The problem isn’t LGBT schoolbooks in Blue Valley. It’s ignorance on ‘indoctrination’
The first thing I learned as a teacher, which I tried to remind myself daily of in the classroom, was that I did not have all the answers. Neither does Blue Valley school board member Jim McMullen. Before deleting his Twitter account, McMullen — like many keyboard warriors before him — took to social media to call Joe Biden a “president embracing child abuse” for simply acknowledging the fact that transgender children exist. This fact is apparently too much for McMullen to tolerate.
In the safe space of wherever McMullen was composing his online tirade, he made it known that he agrees with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that we should restrict what teachers can say about sexual orientation or gender identity in schools. Why? Because it makes him uncomfortable? Welcome to my marshmallow world, Jim.
McMullen should apologize or be censured by the Blue Valley Board of Education, not because of what he said — and not because I or others are interested in canceling him for his tweets — but because he appears to lack the fundamental wherewithal to understand how teaching works. And as someone partially responsible for decisions related to curriculum and personnel, he has demonstrated through his actions that he is wholly unfit for the task.
McMullen sounds like some of my colleagues in the Missouri General Assembly with the simplified notion that schools ought to “return to basics” and “get back to reading, writing and arithmetic.” This narrow view of the learning process treats children as subjects, as blank slates or sponges, that in some sort of mechanical way absorb information and retain it once it’s told to them.
It’s no surprise to me that these are the same individuals who, in a projection of their own ideology, accuse people like me of engaging in “indoctrination.”
Good teaching is far more than a process of delivery and receipt of information. It is precisely because I am opposed to indoctrinating children that I account for the unique experiences that each of them brings to an encounter in the classroom. I have found that kids respond best when their care is as individualized as possible. I, too, have struggled righteously throughout my educational career with figures of authority, but unlike McMullen, I have no interest in absolutes.
When we teach our children about people in the world whose experiences differ from their own, we do not force them to adopt a particular ideology. Often, despite years of formal education, people like McMullen still have not learned the valuable lesson of empathy — a clear demonstration that indoctrination is often a futile effort.
The best teaching involves a two-way feedback loop, with a fully engaged educator and learner exchanging information. Children can teach us just as much as or more than we teach them. As Oscar Wilde put it, “I’m not young enough to know everything.” As we age and the negative experiences in our life multiply, we tend more and more to invent reasons that implicate others unfairly in our own stories. We imagine new and unfamiliar faces to be enemies and scapegoat the mere existence of those who challenge the status quo. We can and must do better.
The bizarre and antiquated notion that a child who reads a book with a gay or transgender character is somehow going to “become” gay or trans as a result is a politically motivated fantasy. Reading prepares us. A child who reads a story about a family with two moms has fewer unsettling questions the first time that child encounters such a family in their life.
This is what McMullen and people like him want to avoid? That should tell you all you need to know. That is why we label positions like his “hate.” And those who spread hate must be stopped.