"And by the way, fuck all y’all.”REPORTER: "Do you think there's any role for congress to play in reaction [to the Tennessee shooting]?"
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) March 28, 2023
BURCHETT: "I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up." pic.twitter.com/4jPPlWa8Pi
REPORTER: "What else should be done to protect people like your little girl?"
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) March 28, 2023
BURCHETT: "Well, we homeschool her." pic.twitter.com/BTKEfkKbUM
The home schooling comment brought me up short. A part of the far right has moved beyond hostility for public schools, to hostility to the whole idea of schools, even religious or private. Twenty years ago now, I had a legal colleague that was deeply conservative. He and his wife had moved their two daughters out of public school into a very conservative evangelical run school. After a few years they weren't satisfied with even that and decided to homeschool their girls so as to keep them away from influences with which they disapproved. He and his wife had attended public schools, he was Ivy League educated and had a law degree, yesterday they rejected any type of formal schooling. Looking back they were the leading edge of today's conservative trend.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up as a kid of the 70's, my middle school science and math teacher had a pile Mother Earth News magazines we could read if we were done with our work. Mixed in with the fun articles on how to raise milk goats and turn an old lawn mower and car alternator into an arc welder (yes this was a real article I wanted to build but my dad was rightly concerned about a 6th grader and enough electrical energy to melt metal). Mixed in were articles of hippies and back to earthers that had pulled their kids from schools so they wouldn't be indoctrinated and could run through the trees rather than sit at a desk. It was the beginning of the home schooling movement. I've mentioned before, but our commissioner of education Frank Edelblut in New Hampshire home schooled his 7 children. He also actively working to gut the public schools in the state and funnel what little education money there is to private (particularly religious) and home schoolers.
This congressman, our commissioner of education and my former colleague are very different from those back to the land hippies of the Mother Earth news. Whereas the hippies wanted no structure, these latter day home school advocates want absolute control over their children. They all seem to also share a certain nihilism about society and institutions, a rejection of community and any collective action. Looking at that utterly depressing Christmas scene, it's barricading yourself away from the world with literal guns to greet anyone unfortunate enough to show up at the door. For the commission and the congressman, there nihilism isn't just personal, but extends to pulling down the world about them. Be that defunding schools and loading them with onerous requirements, or refusing to make them safer by even the most minimal of gun control (I just finished an article today that seriously questioned if limitations on high capacity magazines could withstand SCOTUS review).
ReplyDeleteThe current fight is about the existence of public schools, the deeper fight will be about whether we have schools at all. My own faith calls for me to go out into the world, to be in communion and community with all, to hold myself accountable and responsible for others, particularly those with the least. At the same time we have a whole culture that is moving in exactly the opposite direction. This culture controls our state government (a minority of votes but a majority of power through extreme gerrymandering). People that previously weren't concerned with the school budget, or votes for it because it helped local children, are being told the schools are riddled with CRT, teaching children to be trans, teaching socialism and more. They now are energized to tear down the schools. Yesterday our school budget failed, as did the bond issue for a new elementary school to replace the one that regularly floods in the rain and had kids in trailer classrooms in the parking lot. Somehow the two conservative school board candidates that wanted to cut the school budget even more lost to two more reasonable candidates. I am thankful for small miracles, but also yesterday the school emailed everyone they are looking for two community members to be on a committee that will review high school books objected to by parents.
It's hard to feel hopeful under the current circumstances.