Fahrenheit 321
The week of January 23 was quite a week in CB, as you may know. Before we look at what happened, let’s take a look at what we said was going to happen if the board passed policy 321.
Origins:
We said that the policy began with a desire to strip the Pride Flag and any other symbols of support for small, vulnerable groups of students from our classrooms. The early drafts of the policy were explicit about this.
We also said that the policy presumed wrongdoing by teachers and some of our s.b. Members were straightforward about their accusations, none of which were more than mere anecdotes.
We said that all such problems should be handled, as they have always been handled, by building administrators speaking to parents, teachers, and kids to resolve hard feelings and educate teachers to do better, as needed.
We said that policy 321 privileged punishment over prevention, that the policy would lead to frightened teachers and no benefit to students.
The policy itself:
We said it was vague and would lead to confusion and misunderstanding, that all the well-meaning teachers would find no guidance and know nothing about what our board expected of them.
We said it would lead to a chilling of teachers’ willingness to address difficult issues, preferring to stay on the safe side.
We said teachers would take to heart the embedded contempt in the policy and morale would sink yet further than it already has.
We said it would lead to vulnerable kids feeling unsupported or attacked, with teachers powerless to help them.
The Results:
We said the policy would pit kids against teachers and staff against staff in a big game of Gotcha.
We said the policy, clear as mud, would prevent no problems but would lead to bitterness and misunderstanding.
We said the policy would lead to boring classrooms, boring schools, dead discussions, and a general egg-shells atmosphere of political correctness run amok.
We said the policy would cause more problems than it solved.
We said our most vulnerable kids would suffer the most.
And guess what? In one great blazing conflagration of “we wished we’d been wrong”, every single one of those points came true in a spectacular catastrophe at C.B. South.
In case you missed it, what happened was this. The librarian posted this quotation from the works of Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel:
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, someone had a problem with it and considered it in violation of policy 321. Was it or wasn’t it? Who could possibly say?
A building administrator told the librarian to take it down. He asked what would happen if he refused. There ensued “an awkward silence” and then the promise of punishment of some unspecified sort. The librarian thought about it and took the poster down, with a sorrowing heart.
You might at this point find it interesting to reread all the outcomes we predicted. This scenario has every single one of them. Please note that we do not blame the principal who was told to speak to the librarian. That person had no more guidance from the murky 321 than anybody else.
Our well paid PR firm has helpfully clarified (?) the situation (with some likely mistruths that assign undue wrongdoing to the librarian) saying that if the librarian had posted the quotation in support of literacy and urged kids to read Wiesel’s books, then it would have been fine! Totally fine!
The guy is a librarian. He attributed the quote to Wiesel. What did they think he was posting it for?
They’ve since told him that he can put the quotation back up (and boy did he!) Well, that’s all fine then, right? No harm, no foul?
Except for being threatened for doing your job,
echoing vile antisemitism,
causing every teacher in the district to question if any quotation will ever be okay if Wiesel was removed even temporarily,
throwing not so much a chill as a deep freeze over academic inquiry,
adding to the sense of danger for vulnerable and frightened kids,
rewarding snitches and fomenting division, and
doing absolutely nothing to help teachers do their jobs better.
Quite an accomplishment for 1 incident with 1 policy.
That’s a hefty price to pay for someone’s entirely baseless sense that teachers are out to harm or manipulate kids.
We dread what’s next.