All that bluster has little to do with education
Where I come from, people who have power and lord it over folks who don’t are never called heroes. They are called bullies. That’s what’s happening in Tennessee.
There is much dangerous foolishness occurring up on Tennessee’s Capitol Hill these days – from banning books to demonizing educators – and leaders who ought to know better are tolerating the nonsense.
Just when we thought our legislature could sink no lower as an institution, they surprise us with new bottommarks on the depth gauge – new levels of extremism in the Republican Party’s national culture wars.
None of this has much to do with actual education, schools curricula, library science, or tradition. It’s about a leaderless dysfunction in 2022.
In recent legislative committee meetings, too many elected officials sat silently by while the words “librarian” and “pornography” were tossed into the same sentences. No one is held accountable for such outrageous claims that the former secretly sponsors the other. This, of course, is nonsense.
How Tennessee leaders are acting like bullies
It is rather a pernicious form of modern Mccarthyism. But the screamers get away with this nonsense because duly elected legislators, who ought to know better, just sit there twiddling their thumbs or reading their email.
Banning books is what totalitarian regimes do on the other side of the world to clamp down on freedom. In America, we want our children to think, to confront and understand their world, to become discerning citizens. They must learn how to make good decisions themselves.
Teachers, librarians, and students also have been organizing in opposition to the reckless extremism. They are rallying in defense of truth and democracy. They all know how education actually happens – and are pushing back against the mindless pandering by “officials” who are following a strange national Republican playbook.
Where I come from, people who have power and lord it over folks who don’t are never called heroes. They are called bullies.
Over the past dozen months, the same sort of Republican groupthink has in fact continued to manifest itself in other ways.
Let’s review: h Gov. Bill Lee continues to insist, without much explanation, on his announced plan to contract with tiny Hillsdale College in Michigan to instruct our educators on how to teach better patriotism. No one has explained to me why Tennessee’s universities can’t do as good a job, or why such is needed at all.
h The broad new education “funding formula” the Lee administration has proposed for K-12 schools still begs deep financial questions. (The most penetrating so far have come from professional school superintendents like Dr. Adrienne Battle, Director of Metro Nashville Schools.) Yet some at the Capitol seem annoyed that anyone outside their offices might want more detail.
h The controversy over “critical race theory” may be the most reckless of all. This has become a major distraction to permit a sanitized version of American history that erases important realities of our society we all should remember.
Miscommunication abounds and mistrust follows
Today, parents and educators alike are in an uneasy phase of history over their schools. The current crop of policymakers seems unequipped (or unwilling) to broker genuine public discussion. In this leadership void, this decade has an unmoored, tremulous feel.
Nowadays too many untested politicians appear weak, unable to engage others forthrightly. Institutions that ought to be firm in their purpose – the General Assembly, for instance, and the Tennessee Department of Education – instead are communicating mixed messages. Mistrust follows along behind, and in the void we all worry.
The real shame is that so many duly elected officeholders who ought to know better seem to have so little understanding of their own duty in our democracy. So little regard for the good questions of their own constituents.
Tennesseans are better than this. It is time for the rest of us to push back against this throwback strain of anti-intellectualism that now sits heavily on our Capitol Hill.
Let your representative know where you stand and why.
Keel Hunt is a columnist for the USA TODAY Tennessee Network and the author of three books on Tennessee politics and culture. Read more at www.keelhunt.com