That sounds like a great way to create an unequal school system. Which I’m pretty sure is unconstitutional.
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If you have kids in your school who are Holocaust deniers, you have way bigger problems than whether a certain graphic novel is read. The professional educators in your district are failing to teach history if that is the case, and your deference to their curriculum is inappropriate.
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Maybe, but people are starting to consider alternatives.
@roycroftmom why did the educators fail- the kids were in a class called Holocaust and Genocide?? They joined it to cause trouble.
@vpa2019 Like I said before- I think all of this rumbling is about taking down public education. Guess I’m not off about thinking that.
Yes, if parents concerns are dismissed and discarded they’re going to petition their legislators for redress. Telling them to shut up and sit down isn’t well received. Many parents have already pulled their kids out of public school or are homeschooling them.
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If there are kids in his district who are Holocaust deniers it’s likely because they come from households with bigots for parents. Professional educators teach about the Holocaust, unless the curriculum was impacted by the ignorant preferences of… bigoted parents. To blame educators is absurd.
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No, professional educators do not always teach about the Holocaust. They should, but they do not always. Sad to say, your confidence is sorely misplaced. It seems sometimes educators begin history studies with the pilgrims or thereabouts, and run out of time in the school year around the time they get to post civil-war reconstruction. Some states mandate and test students to ensure coverage of important historical topics, but not all do.
One would think the topic would be covered, but it certainly was not for me or my siblings in NY public schools in the 1970s. Hopefully that has been rectified, but examples like this help explain why there is not always deference to educators’ expertise.
Vietnam was not covered for me. We just stopped- I think it was because it was controversial.
You are very incorrect about your assumption about it being the educator’s fault. My kids most definitely learned about the holocaust before that class- in multiple classes. Since it was an IB class I’m pretty sure it was well covered. Holocaust denial is sadly a real thing.
That your default is to blame educators rather than parents is telling. The school in question covered the topic.
I appreciate that some schools / teachers might proceed at a poor pace and run out of time. That’s often an issue of either resources or experience, not one owing to the willful omission of material. The remedy in those rare instances is more resources, curricula standardization, and testing, not parental involvement.
Beyond that, your personal experience in the 1970s is a non-sequitur. There is more standardization and testing in most states, now, and the Holocaust has greater importance in curricula.
If the subject isn’t taught to a particular student, it’s likely because history courses are being increasingly eschewed in favor of STEM classes by parents who only see the value of education as it relates to future job prospects.
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I live in an area where our school board has been on the news multiple times of late over controversial issues. I can assure you the loud “rabble rousers” represent a very small minority of opinions here. They are a very organized (outside groups are involved) and funded. They get a lot of publicity not given to those with opposing/less extreme views.
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And then there’s this disturbing news about a bill introduced by a state senator who supports banning books.
No, kids come into school believing what they’ve already been taught, from parents, friends, and any other influential “other” in their lives whether that’s FB or a neighbor or similar.
Schools teach what’s out there, in math, science, history, and more. We can’t open minds to get students to believe it, esp when influential folks on the “other” side of whichever topic continue to point out how wrong the school’s view is.
A lot of students get sent to private schools or homeschool if they dare vary from parental teaching. Parents don’t want their offspring learning “that garbage!” It fits right along with book banning and overseeing what gets taught. (I’m NOT saying all homeschool or send to private school for this reason - but a lot do.)
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That could have been your school. In mine we spent two years doing American history (8th and 11th) and made it all the way up to and including the Vietnam war. One of our history teachers had a wife who was a survivor of the Holocaust. She showed us her tattoo once and otherwise wore long sleeves to keep it covered.
H’s school in NC stopped history with/after “The War of Northern Aggression.” (He was far less prepared for college than my NY public school!) Even so, he knew about the Holocaust. It didn’t take a history class to teach about it, though we definitely discussed a bit of our high school experience differences. Schools definitely varied.
I expect the Holocaust denial believers now come from conspiracy theorist influencers. I don’t think anyone denied it back in our day.
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This seems to be the problem on any controversial issue these days. The most extreme voices (on both sides) are the loudest and well represented, but these voices don’t represent the majority view.
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Most parents who choose private or homeschool or charter schools do so in a search for higher academic standards, smaller class sizes, fewer discipline distractions, some exposure to religious
values, or flexibility to schedule time-consuming extracurriculars like elite sports.
I know many public school teachers who send their kids to private schools. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to schooling.
I did not have K12 public school children on zoom, but apparently some of the parents who did were very surprised and unhappy at learning what was happening in the classroom. They shouldn’t have been surprised, and both parties will have to work together to address the unhappiness.
I am sure my classmates all knew about the Holocaust; most of us had fathers who fought in WW2. Still no excuse for not covering it.
Because I’m not supposed to believe all the parents when they told me their reasons? I homeschooled my own for 4-6 years each to get better academics. I was the only one I know of IRL (vs online where I found others doing the same) who did it for those reasons.
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I don’t deny that it was your experience, just wondering about your community where it would occur. Most large urban areas in the US have a strong private school system as well, and about 10 percent of kids nationwide attend private school. I never met anyone who pulled their kid out of public school for curriculum reasons ( other than lack of rigor) but apparently you do.
Perhaps both of us are atypical.
I took my kiddo to the school library 10 years ago to find one of the “Little House” books….no “Little House in The Big Woods” and no “Little House on The Prairie”….the librarian said they were banned for violence and insensitive terminology.
Then that will presumably be demonstrated (one way or another) next election time. Personally I think that it is crazy having so many elected officials in the US (elected judges are a particularly problematic issue, and who needs an elected coroner, tax collector or sheriff?). Other democracies make these decisions at a higher level of government and have many more non-political appointees.
But it is what it is. And in some ways accountability is good, for example having a forum where you can express views about the curriculum (or other issues such as reopening schools) is a pressure valve that is absent elsewhere.
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Nope. We ALL pay tax dollars to schools, whether or not we have kids in them. My kids haven’t been in public school since 2004. My tax dollars go to a public good. Just like yours and just like parents and just like non-parents.
Just as our tax dollars pay for roads we might not drive on, and fire-fighters we hope we never need, and medical research for things we don’t have, and libraries whether we take a book out or not, and all the other shared resources that make a nation work.
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