Problem 1: An inability to understand the skeptics. Right up top, Armitage explains that “Pride Month” and Juneteenth moved her to contemplate her “obligation” to “cover the hard stuff” with her elementary students. She explains the tension she feels. On the one hand, “According to some parents, it is a teacher’s obligation to teach topics about gender and race. They believe educators may be the key to teaching tolerance and to make sure everyone is represented. It may literally save a life for a student to see themselves in a book.” On the other hand, she observes, “To others in the community, it is not a teachers’ [sic] place to discuss the uglier sides of American history.”
The woke response is about saving lives! The second one? It’s pretty weak sauce. It sounds like those parents are so dead-set on hiding the ugly parts of American history that they don’t care about tolerance or saving a kid’s life. Truth is, the lion’s share of Americans are fine with teaching the bad stuff. What they don’t want is teachers imposing ideology, preaching gender dogma, reducing identity to pigmentation, or pretending American history is one long parade of horribles. There’s nothing to suggest that Armitage gets this.
Lesson 1: Don’t belittle those who voice concerns—listen to them. Work to understand how a diverse community thinks about these issues. A huge source of backlash against schools was that educators and advocates who claimed to be inclusive really weren’t.
Problem 2: Disregarding the teacher’s job description. Armitage laments, “Even saving our planet from climate change is considered controversial. I recently attended a virtual conversation about climate education convened by Harvard University’s free webinar series. The webinar’s advice? Teachers need to be discussing it in school. Immediately, a teacher chimed in that their discussions on climate change have been met with resistance from the community.”
How to say this nicely? First, Armitage is a music teacher. It’s not clear that she was hired to teach about climate change or is qualified to do so. Second, it’s not obvious that the urgings of Harvard’s webinar series should dictate what teachers should cover. Third, while I could be wrong, I suspect any resistance to lessons on climate change has less to do with acknowledging science and more with concerns about manipulative efforts to stoke the anxieties of eight-year-olds or use the classroom as a forum for value-laden diatribes.
Lesson 2: Respect the limits of the job. A music teacher’s job is not to serve as a roving conduit for the things that Ivy League advocates would like to see schools do. It’s to, you know, teach music. While there’s some fuzziness at the boundaries between subject areas, you’ve got to stretch the imagination pretty far to work climate change into musical training. Nobody expects the police to preach on the exigencies of global warming when they make a traffic stop. (“Do you have any idea how much carbon you were emitting, sir?”) We ask them to do their job responsibly and leave the moral exhortation to preachers and politicians. That’s a good credo for educators, too.
Problem 3: Allowing edu-consultants to lead you astray. Armitage seems to have lost track of the content that’s relevant and age-appropriate for an elementary school music class. Such wandering makes it too easy to be pushed around by any ideologue with an agenda. For instance, Armitage recounts how she was persuaded by a guest speaker to treat Thanksgiving as a chance to share tales of American villainy:
Earlier this school year, a presenter at my district’s November diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop encouraged us to embrace Thanksgiving as an opportunity to cover the dark history of this holiday. Many of my colleagues were resistant. To protect themselves from parent complaints, some colleagues focused on gratefulness, an age-old Thanksgiving tradition. They knew that the real story of Thanksgiving would put them at big risk for criticism.
The next week, Armitage explains, “I told my students that despite the prevailing story of Thanksgiving, it wasn’t a harmonious collaboration between settlers and Indigenous communities. Instead, their land had been stolen. I told them how the early settlers had brought disease to the people native to this land.” While parents complained that their young kids had come home talking about a lesson that graphically detailed “the deaths of Indigenous people,” Armitage notes that her principal “had attended the same DEI training” and was willing to play defense on her behalf.
Lesson 3: Don’t get pushed around by advocates with agendas. There’s a cottage industry of presenters, trainers, and consultants urging educators to adopt their pet passions. Resist! At a bare minimum, give it more than a week or two before you decide to embrace “the dark history” of Thanksgiving. Take a beat and ask yourself whether this is content you’re meant to cover and whether it’s appropriate for the kids you’re teaching—whatever the advocates for “social justice education” might say.
