Old Classrooms
For many years, teachers wouldn’t allow students to record their classes. Folks from outside education thought that was “nefarious”; that teachers didn’t want to be held accountable for what they said. But the real answer was simpler. Kids, then and now, are technically more proficient than their parents and their teachers. It didn’t take much editing for a perfectly normal lecture or discussion, to turn into something completely unacceptable.
If a teacher really did say or do something that out of bounds, there was always thirty-some witnesses. But one altered tape could destroy a teacher’s career. So teachers of the past didn’t allow their classes to be recorded. But in our current age of Zoom classrooms and every single kid carrying a recording device, teachers are well aware that they are vulnerable to “editing” at every turn. It’s now just another “assumed risk” of the profession.
Lying Eyes
Project Veritas, led by James O’Keefe, is a far-right group that creates videos to trash their opponents. They use hidden cameras to catch the conversations of the “enemy”, then edit the outcome to make them look foolish and nefarious. For example, it was Project Veritas that showed “evidence” that Planned Parenthood was selling parts of aborted fetuses. The evidence was from edited hidden video of “interviews”, carefully clipped to create the appearance that Planned Parenthood executives were bragging about the sales.
It was a lie – but it’s hard to deny your “lying eyes and ears”. Just like that teacher from twenty years ago, the edited version says whatever the editor wants it to say. O’Keefe set the “standard”: fake credentials, hidden audio and video, edited responses to create a false narrative.
Word Salad
Accuracy in Media is another “gotcha” group, run by a Project Veritas alum. This week they posted a video of two local high school administrators (Upper Arlington and Groveport) discussing how their schools “supposedly” teach Critical Race Theory. The video authors follow the Project Veritas playbook, posing as parents enrolling their kids in school, and just asking “a couple of questions” recorded by hidden video and audio.
They use a “word salad” game to “catch” the schools. Accuracy in Media equates their ultimate “bogeyman” – Critical Race Theory – with other educational terms such as Social-Emotional-Learning, Diversity and Equity Education. Social-Emotional Learning is defined as “…the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success (Committee for Children).” That sounds like something every child needs, but, like the term Critical Race Theory itself, the video creators describe it as “liberal indoctrination”. Diversity and Equity, standard educational goals since the 1970’s, are also being “turned” into evil. And don’t even get them started on white privilege or inherent racism.
Gotcha
So as the administrators use those terms, the “announcer” jumps in to quickly redefine them as part of the whole “Critical Race Theory conspiracy” of the “liberal public schools”. The announcer (who is the President of Accuracy in Media) uses the “word salad” to get to his final point: you can’t trust the “liberal” public schools, so support laws which give public money to private schools.
As those school administrators found, you can’t trust anyone to have an honest conversation. Now they are at risk of being fired, and the school districts are scrambling to explain exactly what they’re doing. Public schools serve everyone in their communities, and those two districts now are “out-ted” to a segment of those constituents, even though they aren’t doing anything wrong.
Florida Man
It’s happening here in Ohio, but in Florida, this kind of “Critical Race Theory” nonsense is even more mainstream.
America’s colleges have been teaching classes in African American History for fifty years. This year, the College Board developed a high school advanced placement class (AP) in the subject. They are piloting the course program in sixty high schools throughout the United States: except in Florida.
The Florida legislature already has passed laws that the Accuracy in Media crowd wants for Ohio. They banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, conflating all of the other “word salad” terms as well. The Governor of Florida this week ordered that AP African American Studies cannot be taught in Florida public schools, because it is in violation of that law. As the Governor’s office said: it’s too “woke”, and not “real history”.
White Wash
“Real history” to the Florida legislature is the whitewashed version of American history we were taught in schools of the 1950’s and 60’s. Black influence in America was restricted to Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver and Jackie Robinson. The Civil War was all about the nature of the Constitutional agreement to form a union, and had little to do with enslavement. Only history books acceptable in Texas were allowed in America’s classrooms. We knew more about Davy Crockett and the Alamo, then we did about the Emancipation Proclamation.
To the Florida legislature, “color blindness” (and LGBTQIA blindness, and disability blindness) are all equal to “fairness”. Of course, that’s not fair, not to the kids who aren’t in the majority. But that’s where Florida is “leading” American education – back to the old “white culture” domination of the mid-20th century. And Ohio isn’t far behind, with this new “evidence” to support their biased claims.
And if saying that is “woke” – so be it.
