I was crunching numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics last fall, and noticed that the United States is 62% White, with college campuses remaining 70% White (Fairfield is even higher), but wanted to see how K-12 public schools were landing. In 2020, 47% of K-12 youth were White in public schools. This trend will grow to be a cultural norm in the United States. I've written about it before - and celebrated that super diversity is a global norm as cultures migrate together as a result of wars, climate change, and economic opportunities (Vertovec, 2007). Digital communication has allowed more access to "knowing" in locations that were previously without high literacy rates. The result is population movement. It's happening in any nation where the perception of an opportunity for a better life exists.
But I awoke Sunday morning thinking about book banning, and how a few loud voices in some communities are making an uproar about diverse texts in schools, carrying the torch of misrepresented CRT - Critical Race Theory. Like all ideologies, CRT is a school of thinking, a theory, and I personally find it helpful when working through meaning and truth for the world, especially when analyzing inequities, cruelty, and harshness (owing much to Ernest Morrell and Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade in shaping my mind). In fact, as I was learning the brilliant lives of 8 African-born male refugee youth in and out of school while at Syracuse University, CRT offered me an angle for understanding global shifting, especially around literacy)
In all honesty, it's just CT - Critical Thinking. The goals should always be to teach kids to be independent, active, logical, and agentive. That is as American as it gets. It's the philosophy I believe in. We should want every child in school to be able to think, as thinking is crucial to success in all occupations. In parenting. In the day to day routines of life. Decisions need to be made, and they should be logical and sound. Denying thinking skills to children is simply criminal.
For as long as I've been teaching at the college level, I've promoted Alfred Tatum's work with textual lineages and the ways we build reading lives with ALL students. To do this, I've traced the books that have made me who I am as a thinker (from Ms. Twiggly's Tree, to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to The Color Purple, and Teachers as Cultural Workers, etc), but I've extended the prompt to Literacy Lineages, because I realize that people, experiences, visuals, and circumstances have also shaped my intellectual life and thinking, too. I am the sum of all my parts. I'm the investment of great minds, fortunate opportunities, research, teaching experience in schools with a mission for diversity and inclusion, and creativity. In return for sharing my literacy lineage, I assign my students to explore their own reading/writing/thinking/ speaking trajectory. I want them to have these for their future students, and this includes math, science, history, 2nd language, and English educators. Each of us are a single text, but we are written through the library of influences that have made us who we are.
There's something miraculous I've noticed in the decade I've done this. Kids love reading through middle school, but pretend to read once they get to high school. Teens are overcommitted, frustrated by most adults, exploratory, and busy. The majority of them DO NOT read the assigned texts, and are miraculously brilliant at pretending they do. I know this because 9 times out of 10 my students admit this while presenting on their own lineages. The majority realize they could still pass (even the AP exams) because the teachers do what Gallagher calls 'overreaching' - how can you not know what they should know. Most name that high school reading assignments killed the joy and that the reading life came alive again in college or whenever they had opportunity to choose their own texts on their own. They also state that collegiate reading requires critical thinking and intellectual pursuits in a way that high school reading did/does not. This is something we all should pay attention to.
In 2014, Christopher Myer penned "The Apartheid in Children's Literature" in the New York Times. I was fortunate to present at NCTE with him, Ger Duany, and William King a few conferences ago, and his influence supercharged my thinking in numerous directions. Christopher's mind works even faster than my own, and since I've also followed Ellen Oh's and Lamar Giles work with #WeNeedDiverseBooks, I've been applauding the volumes of texts being published today. In fact, it was central in designing The Write Time show with NWP and Tanya Baker. Why? Because kids I work within schools and during summer programs READ these books, LOVE these books, and in the best circumstances they are having BRILLIANT CONVERSATIONS about these books.
In short, they are doing what Freire recommends, both reading the word and the world.
Then comes the censorship tsunamis of 2021-2022.
I keep shaking my head, but then remember I saw a graphic once of the U.S. timeline on racism, which helped me to view how deeply entrenched the barbaric, colonial, vicious, and hateful snake of racism is to the United States (and how short the timespan has been for the U.S. to work towards a true democracy). A sentiment for civil rights in the U.S. is not even 100 years old, and availability of diverse texts REPRESENTING diverse people who reside in the U.S. is only half my age. The push, #RepresenationMatters, is only 25 years in the making and it arrives from the multiculturalism, social justice phase of the late 80s into the 90s (my years of K-12 schooling and college experiences)
And here the snake is once again with parents doing what they are doing. I wish Superintendents, politicians, and School Boards would hand each of these individuals a library card with the instructions, "Before we listen to your complaints, we need you to revisit history and check out a few books." They should be told this would be the best way to not embarrass themselves in front of the kids. Perhaps we should request as Nic Stone does, "Read my books before you attack them."
Yesterday, I chatted with a few author friends, colleagues in NWP, and teachers from Louisville. One, an African American teacher I adore from Iroquois High School, Aletha, asked when I shared the graphic above, "Did segregation ever end?" I had to stop in my place and ask the same thing. Given zip-code apartheid and the reality of inequitable schools I encounter weekly, her question was spot on. Perhaps that yellow should carry through to where we are right now...maybe we're not so "green."
Then, Torrey Maldonado challenged me to think further, “Often, there’s a backlash to Black & BIPOC Excellence.” When you look at the pernicious hold racism has had on the U.S. from imperialism, colonialism, until now, I can't help but think he is correct. My God, who has modeled better the power of perseverance, dedication, overcoming, achieving, celebrating, and having faith in what is possible than the Brown and diverse minds that have been exploited all the way? In the last decade there's been an uptick of diverse, beautiful, representational, and joyous texts being published and shared with America's readers. Then, boom! Look at those showing up with vitriol once more. Hello followers of Voldemort. Eating death, I see. Their canine teeth are out. Their intent as obvious as ever.
My question is to the parents who want to keep diverse texts from U.S. readers. When you're a teacher, it doesn't take long to realize every parent indoctrinates the minds of their children - it's inevitable, because learning is always an indoctrination. And it's true, teachers do it, too. All education indoctrinates. What is different in the United States, however, is the mission to create individuals - critical thinkers who are able to see multiple perspectives and make a wise decision from there. It's choice. It's variety. It's options. It's free will. K-12 schools indoctrinate in robust, healthy, and enlightening ways: They teach kids to think. They teach kids to question. They tap into the natural wonder of young people to find out why, and they coach.
So, my questions to the parents are as follows: "Why don't you want your child to think? Why don't you want them to question? Why do you desire to hinder curiosity and keep your child from finding out their truth. What are you so afraid of?"
This is year 27 for me as an educator. I've dedicated my life to the profession and even with the wonkiness of today, I still believe it is the greatest work a human being can do. I also like to note that I am a both/and....not an either/or....thinker. My mantra has always been, "Read everything. Engage with everyone. Learn from our humanity." I tell students, "be the most incredible human being you can."
Our young people deserve a better world than we are handing them right now. For me, I'm going back to the beautiful books lying in every room in my house, engaging with the complexity, joyfulness, and inspiring storytelling of the diverse writers that surround me. It makes my life phenomenal. The plurality in my ways of knowing enriches me. Give me heterogeneity over homogeneity every time.
Why? Let me channel Louis Armstrong and Israel Kamakaawiwo'ole for this one. I choose to sing, "And I think to myself, what a wonderful world."
Let's make the world wonderful for all children. Period.