Many are to blame for crisis in education
Re: “Teacher: My profession is in crisis and students will pay price” (Get Schooled, AJC.com, Nov. 9), I agree with much of what the author says, but as a 30-year veteran English teacher, I think it’s disingenuous to say no one is to blame.
I can think of several entities and people that are responsible, starting with politicians who use public schools as a cudgel for beating fear into their base, government bureaucrats who hand down edicts with little knowledge of the reality on the ground, parents who have abdicated the raising of their children to the teachers and then complain about the results, the proliferation of cell phones and social media, and I could keep going.
I don’t think the public sees the tsunami of trouble heading toward us by the massive teacher shortage we face. I’m very worried about our future as a society.
DAWN MOSS, LAWRENCEVILLE
Giving students whitewashed history warps their worldview
The outrage that GOP politicians are cynically ginning up over the bogeyman of “critical race theory” is bunk. Only white fragility could cast whites as the aggrieved victims of our country’s 400 years of racism. Spoon-feeding our kids a whitewashed version of history warps their worldview, fueling ongoing white bigotry and violence.
The obscene killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and recent disturbing racist incidents in local schools could have been prevented if more whites were aware of the over 4,000 racial terror lynchings in the South from 1877-1950, the centuries-old use of fraud and force to keep Blacks from voting and the bloody coups that overthrew multiracial state governments in the South during Reconstruction.
“Canceling” the teaching of unflattering history hurts whites as well as Blacks. It leaves us living a lie, endlessly reenacting variations on past transgressions which we refuse to acknowledge, incapable of reconciliation or redemption.
Our kids can handle the truth. They deserve to be told it.
STEVE BABB, LAWRENCEVILLE
