Education: not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

A few weeks ago we discussed the dangerous lies about teachers and librarians told by national agitators and how they use them deliberately to frighten good people in our community, with the goal of discrediting public neighborhood schools. This strategy is manipulative and deceitful.

The danger of these types of lies staggers the imagination. Recall the near catastrophe at Comet Ping Pong Pizza in Washington D.C. Known liars made up the worst kind of filth about what they said was happening in the basement there. Someone believed those lies and showed up armed with an AR-15 and fired 3 shots, demanding to be shown the basement so he could liberate the alleged victims, while families ducked for cover. Only then did he learn that there is no basement, no victims, no conspiracy, no nothing. The reputation of the restaurant and the lives of those who worked there have never returned to normal. They were harassed and smeared relentlessly and mercilessly, over cooked-up, outright lies, told by people who knew them to be lies. But even when the truth came out, the damage lasted.

That’s why it matters that all of us in Central Bucks know and say that our teachers and librarians do good work, that they are trained professionals who know different kids need different books, and that accepting each child for who they tell us they are counts simply as best practices. Welcoming the beautiful variety of our children and their backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs serves all the kids and all the families. And standing up to the lies we’ve been told by such as Chris Rufo or Moms for Liberty, is no more nor less than our civic duty.

In a pluralistic society, we must make clear that ALL the families are welcome in our schools: all faith traditions, all races, all ethnicities, all abilities, and all identities of every kind. Our schools do not choose which kids are more welcome than others; they welcome them all. Our variety is beautiful, vibrant, healthy, and a source of strength. And those different kids need different books to reflect and amplify their different experiences.

Any good teacher can tell you that a true learning community rests upon different learners, at different stages of their mastery of a subject. Kids thrive when they can talk to one another about the different books they read and the different ideas they took away from them.

We can easily see that lively debate improves our schools. We need to hear from everyone, benefit from every good idea, and include all the expertise available to us.

But in Central Bucks we’re seeing a worrying trend toward homogeneity and conformity.

We’re hearing from people who think that showing support for one set of marginalized and frequently bullied children somehow excludes or reduces other children, as if universal welcome is a zero-sum game. This is not the case. Our school board members, administrators, teachers, librarians, and staff have no business judging facts inherent to being human, nor the lifestyles or life choices of our families. 

Kids want to learn. The way they learn is to start where they are with what they know. To withhold books on certain topics is not only judgmental, controlling, and unconstitutional, it’s also dreadful educational practice.

No good librarian would restrict books about the cancer journey from a student who was battling cancer merely because it’s an uncomfortable topic. No one should deny students who have lost a relative to suicide the books they need to make sense of the trauma and feel the sense of connection and community to others that a good book can provide. We cannot understand how contemporary books of literary merit that contain small excerpts of sexual content qualify for censorship, but “classics” that also contain small excerpts of sexual content are protected. If kids know about these things, we must show them the respect of good books to understand them.

What we want is open inquiry, curiosity, creativity, the glorious and tentative reach to greater realms. Predetermined learning goals and anything at all that is standardized force conformity. Kids are not standardized.

As W.B. Yeats is believed to have said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” 

The point of school is absolutely NOT to turn out hundreds of the same kids, with the same knowledge and skills, according to industry’s wishes. Human students are not widgets. They are people. Individuals. Each one unique. A true education enhances that uniqueness, speaks to it, fosters it— because each unique individual has a unique gift to give to the world.

And that is precisely how our civic debate can unfold. We don’t need all our families to agree, but we do need to accommodate the differences. We don’t want an orthodoxy, we want a raucous harmony.

Those of us who speak about tolerance do not mean bland acceptance of everything with a vapid smile. No. We mean vibrant and sometimes messy debate. We mean taking seriously the right of every single family to raise their children as they see fit and every neighborhood school welcoming all the children, in all their variety, to learn and grow and thrive according to their gifts and values. 

We utterly reject, deny, and condemn the rubbish assertion that anyone ever gave kids pornography in any school library. We will deal with this at greater length in a future post.

When you hear this kind of fear-mongering, we invite you to discount it and ask some curious, respectful questions of the person who said it. Nobody wants kids to encounter X-rated content in our libraries and no librarian has ever stocked the shelves with it. This is a cooked-up lie. Like Comet Pizza.

We must argue from good faith and make room for beliefs other than our own. We can find ways for parents to protect their children from books too mature for them while safeguarding the right of other kids, whose parents believe they are ready for such books, to read them.

It’s a messy process, for sure. But power struggles, the desire to vanquish enemies, the depiction of those who disagree with us as “without a shred of morality” destroys the very vibrancy and variety we must embrace.

We aren’t all the same. We don’t need or want to be.

But we do want to create dazzlingly fantastic schools for ALL the kids.