Afnity groups ofend parents

What do you do when you’re an entitled parent in LM with free time, disposable income, an excess of self-importance, and a Daily Wire+ subscription? File a complaint.

After years of trolling the left for their sensitivity training, identity politics, and intolerable tolerance, the Right has returned to their beloved pastime of platforming issues that nobody who thinks critically cares about. Though critical thinking, at all, seems to be a trigger word these days; Critical Race Theory, for example, has evidently lost all meaning and become a strawman for the Right due in no small part to buzzword enthusiasts like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. Their new slingshot in the perceived David-andGoliath culture war comes in the form of an organization called Parents Defending Education (PDE). Int- entionally vague, their website is bare of any tangible action or change made on behalf of the group because, as far as Internet is aware, they haven’t caused any. Despite their identifcation as a grassroots organization, oppositional activists have labeled PDE “astroturf,” a colorful alternative parading as a political movement. Their essential causes against vaccines, masking protocols, CRT, and most recently, gender ideology, all stem from the same anti-establishment vigor that plagues the American Right today. Their newest target: race-based programs in LM. For many racially-marginalized students, being in a supportive environment that reafrms their identity can ameliorate the discomfort they may feel attending a predominantly white institution like LM. But when you explain in plain terms the means that are necessary to make up for the diference between the high school experience for white and minority students, it can look ugly. It’s not super “color-blind” to acknowledge that sometimes what helps students of color most is a space to feel belonging within the school community and learn about the history of people who look like them–two things that classes outside of these programs can’t guarantee. If parents are upset about groups like REACH, Becton, and POWER teaching under-represented history only to minority students, they should advocate for the inclusion of these lessons in classes accessible to everyone. But they don’t. Instead, they grab onto buzzwords and throw them at necessary support systems until something sticks. This is how panic infltrates our collective psyche. Through half-baked psy-ops funded by the Koch brothers. This is how programs designed to support students of color become the target of campaigns that pass quietly through communities like ours, but leave irreparable damage. Coming in the form of Fox Nation guest appearances, scathing op-eds, or in this case, civil rights complaints fled to the U.S. Department of Education on the grounds of segregation, they chip away at community confdence in these programs’ purpose and existence, and over time, it becomes easier for these programs to become deprioritized. It’s what happened to the student-run Council for Racial Equity and Inclusion, to the ad-hoc School Board committee, to the teacher-stafed committee CARE–and if it happens to other afnity groups and programs, hundreds of students throughout the district will feel the efects. These programs are already over-exhausted and used beyond their initial purposes, responsible for supporting minority students in LM in every way the district administration fails to. Without any systemic change, they are the rope bridge mending an otherwise uncrossable gap between education for diferent groups of students. Still, the lawsuits will never cease. The incessant news cycle will always produce new fodder to use as ammunition against progress in our schools. However, LM has the power as a community to deny these non-issues the attention they seek, to refuse to validate hate as a diference in opinion or anything worth entertaining, and most importantly, to defend the few protections for marginalized students that actually work.

Indoctrination, education: who decides?

New College of Florida has long served as a fantastic option for students seeking a quality education at a lower price. Besides the high value education, New College is notorious for a liberal political identity. Minorities compose 36 percent of the student body while the school features a sizeable LGBTQ+ population. However, surrounding the campus is the conservative Sarasota county and far right local government spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis. New College’s status as a public university gives DeSantis authority over its board and say over its operations.

The Florida governor did not see eye to eye with the status of New College. DeSantis appointed six new conservative board members in hopes of modeling the school after Michigan’s Hillsdale College, a notoriously rightleaning university. DeSantis’ Communication Director Taryn Feske laid the basis of the decision in claiming “this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” but the intent is clear; DeSantis and new board members aim to fundamentally alter the political ethos of the school. The school’s liberal status was a result of the student body’s identity. Attempts to cultivate a conservative ethos are wrong not based on the political orientation, but rather on the active eforts to infuse politics into the school. Headlining some of the nominations to New College’s board are Matthew Spalding, the former vice-president of the Heritage Foundation, and conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Rufo, boasting a bachelors from Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, does not have a background in education. Although Spalding has served as conservative Hillsdale College’s Associate Vice President, his B.A. relates to politics while his Phd. is in philosophy as related to the government. Prior to his role at Hillsdale, Spalding was merely part of conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Both are emblematic of national conservative movements that attempt to restrict the instruction of critical race theory and LGBTQ+ culture. Instead of allowing for the free spread of ideas on a campus, DeSantis has stepped in to enforce his education, or rather, his ideology. The new school board includes activists instead of experts whose purpose is to change the direction of the school. DeSantis has moved on from the restructuring of New College’s board by ending instruction of the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies class in Florida. He commands that he wants “education, not indoctrination.” However, the instruction on aspects of Black history and replacement of college administrators with education “activists” begins to force students down a specifc ideology. Instruction on topics such as the KKK or the Black Lives Matter movement is not disposing students to support opinions in either group. It is merely broadening perspectives, merely educating. DeSantis’ use of his power to regulate what is taught in schools forces students to learn about only specifc topics. Indoctrination involves the use of instruction to teach a group to believe in certain topics. DeSantis, through his alterations to college administration and various curriculums, is attempting the indoctrination he simultaneously disparages.

Many criticize the majority liberal ideologies in schools and universities. They cite overwhelmingly liberal student bodies at various institutions and accuse them of restricting the free fow of ideas. While the restriction of ideas is problematic, bias will inevitably creep into classrooms regardless of teachers’ and schools’ eforts to remain bipartisan. In class discussions on current events, the way that one recounts an event is infuenced by the political status of their source. Experts even recognize that when instructing on current events, it is seemingly impossible for teachers to not mention their political values. The problem with the change of administration at New College is not the school’s switch from liberal to conservative values, but rather the state attempts to use the college to expand their political aims. The resistance to the trend of education is not being led by experts on the feld of education, but rather by self-ascribed education activists.

The acceptance of political activists who are more focused by the ideological stance of education than the interests of students is troublesome to broader educational trends. Students often joke about making themselves “more liberal” on certain class assignments to try to recieve higher grades. Yet, what would students do in the face of a curriculum that enhances certain political ideals? Allowing for the circulation of beliefs is diferent than cementing them in the curriculum.