Thankfully, I’m retired from teaching. Republican state legislators’ obsession with “critical race theory” makes one wonder just what can be safely taught. Although I taught university math, it is unrealistic to think even math could avoid race to be relevant — e.g., when choosing data sets for testing interesting statistical hypotheses.
After retiring 23 years ago, I planned to quench my thirst for U.S. history by reading biographies of all presidents who served before my adulthood. But it’s difficult to find comprehensive biographies for such presidents as Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce. Why? Because they are considered largely inconsequential, primarily because they shirked responsibility for solving the foremost issue of their time: slavery.
While growing up in Salem, Ore., a secret “gentleman’s agreement” among Realtors excluded people of color. Chemawa Indian School, just five miles north, forced assimilation of its students into white culture. Oregon had Black exclusion laws from 1844 until 1926 and was a Ku Klux Klan hotbed in the early 20th century. I certainly never learned any of this during my 1940s-50s K-12 education in Salem. So I’m anxious to learn all that I’ve missed!
Severely limiting race in our educational curricula is blatantly deceptive and unjust. Republican efforts to control what we learn are just another step toward dictatorship, using lies and scapegoats to consolidate power.
