By C J WaldronThese days there is an outcry from the right against what they call “woke”. They insist that it begins in our schools and indoctrinates children with woke philosophy. They want schools to become a place that promotes their own form of patriotism, where their leadership is unquestioned and a sanitized version of American exceptionalism, combined with Christian-based beliefs, is the hallmark of American Education.
That is why we need more woke educators. We them need to counter the notion that being woke is anti-American.
Using scare tactics like book bans, demanding the 10 Commandments be displayed in every classroom and requiring each classroom have a Bible in it, MAGA Republicans, particularly White Christian Nationalists, are insisting these measures are necessary to combat the phantom indoctrination that they claim is teaching our children to hate America through the teaching of Critical Race Theory and Project 1619.
Add to that the claims that teachers are indoctrinating students, making them easy prey for pedophiles, and you have a recipe for an overhaul of the education system that resembles more of the theocracy of the Taliban than the vision of our Founding Fathers.
There is a concerted effort to push the trades over a college education. Memes flood social media with comments like “A college education doesn’t come with common sense”. While the purpose is to promote the trades, the underlying message is that being educated somehow makes you un-American. They promote the notion that America was built on the backs of hard-working laborers rather than the product of carefully thought-out plans by educated individuals. Of course, these hard-working laborers do not include slaves.
The purpose of these memes is to demonize the educated. It’s a strategy straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Discrediting the educated is the first step in dehumanizing them, making it easier to punish them for any perceived wrongs.
It’s been done before. From Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Stalinist Russia and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” in Chima, intelligentsia has been persecuted throughout history. During the Vietnam era, protestors were taunted with “America! Love it or Leave It!”. Our current situation has educators being stifled from criticizing Donald Trump. They are taking it a step further by making any criticism of right-wing martyr Charlie Kirk a fireable offense.
Woke educators can counter this trend by creating an atmosphere where questioning authority is encouraged, critical thinking skills are nurtured and a factual teaching of history is presented, not to promote hatred of America, but to use these instances as a lesson to learn from our past mistakes. They will encourage searching for alternative solutions rather than alternative facts.
There is a movement in some technical schools to eliminate the Humanities requirement for those seeking professional certification rather than an advanced degree. They reason that, by teaching only the skills needed for certification, there will be a greater number of skilled laborers who haven’t been burdened with the ability to read and write properly, or even how history or psychology can make them a better plumber, welder or whatever skill they hope to attain.
Why bother learning to read when you can use an audiobook or get your information from a podcast? You don’t need to know how to write thanks to Chat GPT and other AI programs. Giving a customer information on a repair is easily accomplished by selecting from the options given in a dropdown menu on your tablet.
So, who needs all this reading and writing nonsense? Why do people need to know anything more than the basic knowledge needed to perform the tasks you are trained to do?
The answer is, what if you run into a problem you never encountered before? If you lack critical thinking skills, if you are unbale to creatively use problem solving, you become less of an efficient worker, and more of a hinderance as word of your incompetence spreads.
Having these skills, AKA being woke, is an asset, not a liability.
So, why is there a war on woke?
It stems from the fact that the right has ulterior motives. Back when he first ran in 2016, Trump declared, ”I love the poorly educated!” On the surface it was an effort to reinforce his everyman persona as one of the hard-working individuals he sought to attract. What was less obvious was the fact that those with less education are more easily manipulated.
Using the tactics of Nazi Propaganda Minster Joseph Goebbels, Trump’s followers are fed a steady Diet of lies and false information. Repeating the lie over and over cements it in their psyche until they accept it as the unwavering truth. So, being woke is antithetical to this tactic.
Yet, they get upset when those on the left call them Nazis.
Of course that’s not to say that all those on the right are poorly educated. To claim that would be to adopt the “Us vs. Them” approach where compromise is a dirty word. There are certainly highly intelligent individuals in the MAGA-sphere. Some know they are lying but continue to do so because it is self-serving. Others are following a misguided version of their religious beliefs called Vertical Christianity.
But that’s for another blog.
To quote Thomas Jefferson, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”
Which is why we need woke educators.
