discourse, respectful disagreement, and peaceful solutions.
I hope the trail ahead is better.
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Kudos to Steve Rader for sending us this link.
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Big Bob said:
( July 25th, 2024 @ 8:06 pm )
If you cant accept defeat, you don't deserve victory.
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Attacking a country's heritage should not be tolerated. There should be very severe penalties for any attack on a historic monument with very substantial jail time. Whether it is the pro-Hamas rabble that has attacked a number of historic monuments including recently the Liberty Bell, the eco-loons who attack great paintings and other cultural items, or the radicals who attack southern monuments, the way to stop it is to severely punish this behavior.
There should also be a tolerance for use of whatever force is necessary to stop these attacks on historical and culturals treasures. With the Hamas or Silent Sam attacks, high potency riot control gas should have been deployed and the participants rounded up. Anyone not a US citizen should have been immediately deported. All students in the Silent Sam attack should have been immediately expelled. Everyone else should have been criminally charged with every crime possible, and active sentences sought. WE simply must stop these attacks on our heritage by the loony left. |
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The problem with the Non Patriot Left is that they see everything through the political prism of there always will be winners, and then losers, where one group is given the sanctioned privilege of picking the pockets of others, all at the expense of society as a whole, while stating simple-minded slogans like: "He is an Existential Threat to Democracy;" and "We're All in this Together."
Now, that is truly some simple talk, even when one considers it coming from the mouths of Democratic Socialists, hypocrites all. |
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The danger to America is from your Maoist crowd which wants to inflict a Maoist style Cultural Revolution on America. Pitch forks and torches from the WOKE mob.
Anyone who tears down monuments to soldiers who fought to defend their homeland from aggression is a despicable scumbag. And so are the Maoist jerks who defend it. |
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The danger to America is from your Maoist crowd which wants to inflict a Maoist style Cultural Revolution on America. Pitch forks and torches from the WOKE mob.
Anyone who tears down monuments to soldiers who fought to defend their homeland from aggression is a despicable scumbag. And so are the Maoist jerks who defend their vandalism. |
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IDK VZ - If black people can live with what was done to them, you can live to see the memorial to that tragedy torn down. Have a juice box. Your gonna live.
Pitch forks and torches from the MAGA crowd. Vote - before it's too late |
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There are some teachers here in eastern North Carolina who help create the climate of hate against Donald Trump and Republicans. Something needs to be done to stop it. Political messenging should not be done in the classroom. The colleges and universities are even worse.
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I'm reminded of the maniacal looks on the faces of the UNC students tearing down the Silent Sam statue, which is a memorial for actual UNC students of a different time. Educators should be a bulwark to barbarism. It is disappointing when they are not.
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With the breakdown of our law and order, I guess Death Threats to not count.
Federal law prohibits transmitting "any threat to injure the person of another" and penalizes such threats with five years in prison. But not all threats are created equally, and the Supreme Court has determined that only "true threats" can be punished. |
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A poll here in North Carolina last year showed that 71% of parents are concerned about political indoctrination in the classroom in our public schools. The key battle here is on curriculum, which our GOP Lt. Governor Mark Robinson has fought very hard on at the state level but it has been hard to get the attention of our local school board majority.
I like the British public school statutes that prohibit teachers from covering a politically contested topic unless they fairly present both sides. The last Conservative government in the UK used this law to shut down propagandizing CRT. Also, in a court case about students being shown Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", the British High Court ruled that it is a propaganda film with multiple misstatements of fact and ordered that it not be shown to school children without disclaimers of those things. |
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