Public School Teachers Are Afraid to Teach That Biden Won the 2020 Election

We live in an era of radical propaganda and it's the fault of violent conservatives

Hello Friends,

Let's be clear about something. There should be no problem at all if a history or social studies teacher gets in front of a public school classroom and says, “Joe Biden won the 2020 election.”

The simple truth is that history books 100 years from now will contain that information. It's a fact. It happened.

However, I've worked at public schools and I know the pressures teachers face. Unfortunately, teachers have to deal with completely deranged parents who are capable of behaving in a way that's entirely unhinged. That's part of the job. Teachers know its part of the job as do administrators and the members of the school board.

The result is that teachers are pretty well hardwired not to encroach upon any territory that's controversial. You have to develop your own set of internal parameters or you're not going to last long in the business. For that reason, many teachers will sidestep the idea of asking students who won in 2020.

Public school teachers know that if they send all their children home with graded exams that have marked a kid wrong for claiming that Trump won in 2020, there will be consequences. They don't want to have to deal with some enraged lunatic who is late on his child support payments storming up to the school bearing a Confederate flag and screaming through the lice in his beard.

So, teachers simply don't ask this question. They sidestep it. They pretend it doesn't exist.

This is a problem.

In the case of the 2020 election, it might not seem like such a big deal. You might say to yourself, “Well, Biden is on the television every day, so kids should be able to figure out who the president is.”

But that's not the point.

The point is that our society accepts that public school teachers must censor themselves from telling the truth because it will incite a certain deranged and radicalized portion of the population.

The point is that this idea extends beyond the 2020 election. There are a ton of facts that teachers are afraid to teach. Many of the realities of our history and human life in general have been selectively removed from the classroom.

Every now and then somebody will share a meme saying, “There needs to be a class called life where kids are taught basic essentials like how to cook and manage their finances.”

Um... yeah, we need that. We don't have that because there's so much pressure in our society that prevents teachers from telling their students the truth.

There are so many things that teachers cannot say. For example, the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to religious freedom. That means that kids have the right to leave the religion of their parents if they find that religion constraining, unsatisfying, or unfulfilling. Do you think teachers are allowed to give a lecture in a classroom to tell students this fact?

Hell no.

The other side of this is that the radicalized right wing media always talks about “indoctrination” at schools, or they make false accusations that children are being “groomed.” The reason the news is allowed to spread blatantly false stories like this is because public schools aren't allowed to teach children how to protect themselves from indoctrination or grooming.

Do you know why that is?

It's because the people who most often abuse children are the child's own parents. Once you know that statistic, you can conclude that any and all attacks and accusations of “grooming” or “indoctrination” directed against teachers are simply meant to cover up the crimes of the parents.

The parents are the predators.

The parents are the groomers.

The parents are the ones who indoctrinate.

Public school teachers know this, but they also know damn well that they're not allowed to say it.

Being a public school teacher is a heartbreaking job. You get to know all these wonderful kids who had the misfortune of being born to complete shitbag adults. You see these kids who bravely shoulder a terrible burden, and as a teacher you're often expressly prohibited from easing their burden in any way.

Everybody in our country is naive about what can be done. Teachers, unlike priests, are mandatory reporters. That means that if you have evidence that a student is being abused, you have to report it. It's frustrating that our society rarely discusses how the church has insisted on exemptions to this requirement.

Essentially, the priest in every small town could probably name dozens of adults who are abusing children, but they are legally protected from mentioning it to anyone.

But even if you do report, what do you think is going to happen? Conservatives in the United States already consider their wives their “property.” How do you think they treat their kids? Kids aren't even afforded the protections of adults. The way I see it, conservatives recognize they have 18 years to inflict enough abuse on their progeny to make them obedient and subservient for life. This is why so much of social media is filled with memes bashing younger generations, or complaining about how hard it is to raise teenagers.

It's not hard to raise children if you treat them with the respect and dignity that should be afforded to any human being. The problem isn't children, the problem is conservative ideology.

Not too long ago, I had a weird exchange with an account that claimed to be a retired school teacher. She claimed that “based on her 25 years of experience teaching in Austin, Texas,” there's “no place” in the country where public school teachers are reluctant to teach that Biden won the 2020 election.

I thought her comment was comical, and explained that her experience does not represent the experience of every human being on the planet. She flipped out and screamed at me that I shouldn't be presenting opinion as fact, which was exactly what she was doing.

Based on her comments, I concluded that she couldn't be a real person. Anyone who has legitimately worked as a teacher knows that there are things you can't say. That's always been the case. The difference today is that the kind of comment that's now considered “controversial” has been taken to an absurd extreme.

The various, poorly defined right wing wars on concepts like CRT, basic American history, woke ideology, and the books they want censored from libraries, have led to ideological casualties. There are things that hate obsessed conservatives can't eradicate. They know they can't build bonfires and burn human beings (yet), so they have to content themselves with burning books.

The decent people in our society try to resist them by sidestepping their efforts, but this is a flawed response. When you get to the point where you can't even acknowledge who won the last election in the classroom, you recognize the degree to which our freedom of expression has been eroded.

A teacher should be allowed to put, “Who won the 2020 election?” as a bonus question on a quiz every day. Students should be asked that question as many times as it takes for them to recognize the truth. Instead, we live in a society where there's pressure to allow people to maintain dangerous delusions that are disconnected from reality. We shouldn't be placating these people, we should be getting them the help that they need.

If we don't allow teachers to separate fact from fiction in the classroom, we end up with adults picking up weapons of war and marching on our government institutions. By not telling the truth at schools, we're sowing the seeds of chaos. This is going to result in the complete collapse of our civilization.

Personally, I don't want my children raised in a community that respects the rights of unhinged individuals to believe lies over verifiable facts, but doesn't respect the right of my children to read the books they want or study true history. Once again, the Overton window has been pushed too far to the side of fascism.

This is why we can't afford to shrug our shoulders when we hear about teachers who are afraid to talk about who won the 2020 election. We can't be content to say, “Well, that's not such a big deal.” An instance like this represents the canary in the mine shaft. We can't wait until human beings start dying before we make an objection.

And human beings are already dying, conservative ideology has them bleeding out in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid to provide them with life-saving treatment.

Teachers are afraid to teach facts.

Doctors are afraid to save lives.

Right wing ideology is irredeemably corrupt in all instances.

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Thanks for reading everyone! As always, leave your questions or comments below!

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