‘Punk’ kids refreshing in a stale political season

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What’s up with these punks?” — Fox News host Gretchen Carlson asking about protesting Jeffco students 

In a depressing political year, it’s invigorating to see many hundreds of high school students in suburban Denver defying a school board’s attempt to censor the history curriculum marching with signs saying “Don’t make history a mystery,” “Protest is patriotic” and “We love our teachers.”

The controversy started last November when three new members — Julie Williams, Ken Witt and John Newkirk — were elected to the Jefferson County school board in a low turnout election. They were backed by Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers political advocacy group. The three formed a new ultra-right majority on the fivemember board.

The board quickly abrogated an agreed-upon pay raise for teachers and pushed through a new system linking teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests, rejecting a review by a third-party factfinder who ruled the new system too inaccurate to use for setting salaries.

The board redirected millions of dollars, raised for public schools through a ballot measure, to charter school expansion. It vetoed free full-day kindergarten, a program that would have particularly helped low-income parents and students.

Then the board created a committee to review its Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history curriculum. It proposed that class materials should “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights.”

Classes shouldn’t “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disre gard of the law” and the course materials should portray the U.S. in a positive light, the proposal said.

Julie Williams, the author of the proposal, is a member of the Neville family, an arch-conservative “political dynasty” in Jefferson County profiled by the Denver Post last year. Her brother-in-law, former Sen. Tim Neville, is running again for Colorado Senate District 16, and her in-law nephew Joe Neville is the main lobbyist for the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (the “no compromise” alternative to the NRA).

The school board’s “patriotic” proposal provoked a rebellion with sickouts by teachers, walk-outs by students and angry protests by parents at school board meetings. The parent-teacher association unanimously voted to oppose the proposed curriculum review committee.

The board’s opposition to the new guidelines for teaching AP U.S. history is part of a national push by rightwingers. The guidelines — recently released by the College Board, the nonprofit that administers Advanced Placement tests nationally — include such statements as “The emergence of an industrial culture in the United States led to both greater opportunities for, and restrictions on, immigrants, minorities and women.” The authors of the new curriculum say it was designed to equip students better “to carefully compare and contrast the views of leading historians, to debate and discuss historical issues, and to write analytical essays.”

The Republican National Committee passed a resolution denouncing the new guidelines’ “consistently negative view of American history.” Conservative leader and Fox News commentator Ben Carson said “most people, when they finish that course, they’d be ready to go sign up for ISIS,” the Islamic State terrorist group.

What’s it like to be at the center of this controversy? I spoke with a middle school teacher who has taught in the Jefferson County schools for over 20 years. He wished to be anonymous. He said “Morale in Jeffco schools is rock bottom. Teachers are afraid of losing their jobs. I am 99 percent certain that the board will refuse to negotiate with the union when the contract is up for renewal.”

He said teachers had taken a 3 percent pay cut at the beginning of the recession and have had a pay freeze ever since. He felt that “this country has demoralized teachers by treating education as a business. Everything that is of high moral value is being taken out. The business model is not effective with kids. Kids are not a commodity. … You can’t teach from the heart. There’s overcoaching, overdata, overtesting, overmanagement.” He noted there will be 28 sessions of student testing in March and April of next year. He said schools are threatened by privatizing billionaires as well as political fanatics.

Public education is in danger. It is a great treasure because an educated public is fundamental to a democracy.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com 

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.