The Most Dangerous Local Story

Friends, there are local things to write about today. I just don’t feel like writing about any of them.

There was a tragic fatal shooting of a three year old.

A controversy in a local parade.

Some folks are upset about a nearby quarry.

A member of the County Council will be proposing the creation of a new Inspector General position.

The County announced a partnership with HCC to support childcare for the young children of students there.

The new superintendent of schools is beginning his first ninety days in office,

There’s a new head at CA, too.

And yet…

All I have on my mind this morning is the Twitter account of the Howard Counry M4L chapter which is spewing falsehood after falsehood. The latest?

The teachers unions are killing education in America. Why every parent should be outraged.

Yes,there are plenty of stories both big and small that are on our minds this morning.

Please don’t let any of them obscure the fact that M4L is looking to gain traction on our Board of Education and that you have an opportunity to vote for something better: candidates who support working in partnership with educators, who believe in the power of intellectual freedom and in teaching the truth about history, and who will work to make schools welcoming for all children and families.

Accept no substitutions. Those are the qualities that are needed to create successful learning environments for our kids.

Village Green/Town² Comments

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog