The other day, I noticed a copy of a magazine titled “Teaching
Tolerance” on a desk in a local high school. The magazine is published every
quarter, and it is printed by an organization called tolerance.org.
I was born the same year that Jackie Robinson became the first
Negro ball player in professional baseball, and I witnessed the civil rights
movement blossom and flourish. Emmett Till was murdered on the same day that I
turned 8, and Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech my
birthday in 1963.
Overall, I would say that our society has become more tolerant
than it was when I was a kid, but there has always been, and also will be, a
certain percentage of our population who will forever remain intolerant.
Unfortunately, our society has
become LESS tolerant in recent years due to the ascension of Donald “you’re
fired” Trump, who has surrounded himself with people who are very much like
himself. His senior advisor, Stephen Miller was brought up by a liberal Jewish
family in California, but became radicalized after he read Wayne LaPierre’s
book, “Guns, Crime, and Freedom” when he was in high school.
After graduation from high
school, Miller went to Duke University, where he met Richard Spencer, an
American white supremacist, who is president of the National Policy Institute
as well as Washington Summit Publishers. Spencer was one of the featured speakers
at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last August.
To say “there were a few good people on both sides” at the
rally in Charlottesville is EXACTLY the wrong thing to do, since depicting
Nazis as ordinary gives them power. The link below takes a broader look at the
issue:
According to the FBI, the number of hate crimes reached a 5
year high in 2016, and took a noticeable uptick at the end of 2016 after Trump’s
surprise victory.
There will not be an improvement in our country until Trump is
either forced to resign or forcibly removed from office, but there ARE things
that can be done in the meantime to make our country a “kinder, gentler”
America.
At the local level, the Tucson Unified School district has
taken steps to ensure that our local school system is as tolerant as possible. Last
September, the Governing Board adopted a resolution stating, "the Governing Board and
the District, and its administration, teachers, counselors and staff will
support all students equally, whether their immigration status is documented or
undocumented."
On
March 8, the district will hold a multicultural symposium (designed to build
relationships among different cultures) at one of the local high schools. In
order to further that goal, the district currently offers interpretation and
translation in Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Kirundi, Somali, and Swahili.
I have
been in 2 schools so far that have support groups for students in the LGBTQ
community, but I am fairly certain that there are a lot more schools than that who do the same thing.
I am
not aware of any specific courses in tolerance that are being taught in Tucson,
although many teachers undoubtedly make efforts to do so. If they are unsure
about how to go about doing that, a woman named Kathlene Holmes published an
article in UT News (the newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin) in
2005. Her letter can be viewed at the link shown below:
If more teachers had taken her advice years ago, it’s possible
that Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown would still be alive today.
One of the paradoxes of today’s political environment is that the
most conservative religious voters in the country overwhelmingly support a
thrice-married lying crook because they believe he was “chosen by God” to lead
our country.
One of the troubling trends created by this group is the fact
that more and more states are passing legislation to allow the teaching of the
Bible in public schools.
The West Virginia legislature introduced a bill in January of
2018 that would mandate an elective course in both
private and public schools that teaches "knowledge of biblical
content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to
understanding contemporary society and culture" while also adhering to
"religion neutrality." If
the bill is passed, it would make West Virginia the 8th state to do
so.
Not surprisingly, the push to pass the bill has taken place
in the “red’ states. The Republican platform of 2016 encouraged state
legislatures to offer the Bible in a literature curriculum as a high school
elective due to the fact the Republican Party believes that “a good understanding
of the Bible is indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.
The danger with Bible study courses is that they can easily
stray into attempts to proselytize religion. As a result, the courses have
occasionally run into legal problems in places like Texas and Kentucky.
In
April of 2012, Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill that allowed the Bible to be
studied in Arizona classrooms. Fortunately, the classes aren’t mandatory. In addition, the
elective courses teach students about the Bible’s history as it pertains to its
influence on Western civilization (this is starkly different than, say,
preaching based on the holy book’s tenets).
The best approach to the problem is to NOT teach strictly
about the Bible, but about other religions as well. According to tolerance.org,
research shows that a world religions course helps reduce
intolerance among students without undermining students' religious beliefs.
If you are creative, there ARE ways to fight back against the
folks who are too rigid about religion. One example of that is the Church of
Flying
Spaghetti Monster, which originated in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes. Believe it or not, it is recognized as a legitimate religion in New Zealand and the Netherlands.
Spaghetti Monster, which originated in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes. Believe it or not, it is recognized as a legitimate religion in New Zealand and the Netherlands.
I encountered a similar
problem last spring when I taught a biology class and encountered a student who
was a 7th Day Adventist. That religion does not consider the theory
of evolution to be valid. The permanent teacher of the class advised the girl’s
mother that her daughter could say “scientists say” rather than “the facts are”
when discussing evolution, and the problem was solved.
Although I consider myself to be a tolerant person, the truth
is that tolerance is not actually a virtue, and that odd statement is more
fully explained in the article below:
Martin Luther King Jr. achieved his goals of racial equality
by means of peaceful protests, but he never used the word “tolerance” in his
speeches. For him (and he was
right) “it would have been an obscenity to say white people should learn to
tolerate us more.” The goal of the Civil Rights Movement was not simply
appealing to liberal magnanimity, but demanding equity, including
economic equity. Tolerance is a request that represents a retreat from that
ambitious vision. When King marched on Washington D.C., he didn't say, "Learn
to live with us." He said, "We're here to
cash a check".
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