Revealing Dialogue with a School Board Member

I recently had an interesting email discussion with a member of the Fairfax County School Board.  Our exchange says a lot about how she, and perhaps other current Board members, think about educating our children.

Background

On January 13, 2022, I spoke in person at the School Board meeting.  Thirteen individuals who have submitted applications are chosen by lottery to address the Board at each meeting.  Each person is allotted a strictly-enforced two-minute time slot.  I was one of the people chosen to speak.

My comments focused on the school system’s new curricula for social studies classes.  As I have described in recent posts, social studies courses have recently been revamped to stress the alleged role of privilege, power, bias and identity in shaping America’s history.  See “Development of New Anti-Racism Curriculum in Fairfax County,“ Jan. 16, 2022; “Fairfax County’s Race-Centric Curriculum for U.S. History,” Jan. 21, 2022.

In my comments to the Board, I gave two examples of my concern.  First, I pointed out that in the “early America” unit of US/VA History course for 11th graders, teachers are directed to “focus on the influence of power, position, privilege, and/or agency in the development of the 13 colonies.”  Second, I noted that in the “origins and foundations” unit of the US/VA Government course for 12th graders, teachers are directed to emphasize the role of “power, position, bias, and agency” in shaping our Constitution and other institutions.  I noted that these themes permeate almost every lesson of every social studies course.

Following the meeting, I sent an email to Laura Jane Cohen (the School Board member for the Springfield district in which I reside), asking for her reaction to my comments at the meeting.

Email Dialogue

My email to Ms. Cohen said:

I met you at a Rotary Club meeting in Springfield in the autumn.  You helped me get started on my research into the curriculum of our schools … specifically, you directed me on how to get access to the social studies textbooks.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours since then doing research, and I’m extremely concerned about what I’ve learned.  The textbooks are terrific, but the school system has now adopted curricula materials that seem to say that the focus of almost every lesson in every social studies course should be on “bias, privilege and power.”  I spoke about this at Thursday evening’s School Board meeting.  (By the way, I hope you are doing okay despite your positive Covid test.)  Among other things, I mentioned at the meeting that I have set up a website — fairfaxschoolsmonitor.com — to share with others what I am learning.  I would appreciate it if you would take a look at the website, and if you are interested, register to receive my updates on the site.  Whether or not you agree with my viewpoint, you might be interested in what citizens like me are thinking.  And I would always appreciate your feedback.  And, in particular, I would be interested in your reaction to the concerns I expressed at the meeting about the “Bias, Privilege, Power” social studies curriculum.

Ms. Cohen responded on January 17, saying:

Thanks you very much for your email and your well wishes.  I appreciate your advocacy around FCPS’s social studies curricula.  I did listen carefully to your testimony Thursday night and was a bit confused by your concern that students were asked to reflect on the positions of authority held by those who wrote our founding documents.  I’m working to teach critical thinking skills.  I’m hopeful that my own children are taught to reflect on who is making the rules/laws.  Might someone who had lost someone to violent crime make decisions differently than someone who had not?  Might someone from a family who struggled see the need for different policies around housing, taxes, government assistance, etc. than someone who came from a family that had means?  I’m hopeful that all citizens will carefully reflect on the fact that who makes policy decisions can often be illuminating in helping to answer the “why” such policies are in place.  I look forward to taking a look at your website soon!  If you continue to have questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to reach back out to me.

I replied the same day, saying:

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to me.  It seems that you and I may have very different views about education, but I think dialogue is a good thing and wish more public figures would engage in it seriously.  I’m not surprised that you were confused by my remarks last Thursday.  It’s very difficult to make coherent comments on a complex issue in a 120-second time slot, and I’m sure I didn’t adequately make my point.

I don’t disagree with your observation that reflecting on who makes a decision is relevant, but it’s not the only perspective.  Our Constitution was, of course, drafted by white men, but that doesn’t mean our forefathers were sitting around saying, “How can we entrench the power of white men and subjugate others.”  That’s a very distorted view that denigrates what is perhaps the greatest achievement in governance in the history of the world up to that point.  The new social studies curriculum presents almost every topic from the perspective of “privilege, power, identity and bias.”  That’s very troubling to me.  I said in my remarks that I was shocked.  I am.  I don’t think anyone can come away from reviewing the new social studies curriculum, as I have been doing, without concluding that the people in charge of social studies in Fairfax County want to teach our kids that all of our history, and all of our government institutions, can be explained by negative factors … “privilege, power, identity and bias.”  In truth, America is much more than that.

Discussion

Let me begin by saying I respect Ms. Cohen.  She is friendly, helpful and hard working.  She takes her job on the School Board seriously.  She reaches out to the community with town hall meetings, and she took the time to respond to my email, even though she knows I am a critic.  However, I believe her views about education are misguided and harmful.

The email exchange is revealing for several reasons:

First, Ms. Cohen obviously supports the new social studies curriculum.  She does not claim I have misread the teaching guides or that I have taken them out of context.

Second, Ms. Cohen embraces an “identity” and “power/conflict” mindset for interpreting the world around her.  If you are white, you think one way; if you are black, you think another way.  If you are a white, straight male, you have especial power, because all three of your “identity” groups are majority groups; but if you are, e.g., a black, lesbian female you are particularly disadvantaged because you have three minority “identities.”  This mindset assumes that the prime motivation of persons with power is to enact laws and policies that will entrench their position, to the detriment of those who lack such power.

Third, Ms. Cohen equates an “identity” focus with “critical thinking skills.”

This way of thinking, unfortunately, has become all too common in some political circles in our society, and in our schools.  Teaching our youth to view our history, institutions and contemporary issues in this manner is not education; it is indoctrination.  It is simplistic, one-dimensional thinking, not critical thinking.

The creation of our nation by our founding fathers is a good example.  The School Board’s teaching guide says that the development of our Constitution should be taught “with an emphasis on the concepts of power, position, bias, and agency.”  Ms. Cohen defends this, saying that “reflect[ing] on who is making the laws/rules” is important to understanding the purpose of the rules and who they were intended to benefit.”  What evidence does Ms. Cohen have that the founding fathers were mainly motivated by trying to protect their “power and position” or that “bias” was a focus of their efforts?  The creation of our Constitution was a masterful act of creating a novel, workable, stable republican form of government, a system admired around the world that has endured for more than 200 years.  To portray it to our youth as a self-serving exercise of power by white males is a travesty.

Perhaps Ms. Cohen is referring to the fact that women weren’t given the right to vote in the original Constitution.  It’s true that they weren’t, but that’s because society was different 200 years ago than it is today, not because the male drafters were trying to deprive women of a right they previously had.  It’s a dangerous mistake to judge historical facts as if they were happening today.  That’s what the “woke” crowd does, but it doesn’t do justice to the past and doesn’t solve current problems.

Perhaps Ms. Cohen is referring to the fact that the Constitution didn’t abolish slavery.  Slavery was, of course, an evil.  But if Ms. Cohen wants students to engage in “critical thinking,” how about posing this question: “Slavery was an entrenched part of the economy of the Southern states.  Demanding that it be abolished in the 1789 Constitution would have been a non-starter for them.  So, should the founding fathers have: (a) continued muddling through with the failed Articles of Confederation (which did not outlaw slavery), or (b) created two separate nations, one in the North and one in the South, or (c) adopted the Constitution that they did, creating one nation, but postponing the slavery question for later resolution?”  That would be an interesting question for mature students to discuss, without a teacher forcing the discussion in a particular direction.  That debate would involve “critical thinking.”  However, no thinking is involved, much less mature thinking, when a teacher simply maligns the Constitution without considering the real-world choices that had to be made by the founding fathers.