“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?"

I am taking a breather to write about something domestic this week: education in America. 

photo: Kimberly Cambra/Philadelphia Inquirer

In the last year, good folks of Bucks County had a bit of an issue with the Central Bucks school board. Seems the Republican run school board has been replaced by a whole new crop of Democrats. One-time Republican now turned Democrat Karen Smith was sworn in as school board chair not on a Bible,  but on a stack of banned books. The book on top? NIGHT by Elie Wiesel. She chose it because a quote from that book was ordered to be removed from a library due to a board policy that "banned staff from advocating beliefs to students on “partisan, political, or social policy issues." The removed quote? 

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. 

The other books in the pile?

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: about a child being raped by her father. 
• Lily and Dunkin, by Donna Gephart: with a transgender main character
• All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson: about a young man growing up Black and queer.
• Flamer, by Mike Curato: about a teenager grappling with his identity
• Beyond Magenta, by Susan Kuklin: about the lives of 6 transgender teens

Each of those books confront marginalized groups. Kids need to read books in which they see themselves even when they have not shared that intimate knowledge with others. They need to see they are not alone or weird or abnormal. Each one of those books deals with identity and should never be locked away from readers.

Is this what education in the United States has come to? Mob rule? Get elected or appointed and make rules up as you go? 

Marginalized groups are being terrorized in academic settings and some seek to legitimize that rhetoric. When administrators turn a blind eye and then turn their backs on students of any kind of minority, they are not serving their communities with justice. They are painting targets on kids backs whether or not they fully comprehend the impact of their actions. They are providing tacit approval for bullying and harassment. Doesn't matter if it's gay kids, or trans kids, or Jews, or Muslims, or kids who wear green sneakers. Pull the books about marginalized communities outta the library, tell kids that stuff is bad for them, and the kids will do the rest. Once the target is in place, the potential victim is established, marked, and eventually attacked. 

Ms. Magill, Dr. Kornbluth, and Dr. Gay

This week, presidents of three prestigious universities testified before a congressional House committee about anti-semitism on their campuses. Students across the country are being harassed, attacked, and openly threatened because they are Jews. Those attackers are not going after Israelis per se, they are going after all Jewish students and faculty. Swastikas, threatening graffiti, and physical intimidation are becoming increasingly common on campuses. 

The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and MIT were all asked about what was happening to Jewish students on their respective campuses. All three were asked the same question by Representative Elise Stefanik (R, NY):

“I am asking, specifically: Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?”

All three, Ms. Magill of Penn, Dr. Kornbluth of MIT (who is Jewish), and Dr. Gay of Harvard said it depended on context. While one might argue context may be a factor in prosecutorial conversation, the intent of the speeches, chants, or verbal assaults cannot be dismissed as requiring context. What context would they accept? Someone's head bashed in? Jews herded into a building? Or perhaps a synagogue shot up...like Tree of Life in Pittsburgh or Temple Israel in Albany?

There is a point missing from their context-laden speeches...and that is intent. The shouts, the jeers, the slogans are not innocuous; they are meant to incite a reaction. Just as the January 6th insurrectionists were not merely peaceful demonstrators intent on visiting the Capitol to take in the sights, crowds screaming From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free are not simply trying to make a point. They are trying to rally others to their cause.   

What would the three presidents say had the word Jews been changed to Blacks? Would they remain as morally ambiguous as they appeared? 

Korbluth did admit to being Jewish during her testimony. She said,

As an American, as a Jew, and as a human being, I abhor antisemitism, and my administration is combatting it actively." 

Still, she insisted that calls for genocide be tempered by context. I wonder how Sally Kornbluth would feel if she was the one being targeted because she was Jewish? Or if her kids were the ones being attacked because they were Jewish? Would that have been enough context for her?

Maybe someone should've asked that. follow-up question.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you're gonna shout slogans,

at least bother to learn what they mean.

from the Wall Street Journal - 5 December 2023

***********

PS: Bonus points if you get the title quote right. Send an email to 

thewifelyperson@gmail.com

I'll announce the winner next week. 

There just might be a prize for the first correct email. 

The Eye of the Beholder

photo by J.Tocker

Remove Art Spiegelman's MAUS from a middle school  curriculum? 

Inconceivable! 

Or maybe not.

There are swaths of this country where the object of public school education is no longer to educate children in public schools. Instead, they are devoted to the idea that any idea not aligned with their personal agenda is a danger to children. Obviously, the plan really is to turn kids into mindless replicants incapable of expressing critical or independent thought. They are whitewashing their brains. 

See, whitewashing isn't just for walls in Tom Sawyer; whitewashing is how history is spun so kids see nothing wrong with the evils We, the People, have committed and supported. It prevents the exposure of heinous acts to young minds. (Which probably have already watched hours of DC and Marvel action movies and viewed more heinous acts than most of us growed-ups.)

Humor me for a moment. Let's talk about whitewashing. Once  upon a time, it was, indeed, the stuff you slapped on a wall. Merriam-Webster's Words-At Play 2019, however, points out modern usage has taken on a life of its own, attributing that shift to Wiley Hall:

Finally, the movie makers must not be afraid to lie - especially if it makes us look good. Hollywood has been whitewashing (pun intended) history since movies were invented. (Wiley A. Hall, Afro-American Red Star, 6 Dec. 1997)

It is, as Hall notes, a sly pun on the earlier use of the verb whitewash which can refer to making something whiter, usually by applying a whitener of some sort to it (as in, “We have to whitewash the fence annually”). Whitewash can also refer to glossing over or covering up something that is immoral, illegal, or otherwise bad (as in “a book which whitewashes the country’s troubled past”), and the connotations of this particular whitewash have certainly bled over into the Hollywood whitewash.

If you're  surprised by any of this, you've not been paying much attention. You need to read or listen to more reliable news sources...like PBS Newshour. 

Anyway, what is particularly compelling is the hypocrisy. Our GOP brethren scream about the Democrats attempts to cancel culture  when, in fact, they are doing just that and so much more damage to children in their attempt to prevent them from seeing anything that might promote thought in their little, developing minds. On this list of 850 books Matt Krause wants to see banned in Texas, you will find damn near any book that has to do with gender identity, sexual identity, LGBTQ issues, abortion in the courts, civil rights for Native Americans, the list is heartbreakingly astounding. This list, and others like it, intentionally prohibit the nation's children from learning about anything other than white-bread pure, historically incorrect bull-oney. According to the Dallas Morning News, of the first 100 books on the list, 97 of them are written by women, people of color, or LGBTQ writers. Within those first 100 books you will find Avoiding bullies?: skills to outsmart and stop them by Louise Spilsbury, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Since the bills passed, parents across Texas have challenged books that explore issues of race, gender and sexuality. Some have read short passages about sexual assault and sexual experiences during school board meetings, saying the material is inappropriate for children. A mother in Richardson went somewhat viral after her testimony against books that included descriptions of assault and vulgar language. She later said she took issue with the titles’ information about suicide and “left wing ideology.”

(Just in case you didn't think this was political.) The book bans deny kids a chance to learn without embarrassment or pressure. The bans do not protect children; it puts them at greater risk for emotional and psychological distress, and even physical danger for being different. Books are safe introductions to the very personal questions kids have and ultimately need to ask. Loss of access to material that will illuminate the world is a disservice with far-reaching implications. 

Maus is not on the Krause list from Texas, but in Tennessee, it was unanimously banned from the 8th grade curriculum for nudity and questionable language. Nudity? Not guns in mice mouths? Really? 

A guy I know to be philosophical and thoughtful on this very topic once upon a time had the screen name MnMaus when AOL first started. While there is some disagreement about how that name came to be, the reality is that the owner of said AOL screen name was profoundly impacted by Art Spiegelman's Maus. He wrote:

I was 11 or 12 when I first came across Maus. I already loved comics quite a bit, but Maus struck me in a deeply personal way. This was one of the first serious comics I had read and it dealt with being Jewish in a profound and meaningful way. Vladek Spiegelman became a hero to me in a way because of his ingenuity and his determination to survive. I also loved the artwork. Fun fact: it was drawn using a fountain pen on standard typewriter paper. The simplicity of black and white ink has a starkness to it that seems perfectly fitting with the subject matter.

The Holocaust seemed very monolithic to an 11 year old. Something that is so large and heavy that it's almost impenetrable. Maus took those events and scaled them down to the story of one man's survival in a way that became very accessible to a kid. In a way, Vladek always reminded me of Zaydie in the way he tells his story. It made everything that happened seem more personal, more "real".     

Misha Siegfried     

Keep in mind, he's recalling from the point of view of an 11-year old boy in 1990s America. He knew Holocaust survivors; they were all around him. He saw the numbers, he heard the stories, these were part of his every-day existence. Still, the books sparked discussion; the statements above are proof there was a profound impact. 

So if MAUS made the Holocaust more "real" for a kid who saw the aftermath all around him, why wouldn't anyone want a kid to encounter that reality in a pen-and-ink illustrated book? Would photographs have been better? More shocking? Yes. Scarier? Yes. Desirable for young readers? Maybe not so much. 

Spiegelman's drawings are scary. This is not Feivel the Mouse in An American Tail. This is dirty, gritty, and scary. But if our kids do not, from an early age, learn that this stuff happened in real life, we are doomed to repeat it. 

Banning books that deal with difficult subjects does not make them go away; it buries the hard stuff and lets it fester.  Listen to Art Spiegelman talk about the banning; he's spot on.

Drawings are just that, drawings and even if these are gritty, hard to digest images, they are not photographs of bodies in a ditch or even mounds of shoes. I could understand why some parents would find the fear of night-terrors for kids who have never been exposed to the depth of human cruelty to not want photographs. 

You still have to wonder if these parents are also banning Batman, Spiderman, or Superman comics? I'm equally certain that this folks don't know/understand that Superman was born in the bedrooms of a couple of Jewish kids in 1930s Cleveland. 

Winner of the Completely Inconceivable Stupidity Prize goes to Tennessee's Williamson County, for banning Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea by Chris Butterworth. The so-called reason for disallowing elementary kids the chance to read this adorable book? It describes seahorse reproduction. This is subversive dangerous material? Really? 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you don't own a copy of MAUS, 

go get on a waiting list. 

It's the #1 best seller on Amazon at the moment. 

Bonus Tip o' the Week

Treat yourself to a moment of Art Spiegelman talking about his art

Extra bonus Tip o'the Week from MnMaus himself!