Texas School District Just Trying To Teach Kids Softer Side Of Holocaust
That Bugs Bunny slicing off Florida .gif but with Texas instead.
Lotta people this morning throwing around phrases like "Oh my fucking God" and "Holy shit, Republicans are literal Nazis." No matter how you're expressing your outrage, you should just know that what's happening right now in Texas, as usual, is the fault of GOP Governor Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas Republicans.
That statement could refer to so many things, but in this case, we're talking about the story NBC News broke of what's happening in the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, where an administrator has been caught on tape telling teachers they need to have books in their classrooms that give "opposing" views of the Holocaust.
Because in a world where Chuck Todd has taught us there are two sides to every story, and where white Republicans are having meltdowns because mean liberals are calling them racist just because they're racist, we now have to teach the "opposing" side of the Holocaust.
A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an "opposing" perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News.
Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district's executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent's complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom.
That fourth grade teacher didn't have a pro-racism book in her classroom also? How will the little while children learn to be racist, then? (Ha ha, from everywhere.)
Please listen to the recording:
Congrats to @GovAbbott on signing a law that has teachers “terrified” and that led school administrators to suggest… https: //t.co/NjXnSc98Ch
— Kevin M. Kruse (@Kevin M. Kruse) 1634244036.0
As the historian Kevin Kruse notes, this happened because Greg Abbott signed a law, HB 3979, which for the sake of white racist bigots' extremely fragile feelings and for no other sake requires that, among many other batshit things, "teachers who choose to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs shall, to the best of their ability, strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective." (That's followed by an extended pantshitting meltdown about how no student should ever be made to feel like anybody of their own [white] race ever did anything wrong.)
And that's what leads this administrator Gina Peddy to specifically say:
"And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust," Peddy continued, "that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives."
Which other perspectives? Ones where the Holocaust didn't happen? Where six million Jews maybe WERE guilty of all the things Hitler and his armies said they were? What, you fucking Texas Republican Nazis, what?
"How do you oppose the Holocaust?" one teacher said in response.
"Believe me," Peddy said. "That's come up."
Yeah, we believe it. It's just, you know, that decent people don't coddle people who want us to teach kids the softer side of the Holocaust.
Another teacher wondered aloud if she would have to pull down "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry, or other historical novels that tell the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of victims. It's not clear if Peddy heard the question in the commotion or if she answered.
Jesus.
The rest of the article features quotes from administrators trying to explain that they're just trying to help teachers comply with the new law, and a guy from the Texas State Teachers Association who personally thinks this school district is over-reacting to the new law and that it actually does not require teachers to teach Texas schoolchildren that there are a number of perspectives on the Holocaust, all of which deserve equal time on "Meet The Press."
Also Republican state Senator Bryan Hughes, who wrote the Senate version of the law that's taking effect soon, said it's preposterous that anyone would think his very good law would require something like this, just preposterous:
State Sen. Bryan Hughes, an East Texas Republican who wrote Senate Bill 3, denied that the law requires teachers to provide opposing views on what he called matters of "good and evil" or to get rid of books that offer only one perspective on the Holocaust.
"That's not what the bill says," Hughes said in an interview Wednesday when asked about the Carroll book guidelines. "I'm glad we can have this discussion to help elucidate what the bill says, because that's not what the bill says."
It's not about things like the Holocaust, y'all. It's about areas and subject matters where Republicans currently act like Nazis. OK?
Get it right.
Read the whole thing if you feel like being outraged on your Friday morning. You'll especially like the rubric the school district sent out last week to help teachers "grade" whether books are acceptable for their classrooms, or if they are one-sided liberal propaganda like, we dunno, Night by Elie Wiesel.
[ NBC News ]
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My one history/social studies prof who I suspected of being a conservative leaning moderate was rather keen on having views from both the right and the left, where applicable. The operative phrase here is "where applicable." He had zero sympathy for genocidal assholes, including the sorts who'd lynch black and/or gay people.
"The Nazis never would have done the Holocaust if the cosmopolitan liberal elites hadn't hurt their feelings by calling them anti-Semites."