The ides of March
Let sensibility in education prevail
Idus Martiae, commemorated on March 15, marked the death of Julius Caesar, in 44 B.C., at the hands of his enemies before the Roman Senate, and informs an important political moment in world history. Caesar’s death was a substantial turning point in the future of the Roman Republic, and it opened doors for scholarly and artistic work aimed at comprehending power and democracy in society, including representation, moral reasoning, rationality, ethics, and justice.
This year, March 15 also denotes the advent of a welcomed respite from academic life: spring break. It arrives as this needlessly difficult school year for Arkansas’ teachers nears its merciful end. Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned scholar, has been tracking state legislation limiting what schools can teach regarding race, sex, gender, and broader aspects of American history. He opined, “I think it must be a very terrifying time to be an educator at any level in higher-ed or in K-12.”
Last year began with Gov. Sarah Sanders’ broad attack on education, including claims that teachers are indoctrinating students. Additionally, she took aim at the teaching of race and history through an executive order banning the teaching of critical race theory, claiming it was “antithetical” to American values. She followed with her public opposition to the teaching of AP African American History because it constituted “indoctrination.”
As if that is not enough, Governor Sanders shamelessly attacked, also by executive order, transgender students at school. “Women are women,” her order said. Of course, her aim was to compel students to identify with their prescribed gender at birth rather than what they believe defines their identity and require them to use specified bathrooms to reinforce, cruelly and submissively, that the state controls their liberty.
As former president John Adams noted, “liberty once lost is lost forever.”
Then there is the governor’s relentless assault on public libraries. Apparently, Sanders believes that providing for and supporting learning should be punitive, criminal even. She is wrong, of course, yet Saline County Judge Matt Brumley, perhaps desperate to showcase his fidelity to the governor’s punitive culture war, relieved former library director Patty Hector, a seven-year employee, from her position because she would not ban books.
Hector responded, “In a democracy, you have to have a choice for democracy to work. You can’t have some party having a supermajority and being able to control the local government.”
Bravo. Libraries, like classrooms, are havens for knowledge. As former president Dwight Eisenhower urged, “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.”
The LEARNS Act codified the governor’s inimical approach to education into law. Well-regarded and long-standing Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons opined in the Chicago Sun-Times that it “would re-segregate Arkansas schools—by race, by class and by religion.”
Unfortunately, Governor Sanders remains intent on turning back the clock. As she has said, “we cannot perpetuate a lie to our students and push this propaganda leftist agenda, teaching our kids to hate America and hate one another. It’s one of the reasons that we put into law banning things like indoctrination.” This approach aligns similarly with authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, and Hungary.
To borrow from the Book of Proverbs: “Fools despise wisdom.”
Assailing education and intellectualism while stoking social and racial division may afford the governor the illusion of perpetuating power, but that is all that it does.
Meanwhile, nationally, Arkansas ranks near the bottom in every education metric. The governor’s current approach to education policy was engineered by out-of-state special interests and will not address, much less solve, our present dilemma. To improve, our state would do considerably better by celebrating rather than demagoguing the virtues of the education: free inquiry, unadulterated speech, and serious argument balanced with civility and respect alongside a broad acceptance that education works best when it is unbound from draconian restrictions of the state.
Spring is approaching and soon wildflowers will bloom statewide. I am hopeful that sensibility in education will ultimately prevail. That outcome becomes more probable if those who celebrate education, including academic freedom, tolerance, the pursuit of knowledge, and the virtue of reason repudiate the misanthropic Sanders-era attitude that has dominated this year of anxiety and fear for Arkansas’ teachers.