"Not the Path to Knowledge"

It’s been several months since Curmie wrote a blog post… or, rather, since he finished one. There have been a dozen or more false starts, but Curmie does write in what is sometimes called “long form”: seldom does a post fall short of 1000 words, and they’re often twice that. That means they generally take quite a while to write, and often don’t get finished in the couple hours available on a particular day. Then, with the passage of time, one (or both) of two things is likely to happen: either the issue passes out of currency, or someone (often, several someones) writes a piece that says what Curmie would, and at least as well. The result is that such an essay gets linked on Curmie’s Facebook page and everyone moves on. 

There have been a couple of near misses in the sense that I’ve written often fairly lengthy comments on the Ethics Alarm blog (a couple have been “Comments of the Day” in recent days), since I have yet to fully internalize the notion that my best stuff ought to go on my own page. Certainly, there have been ample opportunities of late to awake (not to be confused with becoming Woke) from my blogging slumber—the ongoing saga of Ron DeSantis vs. Every Strawman Ever Created, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, etc. I may yet return to some of these topics, but the story with which I emerge from hibernation is one I first encountered on Ethics Alarms. 

It’s also not by accident that the targets of Curmie’s… erm… Curmudgeonliness here are those who embarrass him precisely because he shares a profile with them. Curmie has been an educator by profession for over 40 years, and his politics are probably to the left of at least 80% of the American public (and 98% of his Congressional district). So when the idiocy of Woke Folk pseudo-educators brings shame to progressives and (actual) educators alike, it’s time to fall back on an over-used but not irrelevant declaration: we’re not all like that. 

Bet you didn't think this would be the 
center of an educational controversy.

So, here we go… An unnamed social studies teacher at San Francisco’s Creative Arts Charter School was discussing the significance of the invention of the cotton gin, surely one of most significant moments in the history of agriculture. To demonstrate her point, she brought in some cotton bolls, pointing out the sharpness of the edges and the difficulty of extracting the seeds. 

In other words, to show the importance of the cotton gin to the economic development of the country, especially the South, she showed students what the alternative would be. (Curmie remembers his own experience of cotton bolls when he was about 8. They’re nasty things to deal with by hand.) This might not be inspired teaching, but it is good teaching, and it ought to be applauded. Remember, the lesson was about the cotton gin. 

Ah, but you see, it was slaves who had been tasked with the job of rendering the bolls suitable for turning into fabric, slaves whose hands were injured in the process. So the lesson about the importance of a technological advance wasn’t really about that at all; it was… well, it was very, very, bad, whatever it was. 

Literally the day after that lesson the school director, Fernando Aguilar, was apologizing (!) for the “unacceptable, harmful” and “inappropriate” teaching that did not reflect the school’s “anti-racist, progressive-minded curriculum.” Oh, horseshit. Speaking as someone who considers himself both anti-racist and progressive-minded (albeit in the conventional meaning of those terms, not their Woke definition), do NOT, Idiot Administrator, link me to this foolishness. Actually, that’s not the right term. “Foolishness” implies triviality. This is an attack on the entire purpose and function of education. It’s a lot worse than merely foolish. 

Of course, the school manages to enlist testimony from professional victims grand-standing jerks parents and from the Wide World of Academe. Apparently teachers aren’t allowed to… you know… teach about slavery except as some abstract evil. No, actually it was a quite concrete, real-world, phenomenon. Providing students—black, white, or otherwise—with a tangible demonstration of one of the effects of that system strikes career educator Curmie as excellent pedagogy. 

Ah, but we might “trivialize the subject” or “traumatize the children,” according to Hasan Kwame Jeffries of Ohio State. He also fears “re-trauma.” Where the hell does that “re-“ come from? Junior high students today have never suffered from slavery, or even segregation. That prejudice still exists is undeniable. But it isn’t in the same universe as the conditions of the mid-19th century and before. And Jeffries’s objection to “any kind of simulation, any kind of re-creation” does not sit well with this theatre professor who deals with what Aristotle called “the imitation of an action” on a daily basis. 

Meanwhile, parent Rebecca Archer whines that putting raw cotton in the hands of black or mixed race students “evoke[s] so many deeply hurtful things about this country,” and offers the penetrating insight that students don’t need to have first-hand experiences with slave labor to have empathy for slaves. Sigh. 

Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim victimhood because your great-great-great-grandparent experienced slavery and simultaneously forbid anything that gives the slightest whiff of what slaves experienced. Nor is Curmie persuaded that holding a cotton boll for a few seconds is much akin to slavery per se. We either talk about slavery or we don’t. And Curmie is all in on “we do.” 

The object is not to make kids, whatever their heritage, feel bad about themselves—Curmie feels neither guilt nor shame for what happened over a century and a half ago hundreds of miles from any place his forebears lived; nor should anyone else, irrespective of their age, race, religion, or indeed any other demographic criterion. These moments in history are perhaps uncomfortable. That’s not merely OK; it’s a good thing, at least by the time a student is in junior high. Ripping off the scab of ignorance so the wounds can be disinfected is far preferable to allowing them to fester. 

One of the few voices of reason in the education establishment is Zeus Leonardo, who, in addition to having a remarkably cool name, is a professor in UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. He observes that “Being uncomfortable is part of learning, and part of the learning is in the discomfort.” Yes! 

Of course, there are those who need to be perceived as victims or they would evaporate like dew in an Arizona August morning. If they can’t complain that the real history of this country isn’t being taught, they’ll complain that it is. Naturally, the teacher in question was suspended for five weeks, and one can reasonably suspect that her subsequent apology was coerced as a condition of her reinstatement. It has all the authenticity of the fake confessions of American POWs in the Korean War. The problem here goes beyond punishing a teacher for doing nothing wrong. Her travails are the direct result of doing something right.  Humiliating good teachers for doing their jobs has become a blood sport.  This must stop.

If Curmie has learned anything in a teaching career that stretches over six decades, it’s two things: 1). Someone will always claim to be better at my job than I am…until they have to actually do it. 2). The real division in educational philosophy isn’t between liberals and conservatives, although it often appears that way. It’s between those who seek the truth and those who, thinking they’ve found it, attempt to impose their ideology on others. Curmie has known any number of excellent teachers from across the entire political spectrum; they’re from the former category. And there are plenty of doctrinaire bullies across the full range of political persuasion, too. Guess which category they’re from. 

The struttings of conservative yahoos who, for example, believe that romantic relationships between men and women can be “innocent” (a.k.a. asexual), but any same-sex couple is not only inherently founded on sexuality, but overtly about the act itself rather than the relationship: these people drive me crazy. But I’m most ashamed of those who have strayed so far from the the etymology of the term “liberal” (Latin for “free” or “unfettered”) that the description is precisely as apt as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” I just want to slap them all. (Note: snowflakes of all varieties being what they are, I hasten to add that I want to slap them, but have no intention of doing so. Don’t want to get sued or prosecuted…) 

Closing thought: Curmie and Beloved Spouse have been watching the old “Cosmos” series from 1980. Big quote from tonight’s episode: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or politics, but it is not the path to knowledge.” Yeah, what Carl Sagan said.