Much Ado About Nada
As mentioned previously here and here, after months of hand-wringing here on the Left Coast, the Temecula Valley Unified School District has finally concluded its social studies textbook adoption exercise. This post’s title gives a hint at the resolution, but skips over the outrage, so I’ll fill in the blanks right now.
This week, the TVUSD board met for a 2 hour textbook adoption workshop before their monthly open meeting where they, again, voted down adoption of what is called the TCI social studies curriculum for K-5 students in Temecula, California.
This, despite warnings from state officials that they would be, among other things, fined $1.5 million should they fail to adopt a state-approved curriculum.
Their workshop was 1 hour and 45 minutes of utter boredom that all school board workshops tend to be until the agenda item “Next Steps” came up. It was then that board member Daniel Gonzalez erupted into a homophobic hissyfit that was inflicted on half of the audience in the public meeting as seen in this YouTube video.
The other half of the meeting’s audience cheered him on.
During this last part of the workshop, Gonzalez read a passage from a chapter in the text under consideration. Quoting:
“I want to bring up a specific note in this article that says ‘over time groups like the Gay Liberation Front and the Human Rights Campaign fought for the civil rights of gay people.’ “
At that point he jumped the track to his own research, citing a person he claimed to be a founder of the Gay Liberation Front or GLF. Quoting:
“This is a document that I was able to find online, which is the statement of purpose and the manifesto of the founder of that organization, by the name of David Thorstad, written in 1970.”
Right there, in sculpting that poorly worded screed, he departed from truth.
David Thorstad was not a founder of the Gay Liberation Front. Thorstad was one of the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970, not the GLF. I know, what’s a few letters? Besides, they’re all Gay.
But it was important to Gonzalez to conflate the GLF with the GAA because, as Gonzalez continued, Thorstad went on, in 1978, to found NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association. What could be worse than having a pedophile as a founding member of a group (i.e. the GLF) when that group is mentioned in an elementary social studies textbook? Basically, Gonzalez’ “research”, which he went to great effort to include in the workshop’s transcript, illustrated an idea born of intolerance and ignorance: that gay people are all pedophiles.
The workshop ended, and the board met, again, to reject the curriculum. Asked about the fact that Governor Newsom was paying for and sending to TVUSD the rejected materials anyway, board president Komrosky said that he would “send them back”.
Fast-forward to yesterday, Friday July 21st. In a “special meeting” the same school board met to adopt the twice-rejected curriculum. In their staring match with state government, apparently the board blinked.
Maybe they paused at having $1.6 million deducted from their state funds that would buy the curriculum materials, on top of the $1.5 million in fines that the board was promised they’d have to pay (I assume through another deduction from their state allotment).
And so, after months of bitter fighting from the vocally ignorant in Temecula Valley, the fiscal reality of the affair was clarified to the three newly-elected board members. Where reasoning failed, arm-twisting succeeded.
So all the “ado” in Temecula turned out to be “nada”.
Wonder how the professionals that actually deal with the students feel about all this. Teachers. I’m just guessing they were not on board with the board before this resolution and probably don’t trust them going forward. Same crap is going on in many places.
1“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
2― Mark Twain
I believe that people of this ilk need rote training (e.g. repetitive oral recitation of the ‘ABCs’ in kindergarten). The training tool has been identified: $.
Since the state had to expend resources to address this idiocy and not address other needs, total up the cost (both sunk costs and lost opportunity costs). Send said invoice to this board. Amortize the invoice over 36 months, each payment due at the beginning of each month (preferably when the board meets). And, no, it should not be a ‘deduction’ from their allocation of state funds. A hard copy bill each month for the board to see and deal with….each month. You get the drift.
3A perfect example of the truism “Money talks and BS walks.”
4Steve, from what I’m reading, the teachers who actually care are changing professions in droves because of crap like this.
5Which is the reason repugnantcans are doing it.
It’s a twofer.
Red meat for the maga base to foam at the mouth about, and genuine reason to chase off quality teachers.
So they “we the taxpayers” can educate more kids to be magas.
Hmm. I guess their twofer’s got a different multiple.
Some of that new math.
Betcha the new maga teachers won’t cover that particular formula.
Although come to think of it, my pessimistic brain’s thinking that AP courses in a few years will teach the new generation of teachers exactly how it works.
Thank you, Gov Newsom. Thank you for forcing the homophobes to acknowledge reality even if they try to hide the truth. It will not make them treat their gay family members any better but at least they can’t deny that they exist.
6As for teachers leaving the profession, I can’t blame them. They take the brunt of the hatred and fear that these fascists foist off on leaders.
Around here, such a fine is paid by the board that inflicted it. Not by the MEMBERS of the board, but by the taxpayers that voted to put the idiots there. So why should they balk at a fine of 1.5M, or 5.1M, or whatever? They may have to pay slightly more in their own property taxes (modulo Prop 13’s long shadow), but it’s spread over the entire population.
That’s part of the reason police in large cities don’t care how many laws they break or civil rights they violate. They don’t have to pay the settlements, it’s the citizens that get soaked.
7I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you have concerns about what your kid’s teacher is teaching them you can always ask. Nine times out of ten, they aren’t teaching that thing you are worried about anyway. Sure, Harvey Milk is in the book but I imagine they aren’t spending more than two minutes on him. For one, we don’t cover every single little thing that’s in the book. Second, that’s the 1970s. A lot of teachers will be going 120 miles per hour once they get there. History curriculum these days is an inch deep and a mile wide. We don’t have time for deep dives and even if we did, each teacher has their own favorite period/event they would do that with. So again, ask.
8In the extreme, floriduh’s whitewashing of history and education is covered in a Jeff Tiedrich’s Sunday article which I’ll let you find on the internet if you wish. The highlight (make that lowlight) is a requirement that teachers cover how slavery was actually positive because of the useful life lessons it taught.
9If you can’t find it and want me to copy it here, let me know.
Slavery taught slaves valuable work skills that they could only get here? Nope. Slavery only teaches slavery. some of those slaves that got here were from folk who already worked with the bessemer technique for one. dog a little deeper and I bet you find more talent was brought in than was dished out.
10I remain bumfuzzled by the debates about teaching slavery in our history. I first learned about it in the 1st grade (Thank You, Central Elementary School of Sausalito, California!)
But what is almost never mentioned about the whole sorry experience should awe anybody who thinks about it. Take millions of people from their homeland; deprive them of their freedom, education, language, religion, culture; and, over time, they proceed to create something that has appealed to and influenced every other culture on the planet. Ron DeSantis and the MAGAites would be astonished if they ever gave this a moment’s thought.
11Let’s not forget folks, not all them slaves got beat.
I mean other than the whole “can’t leave or they’ll track you down with dogs and horsewhip you all the way back to your benevolent owner” thing, a bunch of ’em had a purty cushy gig.
BarbinDC, we’ve talked a lot about how repugnantcans project their assholishness on everybody else.
12And I think it’s been brought up before, but I think we project too. IMHO We keep expecting them to finally exhibit some kinda decency.
Personally I believe that the contributions to society of the people bigots think of as “less than” (at a minimum) makes said bigots hate them even more.
The bord blinked, and approved the curriculum originally suggested? Good! If logic and facts make no impression on the fanatics, hit ’em in the pocketbook. That usually works.
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