A story from the tiny Center School at Seattle Center illustrates how badly the District can hurt kids by top down, arrogant, centralized management.
In 2o13 the Seattle School District decided to censor the teachings of a popular Center School teacher, Jon Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg’s problem was that he was very serous about teaching his kids the meaning of racism. The parents of one kid got upset when their daughter, their white daughter, was asked to apologize to her black classmates for the way White America treated the slaves.
I can admit some sympathy for these parents. They have a right to protect their daughter. Nonetheless, the Center School is supposed to be an alternative to a Charter. It is supposed to be a school run according to the ideas, not of Seattle as a whole, but a set of ideas supported by its own community of parents, teachers and students. The girl’s parents chose to have their daughter attend Center School. If that school’s strong discussions offended their daughter, the parents had the freedom to move her to another school.
The District should have stayed out of the matter. The District instead ordered that Mr. Greenberg’s course in Citizenship and Social Justice, after many years at Center School, could no longer be used. The claim was that Mr. Greenberg’s curriculum was subversive and that he should not have embarrassed the white students by asking them stand up and apologize for slavery.
To make their message clear, the authorities transferred this a very popular teacher to another school.
All this seems to me to teach two terrible lessons. First, the District believes it knows better than the parents. Second, Mr. Greenberg (as well as parents who support him as their kids’ teacher) does not have the right of free speech
“Whether students move on to become cashiers or CEOs, they will inevitably fill, in varying degrees, positions of influence. Everyone benefits from analyzing the role race and racism play in our experiences — past, present or future. My students have provided 10 years’ worth of evidence of that.”
The School Board, Seattle’s unpaid elected board, represents the citizens of Seattle. It does not represent the kids or the parents. These good burghers were condescending, praising the parents for their interest in the kids. The School Board then stonewalled the students, parents and the teachers’ union. the ban on the course was not lifted. Greenberg and the union appealed the involuntary transfer. An arbitrator ruled for Greenberg, saying that Seattle Schools could not use transfer as a disciplinary weapon. Joel Connely of the Seattle PI reports how other students felt about Mr. Greenberg and the course: “I thought the Cactus Bowl would be the biggest disappointment of the holiday season,” joked Andrew Lewis, a University of California Law School student. “It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch the district is with teachers and families. “It is a disservice to these students to deprive them of a teacher for two weeks, and this whole episode smacks of being spiteful and mean spirited.” Zak Meyer, now a Western Washington University student, organized protests against curtailing Citizenship and Social Justice. “They are trying to show their power and tarnish Jon’s reputation as a way to more easily leverage complaints against him in the future,” Meyer said. The Center School grad pointed to burgeoning national controversy over police shootings of young African Americans. “You would think, with the national discourse surrounding race, the Seattle School District would flock to say they are trying to address race in their schools,” Meyer added. Greenberg will again be teaching Citizenship and Social Justice. The course will be offered with out the opportunity for minority students to tell their classmates what it feels to be treated differently because some clerk or cop thinks you must be a bad person. .