Wednesday May 24, 2023

IN THIS ISSUE: One Parent's Hysteria; A Board's Illiteracy

One Parent’s Hysteria

In Spotsylvania, one parent is creating chaos. And she’s empowered by an illiterate board.

Three books the illiterate are banning, and the one book the illiterate will never understand.

Spotsylvania School Board member Kirk Twigg is fond of calling himself a “Constitutionalist.” It’s a common word thrown around by those who follow the Tea Party.

The truth is that Twigg - as well as April Gillespie, Lisa Phelps, Rabhi Abuismail, and superintendent Mark Taylor - not only have a worldview that is at odds with the Constitution, but they are illiterate about its text, meaning, and history.

We know this because Twigg and company are operating in a manner that reflects the worst fear of James Madison - the Father of the Constitution - which he expressed in Federalist 10. (Read the document here. For an excellent discussion of Federalist 10, spend an hour watching Teaching American History’s “Documents in Detail” episode on this most important of the Federalist Papers.)

They are acting as a “faction.” And a faction, writes Madison in Federalist 10, is:

…. a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens [emphasis added], or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

Consider for just a moment just some of the ways this board has trampled the rights of other citizens.

• Openly violating citizen’s First Amendment rights to Free Speech during board meetings.

• Forbidding minority board members from adding items to the meeting agenda, effectively disenfranchising them and their constituents.

• Going into closed session in a manner that some believe is illegal.

• Refusing to answer direct questions from constituents.

And the most obvious:

• Banning books from the school libraries over the objections of the parent committees that were convened to review challenges.

At the request of one lone individual, this school board has acted unilaterally to remove books that only she, a very few other misguided souls, finds offensive.

This consolidation of power into the hands of a faction is, in the words of Madison, the single greatest threat to the Republican form of government.

The friend of popular governments, never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail therefore to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it.

There are but two cures to this threat.

The first is that if the faction is a minority, the majority will vote it out of power at the first opportunity.

That is certainly the hope of a growing number of people in Spotsylvania County. But elections are unpredictable.

That leaves us with the second option: to control the effects the faction has on the society.

And for Madison, that was accomplished through representative government. This quells factions by:

… passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves convened for the purpose.

In the current situation, this remedy is not much help.

The school board is a representative body. Madison favored representatives over direct democracy because he trusted that the people who would be elevated to those positions would be, for lack of a better word, “elitist.” They would be well-educated, and able to put the needs of the community and the state and the nation above their own.

By their very actions, this board majority has shown it has no concern for the community above their personal interests. They lack education. They lack empathy. And they lack any intellectual ability to comprehend the complexities of what Madison was saying.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that this board majority also detests “elites.”

This is why they let one hyperactive parent dictate what students can and cannot read.

Our problem with illiterate leaders, however, is hardly limited to Spotsylvania.

A Sobering Finding

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published the results of a sobering study of book banning. Rabid factionalism and illiteracy, it seems, is hardly limited to Spotsylvania.

The article, “Objection to sexual, LGBTQ content propels spike in book challenges,” found that our lone parent - empowered by an illiterate board - is hardly an anomaly.

Here’s how the Post went about its study.

The Post requested copies of all book challenges filed in the 2021-2022 school year with the 153 school districts that Tasslyn Magnusson, a researcher employed by free expression advocacy group PEN America, tracked as receiving formal requests to remove books last school year. In total, officials in more than 100 of those school systems, which are spread across 37 states, provided 1,065 complaints totaling 2,506 pages.

And the most shocking finding in the study?

A small number of people were responsible for most of the book challenges, The Post found. Individuals who filed 10 or more complaints were responsible for two-thirds of all challenges. In some cases, these serial filers relied on a network of volunteers gathered together under the aegis of conservative parents’ groups such as Moms for Liberty.

So what we are dealing with in Spotsylvania is actually part of a greater national illiteracy problem.

A paltry 10 individuals are responsible for two-thirds of all book challenges.

T-E-N.

Let that number sink in. And then you begin to understand why Madison, rightly, feared the factions.

The Case for the Humanities

The election in November may well be the best hope for the children of Spotsylvania and their parents to excise the illiterate leaders of the school board, and its equally illiterate superintendent.

The question becomes, even if this movement is stemmed, what is our best defense against its reiteration in another election cycle?

I would argue that it’s something that Madison never mentioned, because in his age it was a given that leaders enjoyed it.

It, is a solid grounding in the humanities.

The reality is that the humanities have been under attack for decades.

Demands for job training, STEM education, and certifications that make students instantly employable are more popular than ever. Even Gov. Glenn Youngkin is pushing for more of this.

To be clear, there is space and need for all of this, and I fully support these programs.

But the demand for these programs is coming at the expense of the humanities, and in particular liberal education grounded in the arts and letters.

Among the illiterate, liberal education has become “indoctrination.” It is to be feared. Most important, it is to be avoided at all costs in public education.

For when students are exposed to the humanities, they see the illiterate for what they are.

Failures at being human.

For it is the humanities alone that teach us about beauty, about life, and about love.

The humanities are the very stuff of life itself.

As my intellectual counterpart Shaun Kenney likes to say:

“When the aliens finally invade, they aren’t going to care about our STEM-H programs, but our art, music, literature, and poetry.”

We must shed the illiterates from power.

They have no ability to use it effectively. And in the eyes of Madison, the four majority members - by virtue of their illiteracy - have no right to power, either.

And then, we must return to the real work of education.

Restoring the humanities to their rightful place at the center of K-12 education.

We owe our children no less.