welcome to texas

Music: Fous De La Mer: Stars and Fishes (2004)

The Texas Board of Education has been getting a lot of national press lately because of the "curricular reforms" a number of its "conservative" members have been ramming into policy. Most of the national hubbub has been about textbook censorship and curricular standards: removing Thomas Jefferson as a representative of the Enlightenment because of his advocacy of the separation of church and state; deleting Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights leaders from social studies curricula; adding creationism to the teaching of science; and so forth. The seven or so self-identified "conservative" board members are rather forthright about their ideological agenda; more than a few are on record claiming that "academia" has a "liberal bias" and, like Twisted Sister, they're "not gonna take it anymore."

Ok, like most of you reading, I think the Texas Board of Education is both comical and an embarrassment. I also think its regrettable that a creationist dentist can decide what is or is not in a textbook; because Texas is a huge state, textbook reform impacts the national textbook industry. In an ideal world, boards of education would be largely peopled by teachers (I don't think it should all be teachers, however; voices from outside the educational-industrial complex are important)---and these teachers should, themselves, have good educations. But, as much as I would admit that the content of textbooks is important, I also have to laugh at the attention these curricular "reforms" are getting. It's actually a diversion to the real problem our system of compulsory education: dedicated teachers. I don't care what textbook or set of standards you endorse or enforce, it don't mean jack without a good teacher to teach and enact them.

Because a good friend and colleague has tangled with David Horowitz, who has made higher education a political battleground in the culture wars (see, for example, this tomfoolery), I'm familiar with the more deliberate politicization of education, primary and secondary. As an educator I also understand the importance of speaking-out against the wildly unfounded claims of this "conservative" movement into the educational system. At the same time, however, I want to look these folks in the eyes and ask: who is gonna teach your revisionist history? Who is gonna teach creation science?

Let me get gross (that is, reductionist): "right" politics in the U.S. reduces to a fundamental---and primal---appeal: someone is taking your happenis away. "Left" politics often cottons to something like, "love your neighbor." These appeals resonate with all of us, but some of us lean more to neighbors than to self, some of us are more about giving than preserving. Guess which kind of person goes into---and stays in---the profession of teaching?

I've been teaching for fourteen years now. If there is one thing I've learned from being a teacher, it is that feeling is the glue of learning, that to get a student to care about doing the work, doing the reading, or mastering the skill, they have to believe that the teacher cares about them doing so. I just taught a class about religion, and I promise that 85% of the students in my class do not share my politics. To be a good teacher, however, I have to connect with them as people, and then provoke them to think for themselves. It really doesn’t matter what the textbook says---what matters is what we talk about in the classroom, how we connect with each other. What matters is the conversation we have. The textbook is a jumping-off point. Any teacher will tell you that the textbook is where we begin, not where we end.

That the Texas Board of Education thinks that it can craft political subjects by textbook content is laughable. It's the teacher and his or her affective investments that make the difference. It's everyday interaction, being in the classroom, it's working with people in "meat space" that makes the impact.

The folks who go into teaching are, by and large, romantics and idealists. Because they are motivated by building community, teachers are less likely to be free market capitalists of the Ayn Randian stripe. (I mean, you're not going to find a kindergarten teacher touting the virtues of selfishness.) If you really want to conservatize education, you're going to have to change the character of the teacher. And I ask: what kind of person signs-up for working in a system that underpays and overworks? What kind of person decides to dedicate his or her career to a profession that is undervalued? It's the kind of person who is less concerned with policy and more concerned with connection.

The assumptions behind the curricular "reform" of the Texas Board of Education are fundamentally flawed. They underestimate the intelligence of young people. And they have no clue about the type of person who is drawn to be a teacher. A teacher did not go into law enforcement for a reason; we are not police. By definition, teaching is not policing.