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On Tyranny: Lessons for Educators 5

Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient public servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

What are ethics? According to dictionary.com, ethics are “the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.” Also, “a system of moral principles.”

Most states have ethical codes for teachers. You can find Florida’s here. It’s subdivided into three categories regarding obligations to students, the public, and the profession.

Florida’s code of educator ethics is based upon the model code developed by the NEA (National Education Association.) It’s based upon an educator’s obligations to students and the profession.

Among the ethical obligations are not to restrain the freedom to learn even that experienced through independent action, to ensure equal opportunity for all, allow access to varying points of view, and not to suppress or distort subject matter so as not to impede a student’s progress in learning.

Living through these dystopian times, aren’t we seeing the subversion of quality education as these ethical obligations are plowed under much as a Deere harvester machine mows, threshes, and leaves the residue behind for a plow to turn under the ground?

Public schools, despite all the attempts to end them, have stubbornly held on. Much of that has come as educators have resisted the reforms that have worked to park students in front of computers for the entire school day (independent action NOT,) resegregate schoolhouses through the use of charter schools and targeted marketing (equal opportunity NOT,) script curriculums and assign test preparation that steer students to the one allowed answer (varying points of view NOT,) and remove books from school libraries, suppress Black history courses, and eliminate anything other than Lost Cause-inspired views of history (suppress or distort subject matter YES.)

“When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.” Educators following the ethical code must maintain their ethical commitments and follow through as necessary.

No one is saying this is easy, but no one is saying that it means being combative or self-righteous as an educator goes about her daily work. Every educator has to determine how to navigate the path they are on. Authoritarians come in many guises and they work on many levels in a district’s bureaucracy. The first thing an educator can do is learn how to recognize them.

Then, resist. Don’t be an obedient public servant. What form and action that takes depends upon an educator and their circumstances. But don’t become complicit and a tool of the forces decimating public education. The ethical commitment to students and the profession demand it.

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On Tyranny: Lessons for Educators 4

Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and other symbols of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so. (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 4.)

The symbols of hate are around you because our students are as divided as we are. Do not look away.

I’m not going to define for you symbols of hate. You know what they are. But I will share a few memories from my teaching career that show division.

Black Lives Matter did not begin with the killing of George Floyd. The movement came into being after the killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman. Sometime afterward, the clapback began with Blue Lives Matter (police.)

This played out in one of my classes. One boy felt strongly about supporting the police, wore blue silicon bracelets, and other items that made his feelings clear. Other students took exception and muttered in the back of the classroom about how they were offended. It became one more problem for classroom management and keeping the peace.

We were supposed to be the safe school, the one where a large LGBTQ+ community existed and teens could find their people. Yet, there were students on the other side of that culture war. I was always on the lookout for brewing trouble.

Teenagers have a talent whereby they can say things to their peers just loud enough to be heard by their target, but not the teacher. They can act in passive-aggressive ways to stay out of trouble. There was an incident in another classroom where a LGBTQ student was getting more and more upset. The alert teacher realized she was being bullied by the student next to her and moved to intervene.

I have had a student complain about bits of pencil being thrown at him. The offenders were careful to do it in a way that I would not see. Being alerted, I then caught them at it.

The symbols of hate that show up in school are not always tangible. We, as educators, have to be on the alert and not look away. We cannot dismiss divisiveness in our classrooms as not belonging in our subject area, for example, math or science. We have to address it.

Sometimes, that means taking a student aside for a quiet conversation about what they are doing and that it won’t be tolerated. Sometimes, that means a conference to facilitate communication and provide a means for students to understand one another. Sometimes, that means consulting with the school counselors to get a bigger picture. If there’s one adult in the building who has knowledge about the undercurrents, it’s the counselor.

It can mean setting the tone for the classroom and making it a place of mutual respect. At the beginning of every school year, I worked to establish my mathematics classroom as a place where it was okay to make mistakes, even encouraging students to make mistakes because that is how humans learn: experimentation, failure, and reflection on better or different ways to approach a problem.

Students would put solutions to problems on the whiteboard. I never said right or wrong. I asked the class to give feedback. “Do we agree on this solution? Or does someone have an alternative to propose?” The best classes happened when students disagreed on the solution and through the back-and-forth came up with the correct answer.

Hate is best met with openness and discussion with others. This is the approach of restorative justice, a process that some unfamiliar adults condemn, because they do not understand it and what it can and cannot do. That makes it ripe for culture war issues.

The culture wars, a neat little euphemism we’ve used for decades to we can avoid the reality of the division and hatred inherent in the phrase, attitudes, and actions of those who engage.

“Take responsibility for the face of the world.” What we do today sets the stage for what people do tomorrow. If we are to put aside the divisiveness and hate, which is not to say that we cannot disagree on matters of little and great importance, we know what we need to do: tone down the rhetoric, stop trolling on social media, and talk reasonably with others, not hyperbolically.

School is a good place to start.

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The Tesla Tank

I will not offend your eyeballs or your ears with a picture or a mention of that vehicle. Suffice it to say that today I saw two on the brief stretch of interstate I use between my library branch and home. It still is ugly to my eyes, even if one owner painted theirs all black and another painted theirs with a black roof and olive green sides. I kept an eye out for flying side panels.

The Rise and Fall of the Elon Empire.

This is the tank I’m talking about–the tumble in stock price of Elon Musk’s central business, one that has lost 48% of its value from its peak in mid-December till now. (Although this is a concern for Musk, it does not mean his house of financial cards is about to fall. Note that today’s price is the same as it was in October.)

Around the world, Tesla has lost its cachet. 94% of Germans say they would never consider buying a Tesla. Sales are down across the globe. In America, Tesla owners are desperately trying to shed their vehicles, but Trump’s supporters are all-in on gasoline, not electric-fueled vehicles.

Not to mention the competitive challenge Tesla faces as Chinese EVs (Electric vehicles) overtake it. Tesla is the overpriced Macbook to Chinese Windows-running computers. But the snob appeal is gone as Musk has become in only two months a toxic personality that consumers loathe.

It’s so bad that the huckster-in-chief, the con of cons, the man who wrote the book on how to build and then ruin a brand, the man whose picture is on the page when you look up grifter in the dictionary, had to promote someone other than himself and staged a Tesla sell-a-thon in the driveway at the White House.

Why, it’s almost like parents CHOOSING to abandon their public school for one of the many options now available. Why are people who push hard for school CHOICE upset now that automobile owners are CHOOSING to abandon their Teslas for a different vehicle? Isn’t that their CHOICE?

Muskrat Love is NOT on my playlist.

Just as the Muskrat wielded a chainsaw on stage, one gifted to him by Argentine’s current president, Javier Milei, and said he would use it on the federal bureaucracy, including the Education Department, investors took a look at the stock price and rebelled. It seems Elon has become toxic and Tesla’s Board of Directors is concerned to the point of discussing his continuing involvement with the company. They also are looking out for themselves as they sell off their stock in the business.

Not even the best oligarchs can save this mess. Their expertise lies in monopolizing markets and taking choice away from consumers. Then, they can charge whatever they want, which is probably their end game. I used to think that they wanted parents to have to bear the full cost of educating their children, thereby eliminating public schools and school taxes. But the profit motive is strong–strong enough for them to want to eliminate public schooling as the most cost-efficient and effective means of delivering education to children so parents have no choice but to pick a profit-generating alternative.

Then again, I don’t think this is a universal plan among the ‘garchs. Some of them must be planning to replace their wage-busted undocumented workers, now deported or soon to be, with children. After all, if their parents can’t afford to send them to school, they are available to work. Isn’t this why states are weakening child labor laws?

What a dream! It’s as if the Gilded Age has returned in all its ugliness and fury as a few ‘garchs gather control of the entire economy into their hands. Vanderbilt, Morgan (JP), Gould, Carnegie, Rockefeller et al. approve.

We used to think Connect-The-Dots was a children’s game as we adults try to figure out what the ‘garchs and their stooge in the White House are really up to. Maybe it still is, but the children no longer hold the pencil. They are the dots.

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On Tyranny: Lessons for Educators 3

Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Beware one-party states. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office. (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 3)

I suppose I could write this post in one word: FLORIDA.

Florida, a state now suffering under super-majority Republican rule, which means the Democrats still in office cannot use the few privileges of a minority party to stop bad laws.

Combine that with a governor who pushed the power and reach of his office to unprecedented levels, who cowed the super-majority into supporting his policies and ambitions, and you have a state beyond the control of the people because the radical Republicans have hopelessly gerrymandered the state into an enduring network of fiefdoms. This despite the fact that Florida has Fair Districts Amendments in its constitution. See here for an explanation of how the amendments work and the shenanigans that followed.

I am disappointed in the impotence, ineffectiveness, and incompetence in the current Democratic leadership to form an effective opposition to Republican steamrolling both nationally and statewide. I have been ready to switch my registration back to NPA, but then I thought, if I live in a one-party state, maybe I should grit my teeth and register Republican because the real choice to be made is in the primary.

But I cannot stomach that thought or take that action. In the afterlife, I don’t want to have to explain why I got into bed with devils.

What has been the effect of this one-party state, one with the most extreme of radical educational reformers destroyers?

  • Unlimited vouchers most of which now go to people who already were paying for the children to attend private or parochial schools.
  • Book-banning in which the school library is restricted to only those books that contain the correct thinking.
  • Abstinence-only sex education for adolescents, which has been shown to impair health and increase unwanted pregnancy.
  • A testing regime that goes on and on even when it has lost its purpose.
  • The casting aside of elected officials on the flimsiest of excuses, a phenomenon that cannot have escaped the notice of elected school board members.
  • A state school board made up of sycophants and toadies, whose only purpose is to serve coffee and donuts and receive marching orders written on napkins.
  • A take-over of universities, all for the purpose of purging academic freedom that goes back 1000 years to the first centers of education and for pillaging the finances and rewarding presidents, whose only qualification consists in shouting, “Hear, here,” to the governor.
  • A state mired in mediocre or worse academic achievement in its schools no matter how loudly it blasts the success of the Florida model.

Beware one-party states, America. Don’t be Florida.

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On Tyranny: Lessons for Educators 2

Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Defend Institutions. It is institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after another unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about–a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union–and take its side. (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 2)

Snyder teaches us from history that authoritarian leaders who have come to power through institutions seldom eliminate them. They change them from within to support their program.

Isn’t that what’s happened to public education? Men like JEB! Bush, Ron DeSantis and Richard Corcoran (in your own state, you will find suitable names to substitute,) organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Fordham Institute, and other think tanks (too many to list them all,) did not set out to abolish public schools. They sought to change them into something different, something that would support their ideas about how education should be delivered.

First, they changed the environment in which public schools operated. They took a developing institution that was meant for experimentation to find better ideas for schools and turned it into a profit-churning machine. I’m speaking of charter schools.

They convinced the parents and society-at-large that public schools were failing and then, when charters performed and still perform worse, they shifted to convince everyone that parents should have a choice, but a choice funded by taxpayer dollars who then had no choice over how their money was spent.

It was not a pivot; it was a developing narrative to achieve change from within and to transform the institution of public education into supporting the greater aims of the reformers, which we are now only seeing in such efforts as Project 2025.

Once parents and others believed that they had the right to choose and the right to force taxpayers to fund their choice, they moved on to their next steps. You might think I’m talking about vouchers for private schools, but I’m not. That’s part of the plan, but they have something greater in mind.

They were coming for the schools; they were always coming for the schools. Schools are places of learning, where children learn their history, learn about others, and discover themselves. Schools instill values, it’s inherent in what they do, and across the many decades of existence, those have been the values of democracy.

If the authoritarians and throw-back-to-antebellum years thinkers were to be successful, they had to convert schools into teaching their values. So first, they came for the teachers.

They introduced VAM scoring, a complicated formula that no one understood and created a mess that brought lawsuits and suicides. Not that they were bothered by that.

They mandated that teacher performance would be determined by a flawed-at-best testing system dominated by corporations trying to turn a buck out of the demand for accountability.

They undermined the longstanding system of school accreditation, a system that might have needed reform but did not need annihilation.

After convincing too many people that teachers were lazy and greedy, they moved on to call them indoctrinators and groomers.

First they came for the teachers, because teachers were the first and most fervent defenders of the institution of public education. But individuals were well regarded by parents, so they turned their fire upon teacher unions, as if those unions were anything more than groups of individual teachers organized to look out for their interests.

As everyone does.

Next, they came for the curriculum. CRT, DEI, all red herrings to disguise the real purpose–that public schools, still the runaway choice of most parents–of determining what children will and will not be taught.

The institution of public education remains under attack, but not for demolition. They seek to convert it into a tool of their means.

Defend it as if the next generations depend upon it. They do.

NPE, the Network for Public Education, will gather in Columbus, Ohio next month. They are the greatest collection of the defenders of the institution. If all works out, I’ll be able to post in real-time what’s taking place.

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Cold As Ice: Update #2

The contagion spreads. Last week, I described a new policy issued on a pre-emptive basis for what Duval County (FL) Public Schools should do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows up at the door. Then, the School Board’s attorney explained his reasoning for issuing his memo establishing the new policy, which resulted in an update. But it seems this will be the never-ending story and thus, a never-ending series.

From Florida Today, as reposted by the Florida Times-Union: Six central Florida school districts have issued their own policies regarding what to do if ICE shows up. Spoiler alert: it’s worse than Duval. The six districts are Brevard, Orange, Volusia, St. Lucie, Osceola, and Seminole.

  • Verify ICE agent’s identity via badge, photo ID, or business card. (Business card?! As in all it takes is a trip to a local print shop in order to gain access to schoolchildren?)
  • Warrants are not needed for ICE to gain access to a campus, although agents must sign in and out following visitor procedures in the front office.
  • Administrators should attempt to contact parents before agents interview their child, but if the agents tell the school not to, they shall comply with the order.
  • Administrators should attempt to remain in the room during the interview, but if the agents order them to leave, they shall comply with the order.
  • If a child is arrested, the parents should be informed immediately, except in Brevard, which says that is the responsibility of the law enforcement agency, which in this case would be ICE. In St. Lucie and Osceola, if ICE directs the school not to notify parents, that should be documented.
  • St. Lucie, Volusia, and Seminole districts warn employees that they are subject to arrest or other legal consequences if they do not follow the directions given to them by ICE.
  • A subpoena or court order is needed for ICE to access student records.

Credit to Finch Walker of Florida Today, who investigated and wrote the story. (Sorry for the paywall, but the USA Today chain does not give subscribers the ability to gift articles like the New York Times or Washington Post.)

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo, school employees are told to follow ICE orders even if not legal or they will end up in the slammer themselves. As for the children, they have the right not to answer questions and request a lawyer, but, as an ACLU lawyer notes, that’s really hard for someone so young to do as they are conditioned to follow the directions of adults and answer questions, especially on school campuses.

It’s hard to say where this is going. Most of what’s been done and publicized by the new administration has been for show. In reality, detention centers are full, the Trump-derided-as-catch-and-release (a fisherman’s conservation principle) policy is still being followed, and ICE lacks by magnitudes the resources needed to carry out what the Trump campaign bragged what it would do on its first day.

However, it is alarming that these school districts are falling into line ahead of an actual need. They signal they are ready, able, and willing to help deny the rights of children, all children regardless of immigration status, to a free and appropriate public education.

As for now, due to a 1990 court case between the Florida State Board of Education and various advocacy groups, schools are not allowed to ask immigration status when enrolling children, schools may not refer students to ICE, and, as noted, may not deny educational services based upon immigration status.

I wonder how long that will last.

Posted on by grumpyoldteacher · 3 Comments

Cold As Ice

Long before ‘Ice, Ice, Baby,’ this was the quintessential song:

Please, please, Facebook algorithm, I’m sharing a YouTube video, not impersonating.

What a field day we could have with the lyrics! But this piece is about the legal advice recently given to principals in my local school district, Duval County Public Schools (FL), and while this post may embarrass them, which the Board is turning into a fireable offense, I am retired and beyond their reach.

What should school officials do if ICE agents (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) show up at the door demanding access to students?

The legal department issued a memo that outlined the approach school employees should take: ICE agents are law enforcement officers; therefore they should be accommodated no different than what the school system would do for JSO (Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office) officers.

  • Allow them to come onto school property. They do not need a warrant.
  • If they ask to speak to a specific student, accommodate them but remember to notify the student’s parents immediately, stay with the student until the parents arrive, and remain present during the interview.
  • If they ask to speak to a group of students, call the legal department.
  • If they ask for access to student records, protect student rights. Call the legal department.
  • Do not give an exclusive listing of ELL/ESOL students. Any requests must include all students whose parents have not opted out of public directory listings.

Soooooooooooooooooooo, pretty much, go into a CYA approach and notify the legal department. There are no assurances about what actions they will or will not take.

To date, we are reassured, there has been no ICE activity in our county’s schools. But if you think that Stephen Miller and his minions haven’t figured out the schools are a weak point when it comes to resisting unlawful enforcement of immigration laws, we still have some worthless Florida swamp land for sale.

As with the tariffs, even the threat of ICE action has a detrimental effect. Canadians have pulled American imports off their store shelves as they refuse to purchase them. If you want a historical parallel, think back to 1983 when the Soviets shot down a South Korean plane that strayed over Sakhalin Island and, in response, American bars poured their stocks of Stolischnaya vodka down the sink.

Teachers across the land are reporting that some students have stopped coming to school out of fear of ICE arrest or detention or that while at school, their parents will be taken and they will come home to an empty house. (I’d love to show social media screenshots or cite sources, but well, you know that in cases like these anonymity is best. Do your own research if you don’t trust me.)

Is it time to cue the biennial NAEP hysteria about falling test scores and American students falling behind? It’s hard for children to learn when they don’t feel safe. Since January 20, there have been mistakes including challenging the citizenship of Puerto Ricans on the mainland because they were overheard speaking Spanish. But we are told that “there are no free passes anymore.”

It’s not a new problem. We are hearing about ICE deporting U.S. citizens, but this has been happening for a while. “Oops, my bad,” is not sufficient for getting this wrong. What child carries a copy of their immigration papers daily into school just in case? Are we becoming Soviet Russia, where every one of us has to carry an internal passport to leave our houses?

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; hinder them not for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

What would he say today? Perhaps this: “You’re as cold as ice, you’re willing to sacrifice our love. You never take advice, someday you’ll pay the price, I know. I’ve seen it before …”

Someday we’ll pay. It begins with the children. What’s missing in that DCPS memo is what the principal should do when ICE says this child is illegally in the United States and we’re taking them with us. But hey, call legal.

Addendum: Since the original publication of this post, more has been learned:

Update : Duval County School Board attorney explains his rationale.

Update : Six Central Florida school districts have issued their own policies.

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Burn! (as That 70s Show Used to Say)

Wry humor, but with a kernel of truth. Often overlooked, safety is a huge consideration when parents try to choose a school for their children.

As we move into the third (or is it fourth) decade of school degradation and the end goal comes in sight, the charter wars have transmogrified into the voucher wars. Neither option is good for the preservation of a free and appropriate education for all children, but this is where we are as the second Trump administration takes hold of the levers of federal power.

As public education advocates continue to point out the issues and problems with using public money, that is, your tax dollars, to pay for private education that not all children can access, which include bankrupting state treasuries, first amendment issues as state resources are handed over to religious institutions, and the quality of education being provided … strange how the calls for school accountability die down when it comes to private education … all of which is appropriate and necessary, but are we forgetting a basic precept? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

No English teacher will sleep tonight as they hash over whether the above paragraph is a run-on sentence or not.

But that’s not Maslov. It’s a joke intended to make you smile before we dive into the gist of this piece.

I remember days gone by when parents would come into the school office griping about the school grade, “Wow. They have really bought into that BS.” And then trying to tell them about why the school is a good place for their children. Chief among those reasons are that we keep them safe.

I can’t speak for elementary, but when it comes to making the middle school transition, parents care less about academic quality, testing, and school grades than they do safety, fairness and equality (all kids are treated the same,) transportation, and food.

If you are on a level or in a stage of life where you can battle over funding and who’s getting it, I applaud you. You are doing good work to demand that states stop defunding public education.

But if you are a local teacher, administrator, or a low-level district staffer whose job is always on the chopping block of budget shortfalls, focus on that bottom level of the pyramid.

  • Will my child be fed or go hungry?
  • Will you provide reliable transportation?
  • Will my child be safe from bullying, fights, and other hazards of gathering hundreds of children into a building where only a few dozens of adults provide supervision?

If you can provide satisfactory answers to questions like these, parents will flock to your school to enroll their children. The fight to save public education will not be won at school board meetings, legislative town halls, or in the many avenues of opining.

It happens with each parent, one by one, to assure them that we care for their children as much as they do.

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Blatherskites

If you’re a C-Span junkie like me, you have been watching the Speaker vote in the House of Representatives, in which Mike Johnson fell short of election by two votes in the first round of voting, the official tally was delayed for about 45 minutes, two votes then switched, and the result was announced: Mike Johnson is re-elected Speaker.

The ceremonies commenced and Johnson is now blathering on about his agenda and his views on American government. Among the gems was this, “we must take back control of education from administrators and give it back to parents” or words to that effect.

As the late, great Joan Rivers would say …

Can we talk here? Will the blatherskites of education think tanks, Moms 4 Liberty, and foundations with an agenda stop for a moment? Can we just simply talk?

PARENTS HAVE ALWAYS CONTROLLED THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN.

THEY NEVER GAVE IT UP AND NO ADMINISTRATOR, TEACHER, SUPERINTENDENT, OR ANYONE IN BETWEEN HAS EVER SEIZED IT.

Maybe you’ve never been in a parent conference where the administrators danced around, berated the teacher, and ordered everyone within earshot to do exactly as the parent wants.

Maybe you’ve never received a district notice that a parent has lawyered up and everyone must appease the parent so the district doesn’t get sued.

Maybe you’ve never talked to neighbors about how they are sending their children to private school or parochial school because they don’t like their local public school option.

Maybe you’ve never attended a neighborhood block party where parents brag about ‘correcting’ the teaching of public schools and instilling their own values into their children.

Maybe you’ve listened too often too much to blatherskites like the late, not great Rush Limbaugh who never had children of his own.

What is a blatherskite, you may ask? From dictionary.com, it is “one who is given to voluble, empty talk,” which dates from the middle of the 19th century, was originally and remains mostly an Americanism. Blatherskite is a variant of Scottish bletherskate, which dates from the mid-17th century and is a compound of the verb blether or blather “to talk nonsense” and the Anglo-American slang word skate “person, contemptible person, broken-down horse.” Another variant, bladderskate, appears in the traditional Scottish song “Maggie Lauder,” which was popular among American soldiers during the American Revolution.”

Empty talk that goes on and on seemingly without end. You’re welcome for the new word of 2025 to add to your vocabulary.

But don’t be fooled, Parents are in control. Sometimes, they despair over their children’s adolescent agenda of breaking away. It is at those moments, during many parent conferences, when I would remind them that they remain the most important person in their children’s lives and that their children are always listening to them even when they seem to be most hateful.

As a wise counselor once said, “The adolescent must reject their parents’ values so that they can adopt them as their own.”

Parents have always been in control and will remain so.

Don’t let the politicians tell you different.