What Hath Got Wrot?

Texas school district official tells teachers they should offer students an 'opposing view' to the Holocausthttps://t.co/flCAFu26zn

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 14, 2021

Read that headline, and your response should be: What the f*ck is wrong with that school district official?

Then read the story:

"Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979," Peddy said in a recording taken secretly by a Carrol staff member, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing "widely debated and currently controversial" issues.

"And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives," Peddy continued.

"How do you oppose the Holocaust?" one teacher said in response.

 

"Believe me," Peddy said. "That's come up."

Gina Peddy is the executive director of curriculum and instruction for Carroll ISD.  And she's exactly right.  This issue came up, and she had to address it, because of "a parent's complaint about a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racism book in her classroom."

Those kinds of complaints can go to the Texas Education Agency, of if the parent is seriously nasty, to court.  Schools don't operate by litigating issues, or by fighting with the TEA.  Where the schools might have ignored this parent's complaint before, now Texas law says they have to pay attention to it.

Look next to legislator's swearing up, down, and sidewise that they never meant schools to present "both sides" (?) of the Holocaust.  Or slavery, which is coming next, if it hasn't come up somewhere already.

When I was in Texas schools, Marxism was the subject you did not discuss.  You just agreed it was bad, and asked no further questions.  Matters of race weren't discussed either, despite the fact my junior year was riven by a campus-wide fight releasing the pent-up anger of black students who had lost their high school and been forced to attend mine:  Robert E. Lee (insult to injury).  It was 40 years later before it occurred to me those students had lost their high school because whites were not going to allow the school board to shut down either of the white high schools to send those students to the "black" high school.  No wonder those students were pissed.

We're going backwards, in other words.  The reaction to the death of George Floyd galvanized some people, whites included.  It scared the hell out of others, mostly whites.  They're still scared.

That's no reason for them to be in charge, or to get their way.

(And the problem with Twitter is that people think the story is contained in the tweet. But that's another matter.)