Republicans have a new target: Public schools. They’re turning K-12 education into a culture war battleground.
While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gets the most attention for his book banning, criminalizing the teaching of black history, and efforts to impose conservative ideology on his state’s universities and colleges, Trump is weighing in with his own shtick.
Trump wants to create a government agency to certify “patriotic teachers,” which he justifies by saying “if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem” (read story here).
Damn.
So I went hunting for pink-haired communist teachers, but all I came up with was Chrese Evans (photo, left), 50, of Portland, Oregon, who isn’t a teacher (last I heard, she owned a flower shop), or a communist (as far as I know, she doesn’t have any ideology), but she’ll do as a stand-in for her grandfather, Stalin.
Of course, you can redefine “communist,” which Republicans did years ago to include everyone they don’t like. For example, Summer Taylor (photo, right), 24, of Seattle was an activist, had pink hair, and used “they” and “them” pronouns, which is close enough to “communist” for their purposes.
You can’t let her teach kids, because she’s against white cops murdering black people. That’s “woke” ideology; you know, Black Lives Matter stuff.
No problem, Taylor isn’t going to teach anyone; she’s dead, mowed down by a car terrorist while protesting police brutality against black people. But she was exactly the kind of person Trump wanted to use the U.S. military against. (He had to settle for U.S. marshals because of constitutional restrictions on waging war against our own citizens).
Maybe he was thinking of her when he conjured up “pink-haired communists.” She did have pink hair, and went by “they” instead of “she.”
Another of Trump’s ideas is letting parents elect school principals. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what this would lead to. It’s bad enough they elect school boards in some places. Besides, if those school boards are hiring the principals, what’s the problem?
I don’t think we have to worry much about our kids being taught the three R’s by communists. We have a much bigger problem: Republicans trying to take over schools and dictate kids’ education. It’s the orange-haired fascist you really have to worry about.