Originally published at: Elementary school teacher in Texas under fire for teaching students their Constitutional rights | Boing Boing
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Lemme guess: her students are predominantly BIPOC? I can’t imagine a Texas school board getting concerned about teaching white kids about their rights. Unless they’re white librull kids.
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The catch is that knowing all your rights makes you liberal.
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That’s usually a fairly safe bet, but the concept of children having rights is controversial in conservative circles no matter who the kids are. In their view children are property of the parents, and how dare you try to tell them that they have any rights or existence separate from what their parents want them to be.
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This tracks. Given their stance on reproductive freedom, they consider women to be property of the state.
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Want to bet that the parent who whinged about it carries around one of those pocket Constitutions that right-wing think tanks distribute to MAGAts.
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If the Founding Fathers had wanted people to have rights, they would have put it in writing. What are you, some kind of communist?
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BIPOC and/or girls? There are enough people for whom The Handmaid’s Tale is a goal rather than a precautionary tale that I could see one of them complaining about this teacher’s teachings.
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Yeah: where “all” includes “even the laws that protect rather than just bind.”
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The irony of people on the right calling themselves “true patriots” just completely blows out the meter.
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Only slightly less ironic than people hating others calling themselves “christians”…
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I think this list by the Clash is probably a more accurate representation of how those “rights” actually play out: The Clash - Know Your Rights (Remastered) - YouTube
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Brought to you by the country whose legal system doesn’t allow people to inform jurors of all their options.
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She says she was brought in to discuss this concern. Did she ask them why the concern and did they giver her an answer?
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I found another tiktok video from her, it has to do with teaching her students about protesting, she used the pledge of allegiance and hitler youth as a teaching moment. She claims the 3rd graders decided on thier own to not say the pledge anymore.
Sounds like more to the story but nothing that rises to losing a job which it sounds like has happened or will happen.
I guess giving kids information is bad even when kids ask questions
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This seems like a great teacher. Although admittedly using this approach with third graders may not help one’s job security…
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Not really no. That is teaching them about the pledge, and that they should have the choice not to stand for it in a free society.
Which should not be a thing… 
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Disclosure:
I live in Austin metro, and I work ~1.3 miles from Becker Elementary.
I moved to Austin in 1990, because this town was and to some extent still is a fairly laidback, reasonable [but for property prices and rents], fun, creative, solidly progressive town with good music, good food, excellent bookstores, artists, musicians, old hippie liberals, environmentalists and social justice workers of all kinds, a safe place to be LBGTQIAA+ and the weather is often quite nice (except for the three months of 100°F+ weather we have more and more often–summers used to be not as hot, for not as long, as the past decade).
https://www.austinisd.org/schools/becker
Becker is in somewhat racially mixed south Austin (i.e. funky older neighborhood) in the increasingly less affordable 78704.
Not especially.
The student demographic is a mix of Hispanic (which is not a race, btw), “white” and other ethnic groups, from working class and middle class households.
Not exactly.
This is a co-ed Austin Independent School District school. Mixed genders, races, with courses taught in English and Spanish in its Two-Way Dual Language Program.
Becker is a public (in the U.S.ian sense) elementary school in the classic old south Austin tradition.1 78704 used to be a hippie bastion but is nowadays much more expensive and the treehuggin’ dirt-worshippers and other progressives mostly have had to move to less expensive places to live (and pay property taxes in).
Before anyone else piles on with the “oh those stupid Texas rednecks” or “oh those awful conservative MAGAs” or some other “this is why we cannot have nice things” analogous oversimplification, please allow me to point out that Austin–as the state capital of Texas–has always been a very mixed city when it comes to political persuasions, economic strata, stances on drugs and religions and sex work, and so much more.
Here’s something not mixed socio-economically and racially: Austin’s current and legacy redlining and racism:
https://projects.statesman.com/news/economic-mobility/
@frauenfelder
I note the illustration chosen to accompany your post is a bunch of pale hands, palms facing the camera… kids’ hands. Yes, the word “rights” is definitely apropos but it would have been great to have a mix of melanin to look at in your chosen photo illo. As a person of mixed race, I promise you that we really are here, and we are watching, and we do believe a better world is possible. And I for one think the U.S. Constitution is a good founding document, especially with the amendments granting the right to vote for all people, regardless of gender, or melanin, etc.
- A dear friend (now passed on to the Great Gardening Project in the Sky) taught Green Classroom courses there for decades. Carla, you are missed!
Rest in Power!
ETA: grammar
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