South Carolina is poised with Bill 3613 to continue the historical failures of addressing reading in South Carolina through micromanaging legislation that has not resulted in improving home, community, individual equity or learning outcomes for students living in poverty, Black students, Emergent Bilinguals, or students with special needs.
Currently, I am in year 37 of teaching in SC, serving as a high school English teacher at Woodruff High for 18 years before moving to teacher education at Furman University for the past 19 years. I entered education in SC in 1984, the first days of the accountability movement in our state.
Despite political leaders changing standards and high-stakes testing multiple times over the past four decades, political and public perception remains convinced our schools are failing, and that our students are, specifically, failing to learn to read.
Read To Succeed, which Bill 3613 seeks to amend, was a serious mistake at its inception since it misreads both how students learn to read and how best to teach reading. Reading growth is not simple, and test scores are a stronger measure of poverty and social inequities than the state of student learning or the quality of teaching.
Bill 3613 is making the same mistake political leaders have been making since the 1980s, tinkering with prescriptive legislation aimed at our students and teachers while ignoring the overwhelming negative impact of inequity in our students’ homes and communities as well as the harmful negative learning and teaching conditions that persist in our schools.
This proposed legislation is yet another example of SC jumping on a flawed educational bandwagon (this time copying Mississippi), the “science of reading” movement that has resulted in harmful educational policy such as increased grade retention, over-screening for dyslexia, and prescribing “one-size-fits all” instruction for students.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the largest professional organization for English teachers in the U.S., has issued a strong policy statement rejecting third-grade retention supported by decades of research showing grade retention remains harmful for students. Dorothy C. Suskink also recently posted at NCTE that the “science of reading” movement is deeply misleading in its use of the term “science,” misrepresentation of the National Reading Panel, dependence on discredited reports from the National Council on Teacher Quality, and claims of crisis from NAEP scores.
Prominent literacy scholars David Reinking, Victoria J. Risko and George G. Hruby have also challenged the many flaws in the “science of reading” movement that are now included in Bill 3613. “When the teaching of reading is framed as a war, nuance and common areas of agreement are casualties,” they conclude, adding: “But worse, our children can become innocent victims caught in a no man’s land between those more interested in winning a conflict than in meeting individual needs.”
As has been proven by Read to Succeed so far, the most vulnerable students in our state will be harmed by the policies in this bill the most while political leaders in the state continue to lack the political will and courage to address the root causes of educational challenges across SC—poverty and racial inequity.
I urge political leaders in SC to think differently about our students, our teachers, and our schools; notably, I strongly recommend that we seek ways to create homes, communities, and schools that allow our students to grow and excel in the literacy development. Continuing to tinker with prescriptive and punitive reading legislation is a dereliction of political and ethical duty; we can and must do better, by doing differently.
This emphasis on the proper place of editing in the writing process (attending to surface features later rather than earlier) reminded me of a dictum from Lou LaBrant (1946) that drives much of how I teach writing: “As a teacher of English, I am not willing to teach the polishing and adornment of irresponsible, unimportant writing [emphasis added]…. I would place as the first aim of teaching students to write the development of full responsibility for what they say” (p. 123).
While I recognize that it is impossible to separate cleanly meaning from expression and conventions, writers and students-as-writers need to focus the greatest weight of their attention on making meaning as they discover through drafting what they want and need to express.
In fact, many students struggle with the blank page under the paralysis of the tyranny of correctness and perfection. Relieved of being perfect or correct while drafting—creating and developing a yet unknown meaning—is crucial for students learning to write well.
And thus, as I have thought further about May’s Tweets, I am now even more drawn to “trash drafting” in that this metaphor highlights an option often ignored by students—the right (and even need) to abandon (trash) a draft of an essay.
Abandonment in writing and reading is rarely allowed and almost never encouraged; I think this is true because of an odd economy of student work linked to grading. Teachers and their students feel an irrational need to account for all artifacts produced by students, disregarding that final products are likely where the focus should be.
Trash drafting acknowledges some key and often missing concepts essential for effective writing instruction.
First, drafts of writing are valuable as a process toward a public draft (for students, toward a draft to be submitted for feedback and/or evaluation), but exact elements of those drafts need not be in that final version intact, or verbatim.
Trash drafting, I think, is an effective metaphor that better captures the hardest aspects of discovery drafting (specifically for students, abandonment).
Process portfolios, however, can provide structures that allow students to display the trash drafts without those drafts bearing the weight of assessment/evaluation; students can receive blanket credit for drafting (a check, etc.) without fear of points being deducted, without the pressure of correctness/perfection.
Another key element of May’s thread is that she has control of the trash drafts in terms of what she eventually submits for feedback. Students are rarely afforded this level of control, purpose, and autonomy.
Trash drafting places the responsibility for drafting on the student (when the draft is seen by someone else) and not the teacher, helping shift the role of the student toward being a writer.
For example, one of the most harmful traditional approaches to the writing process in formal schooling is requiring students to submit a draft introduction and thesis before they are allowed to draft the essay. This structure ignores the value of trash/discovery drafting, and it creates yet another tyranny for the student—the need to write the essay approved even if during the drafting the student realizes a better and different essay.
As a first-year writing professor, I always start essay conferences by asking if this is the essay the student wants to revise; if it is not, we abandon, and brainstorm a replacement essay.
Since May is a professional writer and novelist, I have been thinking about how trash drafting looks in the formal class setting where students are more often than not writing nonfiction essays.
As one option for drafting and brainstorming I suggest allowing or encouraging struggling writers to produce a trash draft that is an essay about the essay the student is considering.
For example, starting as rudimentary as “In this essay, I want to …”. As well the teacher should suggest that the student include some musing about ways to open the essay, examples or evidence to include, and how to end the essay.
This approach has no pressure for grading, correctness, and it allows the students a space and process for writing to a place where the student can draft the actual essay.
It is important for teachers of writing to recognize and value that the act of writing is the act of thinking. Trash/discovery drafts may not produce the text of an essay, but they are likely to crystalize the thinking a student needs in order to write well.
Again, as LaBrant argues:
All writing that is worth putting on paper is creative in that it is made by the writer and is his own product…. Again there may be those who will infer that I am advocating no correction, no emphasis on form. The opposite is really true. The reason for clarity, for approved usage, for attractive form, for organization, lies in the fact that these are means to the communication of something important. (p. 126)
Many will view May as a “creative writer” and ignore, see LaBrant above, that all writing is creative—and thus idiosyncratic in how it comes to be.
Embracing May’s trash drafting and reinforcing a healthier approach to correctness and perfection are likely to improve both how we teach writing and the writing our students choose eventually to submit for our feedback.
I am contacting you with an urgent caution about Bill 3613 and the historical failures of addressing reading in South Carolina through micromanaging legislation that has not resulted in improving home, community, individual equity or learning outcomes for students living in poverty, Black students, Emergent Bilinguals, or students with special needs.
Currently, I am in year 37 of being an educator in SC, serving as a high school English teacher at Woodruff High for 18 years before moving to teacher education at Furman University for the past 19 years. I entered education in SC in 1984, the first days of the accountability movement in our state.
Despite changing standards and high-stakes testing multiple times over the past four decades, political and public perception remains convinced our schools are failing, and that our students are, specifically, failing in reading achievement.
Read To Succeed was a serious mistake at its inception since it misreads both how students learn to read and how best to teach reading. Reading growth is not simple, and test scores are a stronger measure of poverty and social inequities than the state of student learning or the quality of teaching.
Bill 3613 is making the same mistake political leaders have been making since the 1980s, tinkering with prescriptive legislation aimed at our students and teachers while ignoring the overwhelming negative impact of inequity in our students’ homes and communities as well as the harmful negative learning and teaching conditions that persist in our schools.
I am attaching a full statement and a resource list that includes powerful and valuable recommendations from important national organizations (NCTE, ILA, NEPC) who have addressed how best to reform our schools in order to serve all students and to foster literacy in effective and compelling ways.
Please read and consider the resources I have provided, notably the nearly exhaustive collection of research on grade retention and NCTE’s Position Statement strongly rejecting grade retention as reading policy; below I highlight the should not/should recommended with research support from NEPC (see the resource list below):
Should not fund or endorse unproven private-vendor comprehensive reading programs or materials.[i]
Should not adopt “ends justify the means” policies aimed at raising reading test scores in the short term that have longer-term harms (for example, third-grade retention policies).[ii]
Should not prescribe a narrow definition of “scientific” or “evidence-based” that elevates one part of the research base while ignoring contradictory high-quality research.[iii]
Should not prescribe a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teaching reading, addressing struggling readers or English language learners (Emergent Bilinguals), or identifying and serving special needs students.
Should not prescribe such a “one-size-fits-all” approach to preparing teachers for reading instruction, since teachers need a full set of tools to help their students.
Should not ignore the limited impact on measurable student outcomes (e.g., test scores) of in-school opportunities to learn, as compared to the opportunity gaps that arise outside of school tied to racism, poverty, and concentrated poverty.[iv]
Should not prioritize test scores measuring reading, particularly lower-level reading tasks, over a wide range of types of evidence (e.g., literacy portfolios and teacher assessments[v]), or over other equity-based targets (e.g., access to courses and access to certified, experienced teachers), always prioritizing the goal of ensuring that all students have access to high-quality reading instruction.
Should not teacher-proof reading instruction or de-professionalize teachers of reading or teacher educators through narrow prescriptions of how to teach reading and serve struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, or students with special needs.
Should not prioritize advocacy by a small group of non-educators over the expertise and experiences of K-12 educators and scholars of reading and literacy.
Should not conflate general reading instruction policy with the unique needs of struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, and special needs students.
And therefore:
Should guarantee that all students are served based on their identifiable needs in the highest quality teaching and learning conditions possible across all schools:
Full funding to support all students’ reading needs;
Professionally prepared teachers with expertise in supporting all students with the most beneficial reading instruction, balancing systematic skills instruction with authentic texts and activities;
Full and supported instructional materials for learning to read, chosen by teachers to fit the needs of their unique group of students;
Intensive, research-based early interventions for struggling readers; and
Guaranteed and extensive time to read and learn to read daily.
Should support the professionalism of K-12 teachers and teacher educators, and should acknowledge the teacher as the reading expert in the care of unique populations of students.
Should adopt a complex and robust definition of “scientific” and “evidence-based.”
Should embrace a philosophy of “first, do no harm,” avoiding detrimental policies like grade retention and tracking.[vii]
Should acknowledge that reading needs across the general population, struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, and special needs students are varied and complex.
Should adopt a wide range of types of evidence of student learning.
Should prioritize, when using standardized test scores, longitudinal data on reading achievement as guiding evidence among a diversity of evidence for supporting instruction and the conditions of teaching and learning.
Should establish equity (input) standards as a balance to accountability (output) standards, including the need to provide funding and oversight to guarantee all students access to high-quality, certified teachers; to address inequitable access to experienced teachers; and to ensure supported, challenging and engaging reading and literacy experiences regardless of student background or geographical setting.
Should recognize that there is no settled science of reading and that the research base and evidence base on reading and teaching reading is diverse and always in a state of change.
Should acknowledge and support that the greatest avenue to reading for all students is access to books and reading in their homes, their schools, and their access to libraries (school and community).[viii]
I urge political leaders in SC to think differently about our students, our teachers, and our schools; notably, I strongly recommend that we seek ways to create homes, communities, and schools that allow our students to grow and excel in the literacy development.
Continuing to tinker with prescriptive and punitive reading legislation is a dereliction of political and ethical duty; we can and must do better, by doing differently.
[i] This is true even when the program is generally understood to be of high quality. See Gonzalez, N. (2018, November 26). When evidence-based literacy programs fail. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(4), 54-58. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
See also International Reading Association (2002). What is evidence-based reading instruction? Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
Office of the Inspector General. (2006). The Reading First program’s grant application process. Final inspection report. Washington, DC: US Department of Education. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[ii] See the sources linked at Thomas, P.L. (2014). Grade Retention Research. Radical Eyes for Equity. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[iii] See resources linked at Thomas, P. L. (2020). Understanding the “Science of Reading”: A Reader. Radical Eyes for Equity. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[iv] Carter, P.L. & Welner, K.G. (Eds) (2013). Closing the opportunity gap: What America must do to give all children an even chance. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Reardon, S.F., Weathers, E.S., Fahle, E.M., Jang, H., & Kalogrides, D. (2019). Is separate still unequal? New evidence on school segregation and racial academic achievement gaps (No. 19-06). CEPA Working Paper. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[v] Valencia, S.W. (1998). Literacy Portfolios in Action. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
Strunk, K.O., Weinsten, T.L., & Makkonen, R. (2014). Sorting out the signal: Do multiple measures of teachers’ effectiveness provide consistent information to teachers and principals?. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(100). Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
Lavigne, D.A.L., & Good, D.T.L. (2020). Addressing teacher evaluation appropriately. APA Division 15 Policy Brief Series, 1(2). Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[vi] Schanzenbach, D.W. (2014). Does class size matter? Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[vii] Atteberry, A., LaCour, S.E., Burris, C., Welner, K.G., & Murphy, J. (2019). Opening the gates: Detracking and the International Baccalaureate. Teachers College Record, 121(9), 1-63.
See also the sources linked at Thomas, P.L. (2014). Grade retention research. Radical Eyes for Equity. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
[viii] Fryer, R., & Levitt, S. (2004). Understanding the black-white test score gap in the first two years of school. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(2), 447-464.
Lance, K.C., & Kachel, D.E. (2018). Why school librarians matter: What years of research tell us. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(7), 15-20. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
Krashen, S. (2013). Access to books and time to read versus the common core state standards and tests. English Journal, 21-29. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from LINK
“President-elect Joe Biden will seek to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of his relief bill,” reported Alina Selyukh for NPR.
Across social media, people began doing calculations of what $15/hour translates into for annual salaries, and here are a couple responses from white Christian conservatives:
McChristian, personifying the relationship between a McNugget and real chicken, seems to be aware that teachers are underpaid, but lacks any Christian compassion for other workers also being underpaid (such as minimum-wage workers often constituting the working poor and living without healthcare or retirement—or job security).
Rachel, hollow mouthpiece for the equally vapid TPUSA, doesn’t just lack compassion; she also lacks any grasp of basic facts, embodying not only the hypocrisy of the Christian conservative movement but also the complete misunderstanding of how the free market works.
Note that “[r]aising wages for fast-food workers to $15 an hour would lead to a noticeable but not substantial increase in food prices, according to a new study by Purdue University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management,” as reported by Sally French at Market Watch.
Social media, as well, was quick to point out that in areas such as DC and the San Francisco Bay, where the minimum wage is already $15 and above, Taco Bell burritos remain below $4 at the most expensive.
In the U.S., we are well beyond the point of needing to acknowledge that there is nothing Christian or honest about the conservative movement in the U.S.
And few times a year are more likely to expose that than Martin Luther King Jr. Day—when those on the Right scramble to cherry-pick one or two quotes from MLK to wave in front of their hypocrisy and lies.
The debate about the $15/hour minimum wage (as well as college debt relief and universal healthcare) is an ideal opportunity to examine the MLK that almost everyone in mainstream America chooses to ignore.
A couple favorite mis-uses and distortions of appropriating MLK is, first, characterizing King as a “passive radical” in order to violence-shame groups or paint a distorted “both sides” false equivalency between right-wing white nationalism and social justice advocates focusing on race and racism, and second, plastering the “content of their character” quotes everywhere to perpetuate the colorblind argument that, in fact, is itself racist.
Here, King offers his criticism of the standard approach to eradicating poverty (approaches that persist in 2021):
Up to recently we have proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils:
• lack of education restricting job opportunities;
• poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiatives;
• fragile relationships which distorted personality development.
The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes be attacked one by one. Hence a housing program to transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were designed. In combination these measure were intended to remove the causes of poverty.
King was confronting that U.S. political will could only admit indirect ways to address poverty—despite, as King pointed out, that more whites than Black people suffered under the weight of economic inequity.
“In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else,” King noted, adding: “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
Not only did King call for a guaranteed income, he asserted the essential need to be direct:
We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.
Unlike McChristian and Rachel above, MLK as a progressive, as a Leftist (often slurred as a “communist”), understood the foundational need in a capitalist society that all people have capital:
Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life and in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he know that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.
But King was profoundly aware of the problems with “minimum” wages, arguing about the guaranteed income:
Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure.
• First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions.
• Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.
King makes a purely Christian argument about economic policy in a capitalist democracy that should and could center human dignity and equity over greed:
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
From 1984 until 2002, 18 years, I taught high school English in the town and school where I grew up and graduated, moving into the classroom of my high school English teacher, Lynn Harrill, where I had sat as a student just six years earlier.
My first few years were overwhelming and at times terrifying; I taught five different preparations—managing fifteen different textbooks—and several of the classes were filled to capacity, 35 students packed into the room.
Throughout those two decades spanning the 1980s and past the 1990s, I was a student-centered teacher who had a wonderful relationship with my students—lots of mutual love and respect. However, there was always some tension between me and white redneck boys.
Again, these white redneck boys were who I had been growing up, and even the least aware among them likely sensed deep down inside that I knew who they were.
One of the worst days of my teaching career—sitting among having to confront a student gunman and returning to school after three children burned down the school building—included the actions of one white redneck boy.
A significant sub-unit of my nine-week non-fiction unit included walking students through the concept of civil disobedience, starting with Emerson and Thoreau but spending far more time on a mini-unit in Black history grounded in ideas and texts by Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
We capped off that unit with Gandhi, but the grounding text of this nine weeks was always King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” paired with different excerpts from Malcolm X.
One day as I was passing out King’s “Letter” (I always provided students their own copies of texts to annotate and keep), a white redneck boy slapped the handout off his desk and announced, “I ain’t reading that [N-word].”
In many ways, this was a defining moment for me as a teacher and a human. I was very aware that I had Black students in the room and that this teenager was much larger and angrier than was safe for me or the classroom of students.
I calmly returned the handout to the desk, my hand firmly on the paper while I leaned toward the student, and I said without hesitation that he would read the essay and that he would never utter that word in class again.
It seems odd to me now, but that is exactly what happened as I continued handing out the essay before we began reading and discussing the essay as a class.
This is no after-school special, and I never had any sort of deep conversation with that student—and I suspect he never changed his beliefs, except keeping his bigotry to himself, at least in my class.
I do suspect that for him and others in the classroom, I was the first white man to take a stand against racism and racist language that they had ever experienced.
It is embarrassing to admit, but that unit was a huge risk for me throughout my 18 years teaching. It even prompted not-so-veiled attacks from local preachers during sermons that my students attended on Sunday mornings (oddly, Southern Baptists seemed very offended by students studying Gandhi, who they dismissed as “not a Christian”).
There are many things I would change about my first two decades of teaching, being charged with the learning of hundreds of teenagers; there are many things I did inexcusably wrong, things for which I remain embarrassed and wish I had the power to return to those moments in order to make amends.
But that sub-unit, and specifically how I taught MLK and what works of his I exposed students to, is important still to me because we did not read “I Have a Dream,” and we did not mythologize MLK as a passive radical, rejecting the whitewashing far too common with King’s ideas and life.
I also exposed students to a wide range of Black writers and thinkers, emphasizing the importance of recognizing Malcolm X and taking his arguments seriously.
None the less, I could have done better—and even today in 2021, King’s life and legacy are woefully mis-served, especially in classrooms (as well as crossing the lips of politicians who cannot even for one day practice an iota of the ideals of King).
Here, then, is a reader for serving King better and expanding the voices and ideas with which we invite our students to engage:
Labeled as “surreal” by Emilia Petrarca, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R – Georgia) wore as “censored” face mask while speaking from the floor on Congress.
First, we must recognize that statistically no one in the U.S. has the sort of access to a bully pulpit that a member of Congress has (535 out of 330 million people), and then, we must consider whether Greene is incredibly dishonest, spectacularly ignorant, or both.
After the insurrection at the Capitol by rightwing domestic terrorists supporting Trump—and emboldened by Trump and many Republicans in office—conservatives and Republicans across the U.S. have evoked “censorship,” “First Amendment,” and “freedom of speech” tirades in response to Trump being banned from several social media platforms as well as many Republicans losing followers on those platforms.
Here is the disturbing thing that Greene represents among conservatives and Republicans: There appears to be the same sort of dishonesty/ignorance running rampant because there is essentially no relationship between private businesses and free speech guaranteed in the Constitution since the First Amendment is about the role of government in protected speech.
Let’s not forget very recent history when Republicans and conservatives scrambled to support the right of companies not to serve or even hire LGBTQ+ individuals (recall the wedding cake).
Private companies banning anyone is not an issue of free speech grounded in the First Amendment since government plays no role in that, and (ironically), anyone losing Twitter followers is a consequence of market forces, how the free market works.
In the jumbled surreal-reality of Republicans, it seems they want some entity (the government?) to monitor the free market so that all voices are heard—regardless of truth and irrespective of inciting violence (seemingly now, conservatives support yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater).
As a writer, I have been submitting letters to the editor and Op-Eds to local, state, and national media for decades; most of those submissions are rejected. Is that censorship? A denial of freedom of speech? A breech of my First Amendment rights?
Of course not.
It is the free market—as right-wingers would say, the marketplace of ideas.
There are some really important and likely disorienting elements to this jumbled message created by Republicans and conservatives.
One seems to be why does Greene (and Trump, et al.) lie and misrepresent to the American public as agents of the government with impunity? In other words, what is the role of truth in governing?
Free speech and the First Amendment have continued to be areas of debate in the U.S. in terms of inciting violence and pornography, and we must admit that free speech is not a clear-cut or absolute thing even when recognizing only the role of government.
The level of lies and disinformation under Trump, I think, now calls for a serious interrogation of what free speech allows in those contexts—especially in terms of elected and appointed members of the government.
It seems obvious that agents of government must not incite violence or promote false information.
When people with power (from the wealthy to police to elected officials, including the president) function above truth and the law, it is unlikely that free speech matters for anyone.
A second element that is being almost entirely ignored because of the lies and ignorance on the Right is the question of free speech and the free market; in other words, we are not confronting the role played by private companies in whose voice is amplified and whose voice is muted or ignored.
Twitter bans and people losing followers on Twitter are not the purview of government, and both exist in the mechanics of the free market—which many of us on the Left have warned are amoral dynamics.
Supply and demand left unchecked has nothing to do with ethical or moral concerns. There is a demand for child sex trafficking, for example, and without government intervention (a moral/ethical imperative), it would flourish within the parameters of those consumers.
Many aspects of the U.S. function this way without being so immediately disgusting and inhuman—and thus, remain unchecked.
Those of us on the Left, as well, recognize the amoral aspect of the market and therefore call for universal healthcare, for example, since market forces are inappropriate for determining who does and does not receive medical care.
Trump sycophants such as Greene are backing themselves into some complicated ideological and political corners since their outrage over social media is challenging the efficacy of the free market (misidentified as free speech because of their dishonesty/ignorance).
While I see no hope that Republicans have any interest in the truth—or freedom of speech—I think that this nonsense from the Right offers yet another opportunity for people in the U.S. to reconsider the relationship between government/democracy and capitalism.
Despite a related lie from the Right, we Leftists are rarely calling for full-blown socialism or communism; we are, however, arguing that far too much of human dignity and freedom is left to the free market—such as healthcare—and the whims of the states—such as women’s reproductive rights.
Should we be concerned that Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, and that Parler was de-platformed?
I suspect we should, but not because these events have violated the First Amendment.
The problem is us and the lack of political will in the U.S. to reconsider our overblown commitments to the free market at the expense of democracy and truth as well as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The summer of 1975, I was diagnosed with scoliosis and fitted with a form-fitting plastic body brace anchored with aluminum rods and spanning from my pelvic bone to my chin. This was a hell of a way to start my ninth grade at Woodruff Junior High.
I would wear that brace 23 hours a day, gradually weaning myself off the support as my vertebrae both (mostly) repaired their disfigurement and eventually stopped growing; this meant I wore the brace for much of my high school experience as well.
My childhood and teen years were a contradiction of Southern racism, ignorance, and bigotry warmly wrapped in the blanket of my loving and doting working-class parents. My scoliosis was a significant financial burden on my parents (who never flinched at the medical care it required), but it also in some ways broke their hearts.
I was a skinny and very anxious human, deeply self-conscious and introverted before the years of the brace came upon me in the roiling shit-storm of adolescence.
It was at this juncture of my life that I discovered comic books, what now seems like a logical extension of the fascination I inherited from my mom for science fiction (she loved classic black-and-white B-movies, always claiming The Day the Earth Stood Still as her favorite film).
Once again, my parents never wavered when I began collecting and drawing from Marvel comics in the mid-1970s. They drove me to the local pharmacies to buy new comics and even bought a pretty large and important collection from a guy selling hundreds of comics in the local newspaper.
By high school graduation, I had amassed essentially every comic book Marvel published in the 1970s.
It would take me many years to recognize that my comic book collecting and science fiction reading were the foundation upon which I eventually chose to be a high school English teacher and came to recognize that I am a writer (although I initially clung to being a comic book artist since I spent hours and hours standing at our kitchen bar drawing from the comics I collected). (See my original artwork from the mid-/late 1970s below.)
Just thirteen days away from turning 60, I am baffled at not being able to specifically identify when I stopped collecting comics some time around graduating high school and attending college. I assume it seemed childish at some point even though I kept my 7000-book collection well into marriage.
I do know that when we bought our first townhouse, I sold that collection for way less than it was worth in both dollars and for my soul. I held onto the full run of Howard the Duck, but let everything else fund my misguided pursuit of the corrupted American Dream—home ownership.
At some point in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I briefly returned to collecting, prompted by several of my high school students and the Frank Miller rebooting of Batman as well as the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton films. This coincided with the 1990s boom/bust of mainstream comics by Marvel and DC, and once again, adult life kept me from really fully engaging in something I love.
When I moved to higher education in 2002 after 18 years teaching high school English, I found a way to merge my adolescent love for comic books and my adult life—comic book scholarship and blogging. I also published one book on comic books, which allowed me a justification for buying comics and graphic novels once again (and a way to move beyond super hero comics). I learned a great deal (and made several embarrassing mistakes) when I merged my fandom with my scholarship, but that work about a decade ago, once again, didn’t really stick—although it certainly didn’t fade away either.
Recently, I allowed myself to re-commit to collecting, focusing on Daredevil and then adding the newest Wolverine run. I am back engaged with a local comic book store just minutes from where I live, and I also collected the recent X of Swords run from Marvel. (See part of my Xmas haul below.)
And yesterday, something very interesting happened for me, again just two weeks from turning 60.
I never became a gamer because I always have struggled with the controls, and in my advancing age, that has been a real hurdle even more pronounced. But I also experienced a significant amount of disorientation as well as feeling extremely (for lack of a better word) dumb.
Starting a game left me paralyzed, repeatedly asking what I was supposed to do. I often was coached with this advice: Just explore and watch for what the game shows you to do.
That meant nothing to me, even less than nothing. In fact, I soon realized that I was simply unable to read the video games while experienced gamers have internalized hundreds of signals and cues to the point that “what you are supposed to do” seems obvious (see this on gaming, for example).
One of my foundational complaints about the “science of reading” movement has been its embracing a simple view of reading, and here I was, at 60, experiencing how incredibly complex reading is—that reading is far more than decoding print (and is even often apart from print).
Gaming like reading comic books is a holistic experience with text as well as images all guided by prior knowledge and experiences, and the blending of many different kinds of codes that are both unique to a single environment as well as common across the medium/genre/form.
The subgenres of gaming have commonalities like the subgenre of comic books, super hero comics.
Although I have recognized myself as a writer for forty years now—and never lift a pencil to draw any more—I was pulled back into comic book collecting because of the artwork, first Daredevil (a series that has always had distinct and powerful artists working on the character, in my opinion), then the rebooted Wolverine series, and now the incredible artists working on X-Men.
X-Men vol. 5, issues 5 and 6 (cover art: Leinil Francis Yu and Sunny Gho)
In several of my college courses, I have integrated comic books and graphic novels, often to students who have never read comics. They almost always admit that reading comics is much harder and takes much longer than they expected. It wasn’t, they discovered, like reading a text-only essay or book.
As I have been diving back into the X of Swords series and the rebooted X-Men series spearheaded by Jonathan Hickman, I have noticed my haphazard reading style of comics, very art-based and not very sequential (I glance around the entire spread and often dart back and forth among the text and panels).
And so here is the very interesting thing from yesterday.
In issue 4 of X-Men (vol. 5), Magneto quotes Aldous Huxley:
A sucker for literary references, I paused to search the quote, and then returned to reread the pages leading up to and after the use of the quote. Then, I realized something unusual that I had not noticed when first reading:
X-Men vol. 5, issue 4 (Hickman/Yu)
The omission of “care.”
Every time I read this, I still insert “care” automatically and have to force myself to see that it isn’t there (as if Professor X is doing it for me each time).
There are dozens of cues in those three panels, some of them text (and one of them the absence of assumed text).
As I count down the days until I turn 60, I am living some of the fantastical elements we associate with children’s stories, comic books, and science fiction—a pandemic, a Capitol siege, and the many eras of my own life overlapping with each other as if I am both living my current life and going back in time.
Life is no comic book or video game, but I am tasked with making sure as I explore the things around me that I pay attention to all the cues of what I am supposed to do—and it remains a very complicated task in 2021 as it was in 1975.
While it now seems like generations ago, in the spring of 2008, I joined other faculty at Furman University in an organized protest labeled “We Object.” Through the university’s connections with FU graduate and former governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford, George W. Bush was invited to speak at commencement.
Recent university tradition was to have two students speak, but did not include outside speakers. None the less, students and the community (overwhelmingly conservative) seemed to welcome the opportunity to have a two-term Republican president speak to graduates.
The protest took many forms, including reaching out to the media, posting an official “We Object” statement, and wearing a “We Object” shirt, revealed from beneath professor’s gowns during the speech.
I did not yet have tenure as an assistant professor, but I was active in the organized resistance that included a wide range of reasons why professors were objecting. I attended meetings, helped with the statement, and provided interviews to the media (I did not stand and protest during graduation, however).
One aspect of that spring that now looks like a harbinger of the world in which we live today was an Op-Ed published by two conservative professors in political science. In that piece, they discounted the professors protesting as postmodernists.
Two problems stand out from that commentary. First, as is typical of conservative thinkers, they either did not understand postmodernism or willfully misrepresented postmodernism in order to have a strawman to attack. Second, when those of us protesting gathered after the piece was published, we uniformly confirmed that not a single one of us considered ourselves postmodernists (an intellectual movement now well in the past, supplanted by the ever-inane, in fact, post-postmodernism).
Conservatives have long posed postmodernism as a full rejection of truth/Truth (which it isn’t), but the great irony of being falsely slandered as postmodernists is that we objecting were all doing so on very clear ethical grounds.
A logical and dangerous extension of postmodernism’s challenge to the nature of truth/Truth is, of course, that there is no truth; many academics quickly rejected that path. In its purest form, however, postmodernism attempted to emphasize that truth/Truth is never objective but always a pawn of those in power.
In other words, postmodernism posed that truth/Truth is almost always what people in power say is truth regardless of empirical evidence (truth couched in power versus truth gleaned from evidence).
While scholars in philosophy, literature, and the arts had moved through and past postmodernism in many ways, this moment in 2008 certainly was a harbinger for the conservative and popular bastardization of postmodernism by Trump and the youngest generations in the U.S.—fake news and the power of social media to create (distort) truth/Truth.
The paradox of Trump is that he has become the embodiment of “there is no truth except what I declare is true” (even when those claims are baseless and repeatedly self-contradictory). Yes, Trump’s appropriating “fake news” to prop up his pathological lies and power-mania are exactly the worst of problems with truth/Truth that postmodernism was confronting.
Even Trump’s use of the term “fake news” is itself false (an ignorant or willfully planned use similar to the one used by the two conservative professors), but Trump’s mendacity and megalomania have both spoken to and emboldened a much wider and more insidious faction of the U.S. who function with the same sort of misguided approach to truth/Truth as Trump.
Not so long ago, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh seemed like mostly harmless sideshows, things of a very small minority of people in the U.S.
In 2021, Parler and Breitbart have far surpassed what was once rightwing media—and then there is QAnon.
Just as there was a logical and dangerous natural conclusion to postmodernism, there is now a very real and dangerous outcome of simplistic approaches to critical thinking as well as honoring the democracy of ideas.
The Right in the U.S. has leveraged challenging any and every idea, fact, and authority into a chaos that allows even a greater concentration of power among very few (mostly white and male) Americans.
Republicans have aligned themselves with both Evangelical Christian conservatism and authoritarianism; democrats have increasingly become the party of ethical challenges to the status quo (a party that at least pays lip service to gender, race, and sexuality equity).
Trump’s “fake news” ploy is a scorched-Earth policy for political and financial gain.
What has happened, however, in the wider society is much more disturbing in the sense that we can see some possible end to Trump as president.
Maybe we [Gen Z] don’t believe in her [Hellen Keller] because we’re growing up in a world of fake news. We know the power of manipulation and lies in the media, and we’re losing faith in the sources everyone once trusted. There’s too much data and too many lies circulating for us to process and believe it all….
We don’t have to believe in Helen Keller, and it shouldn’t be surprising if we don’t. The world we were born into makes us profoundly different than other generations, and hopefully, it will also make us into change agents.
In 2021, then, there are now at least three Hellen Kellers: the historical Keller (the radical socialist and activist), the myth of Keller as rugged individual [1] (the distorted version often taught in school through The Miracle Worker), and the “fake news” Keller who did not (could not?) exist.
At the root of this is critical thinking, how formal education fails to teach it by mis-teaching it (see here and here).
Questioning authority and hearing all sides have long been a part of American culture.
Like postmodernism, “critical” is too often misunderstood and almost entirely absent from formal education.
Traditional schooling has reduced “critical thinking” to skills (such as HOTS, high-order thinking skills). This approach reduced being critical to a checklist of skills and a mechanical approach to interrogating texts and ideas.
But while education has been lazy and superficial in its approach to being critical, popular culture has gone off the rails, specifically because of the power of social media to allow and foster insular communities in which that community establishes truth/Truth and controls what counts as evidence (Facebook, Twitter, reddit, etc.).
To be blunt, the anti-vaccination movement has gone mainstream—and widespread [2].
Since the insurrection at the Capitol, I have circled back to 2008, when I was mis-labled a postmodernist.
Not a postmodernist, I am a critical educator, my work grounded in Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy.
Unlike those who suggest I believe there is no truth/Truth, my critical teaching and writing are a pursuit of both truth/Truth and that which is ethical and moral.
Critical thinking, then, is not about rejecting truth/Truth, but acknowledging that truth/Truth is always couched in power. Critical thinking, then, is not about hearing all sides, but recognizing that it is a complicated but necessary thing to recognize what is credible and what is not when interrogating a text or idea.
Critical think allows anyone to realize that Hellen Keller was a real person, a complicated human made exceptional due to challenges beyond her control. But critical thinking also allows anyone to know that rugged-individual Keller is in many ways a lie, part theater and part ideological myth-making—and that Keller denial is a dangerously frivolous thing (several magnitudes less so but overlapping with Holocaust denial).
Critical thinking allows anyone to realize there is a wide and complicated gray area between “Believe no one” and “Listen to everyone.”
Those two extremes, in fact, have joined hands and are poised to destroy democracy and the sort of slow and painful arc of history reaching for justice on a darkening horizon.
If and when Trump leaves office, and if and when he fades from public spaces, we will still have TikTok (or something like it) and Parler (or something like it) and tens of millions of people who don’t believe in Keller but do believe Trump (or someone like him).
It is again a critical time for truth/Truth.
[1] See also how Pat Tillman suffered a similar fate, being misrepresented for ideological/political purposes.
As a part of the education community, I noticed two immediate responses to the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol by domestic terrorists seeking to disrupt the confirmation of the next President of the U.S.
One response anticipated that (once again) teachers would be on the front line of addressing trauma by suggesting ways that examining the riot in DC could be (should be) incorporated into the classroom—notably for those teachers dealing with history.
Another response, however, was the both-sides warning calling for no politics in the classroom.
Some educators received the identical email shared after the November elections, essentially telling teachers not to take political sides in the classroom.
We stand in the first weeks of 2021 once again needing to clarify language and confronting just what being “political” means.
First, to remain neutral or to use the “both sides” approach (or to remain silent) is a form of politics—often imposed by those with power onto those who fear for their jobs (notably teachers in non-union states).
“Politics” is simply the negotiation of power between and among humans; in other words, all human behavior is political.
Many demanding “no politics” are in fact confusing “political” with “partisan.”
2021 is providing a vivid and disturbing example of “partisan” though the behavior of Republicans who have for four years yielded all ethical ground to Trump in order to protect their partisan power in the White House and Senate.
With the insurrection at the Capitol, we have witnessed cowardly backpedaling (Lindsay Graham) and the most disturbing doubling-down on partisanship (Ted Crus et al.).
The politics of calling for no politics is both a paradox (since the ones in power demanding “no politics” are themselves being political) and the worst sort of ethical abdication.
The horrific four years of Trump has been fueled in part by calls for civility and by a simplistic belief that people can just get along if they have a difference of “politics.”
The last weeks of Trump have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that rejecting Trump is not about his being a Republican. We are rejecting Trump on moral and ethical grounds; there is no compromise between white supremacy and human equity, no compromise between fascism and democracy, no compromise between lies and truth.
Trump’s minions storming the Capitol must not be read along partisan lines even though it is an easy thing to do.
For example, in 2016, Hillary Clinton gained 3+ million more popular votes than Trump, but lost in the Electoral College. Certainly we can all agree that most of Clinton’s supporters were at least as angry about Trump’s win as Trump supporters are of Biden’s win.
However, Clinton conceded, and the transition to Trump occurred without any disruption from Clinton’s majority of voters. Notable is that Trump won key states by even fewer votes than Biden won in 2020, yet no weeks and weeks of false claims of voter fraud.
The boundaries in 2020 and 2021 of democracy, however, have now been crossed, and Republicans have made that decision for the political party.
Regardless of our professions or stations in life, we cannot take the “both sides” or neutral approach to that line crossing without also being complicit in the insurrection.
Neutral is a political stance that endorses the status quo through silence and inaction.
Calling for no politics is always a political move of the powerful, who worship few things more than the status quo that allows their power.
Calling for no politics is always a political move of the powerful who depend on individual compliance and fear collective ethical resolve.
The worst and best examples of power in the U.S. is Trump and Mitch McConnell, both embodying the very worst of partisan and personal dishonesty and blatant loyalty only to their own fortunes; in other words, they have clung desperately to the status quo and their behavior has no ethical underpinning except to keep their own butts on their different thrones.
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, we should now recognize that we are all in very tenuous circumstances; life has no guarantees.
But in our daily lives, we must eat, cloth ourselves, and sleep somewhere while we also have families and loved ones who need us so that they can live; calling for no politics where we work and because of our professions is the most insidious way to keep the status quo of inequity in place.
As adults, if we genuinely seek a country that honors life, liberty, and the pursuit of freedom for all people, we must take clear stands, especially in our work puts us in front of children and young people.
There is nothing partisan about calling fascism “fascism,” calling racism “racism,” and calling lies “lies.”
To name those wrongs is the very best of being political and remaining neutral and silent, then, is the very worst of being political.
First, Bean Dad (as he would become known) posted a Twitter thread about teaching his daughter a lesson. The thread was flippant, snarky—and about a child not knowing how to use a can opener.
I was, frankly, surprised that Bean Dad took a beating on this because his approach to his child is essentially the foundational belief system in the U.S. about child rearing: The world is dangerous so I better pound on my kid before the world does so she/he is prepared for the Real World.
In far too much of the U.S., that pounding is literal—corporal punishment—but the pounding takes many forms such as grade retention and “no excuses” policies and practices in K-12 schooling.
Gradually, the clever thing to do about the Bean Dad trending on social media was to interrogate the phenomenon as an example of everything-that-is-wrong-with-Twitter. While a valid take, I think, it is also careless to set aside how this thread (whether it was hyperbole, as he claims, or not) is one small but ugly picture of how we mistreat children in the U.S., both in our families and in our institutions such as formal schools.
Let me offer an analogy.
One of the most important moments in the U.S. for the safety of children was recognizing the dangers of lead paint. This moment also is a powerful illustration of the need to target the external danger and not the child.
Instead of teaching children a lesson about lead paint—somehow toughening up those kids so that when they did consume lead paint, they would survive the experience—we used the power of public policy to remove lead from paint—to eradicate the danger, instead of pounding on the children.
Bean Dad quipped about his own compulsion to prepare his daughter for the apocalypse—some sort of version of The Road where the child is always alone?—but there seems never to be any consideration, as Maggie Smith concludes, for a better world: “This place could be beautiful,/right? You could make this place beautiful.”
A child is not an inherently flawed human that must be “fixed,” corrected, or improved. A child is a developing human that must be nurtured, and nurturing requires love, patience, and safe spaces.
If nothing else, we must all check our impulses to be Bean Dad so I offer here some reading to reconsider the many ways we fail that calling:
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 