Author: Blue Cereal

MLK’s “I’m Living The Dream” Speech

~ Blue Cereal

Editor’s Note: Recently, legislators across the U.S. have initiated new guidelines for public school educators banning the use of literature or history with the potential to make students feel uncomfortable about race or gender. Teachers can also be severely punished for information or lines of reasoning which could be misconstrued to suggest that systemic racism or sexism has in any way shaped the society they live in today. As a service to educators in these evolving, more enlightened states, this well-known speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., has been updated to more accurately reflect state-approved concepts and historical understanding. 

Happy MLKFive score years ago, a great Republican (let’s not ever forget he was a Republican) signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This largely symbolic decree verified the great beacon of hope already guiding millions of Negro slaves who had been freed by the fire of American greatness. It came as a joyous reminder of their long flight from their REAL captivity (which started in Africa – let’s not ever forget that slavery started IN Africa) to the glorious shores of America.

But 100 years later, the Negro is even more free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is far better than the manacles of tribalism and the chains of paganism. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a prosperous continent in the midst of a vast ocean of freedom and prosperity… 

And so we’ve come here today to celebrate our ever-improving condition. In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to thank them for the checks. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to agree. This note was a promise that all educators – yes, black educators as well as white educators – would guarantee that everyone has plenty of life, liberty, and opportunities to pursue happiness already and that any claims to the contrary are tragic evidence of how much they hate our founding documents, preferring instead to teach “Critical Race Theory” and Marxist ideologies because what-is-wrong-with-those-people?!

It is obvious today that teachers’ unions and liberal universities have defaulted on this promissory note insofar as BLM and other terrorist groups are concerned. Instead of honoring their sacred obligation, they continue to insist that America has given the Negro people a bad check – a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” Insufficient patriotism is more like it!

But we refuse to believe pretty much anything that contradicts our emotionally manufactured ideologies. And so we’ve come to tell them to run that check through again – no matter how many times it comes back marked “NSF.” There’s plenty in that account! If it’s not clearing, it’s definitely something they’re doing wrong. I’ve never had trouble cashing my check from America, so obviously that’s not a thing that happens…

Now is the time to celebrate the triumphs of democracy. Now is the time to stop pointing out the dark and desolate spectre of segregation instead of the sunlit path of how things worked out for that one black friend who’s doing so well. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of protest to the solid rock of mandated unity and agreement. Now is the time to make justice a reality in the textbooks and lesson plans of all educators.

It would be fatal for this nation to confess it’s own shortcomings. This sweltering summer of the right wing’s manipulated discontent will not pass until there is a serious crackdown on questioning freedom and equality…

There is something that I must say to my people in order to give white folks of the future isolated quotes to use out of context in service of their own bewildering agendas: “In the process of gaining an upper hand via ‘affirmative action’ and liberal guilt, we must not be suspected of wrongful deeds. Let us not satisfy our thirst for justice by drinking from the cup of blocking traffic and damaging private property.”

Seriously, it’s probably better not to even march peacefully or kneel or anything else that annoys white people. I never do.

There are those who are asking their one black friend, are you satisfied? I mean, you seem alright to me, so… you are, right? We should always be satisfied as long as a handful of Negros have found pathways to success in sports, music, or pizza chains, thus proving anyone could have done it if they’d simply made better choices. We should always be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue, can theoretically vote no matter how long the lines are or how limited the access to water, protection from the weather, or transportation. We should always be satisfied as long as our children are periodically given free lunch at school or granted the dignity of sitting next to white kids in detention. 

Yes, yes – we are satisfied, and we will always be satisfied as “justice” crashes over us like a tidal wave and “righteousness” is wielded against us like a mighty club. Sure, some of you have experienced great trials and tribulations, but that’s usually an indication you’ve done something wrong. Other than very rare examples involving “bad apples” who are in no way representative of the masses who support and defend them, when does anything horrible ever happen unless you kinda deserve it? 

Besides, suffering makes you creative. It’s redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow any minor inconveniences you experience can and will build character. 

Let us not tolerate wallowing in negativity, I say to you today, my friends. 

Even though we may face isolated difficulties from time to time, I’m still living the dream. It is a dream exactly the same as everyone else’s American dream, because I prefer not to divide people by focusing on race. I’m living the dream because this nation has risen up and lives out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were made equal when a lot of white men died to free them in the Civil War and yet somehow never get a “thank you” a century later. 

I’m living the dream because the sons of former servants and the sons of former employers now sit down together at the table of brotherhood. Some of them even have homes in the same neighborhood and that’s gotta be proof of something, right?

I’m living the dream because my four little children have been given the opportunity to live in a nation where they are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character – if only BLM and liberal educators would stop trying to make EVERYTHING ABOUT RACE! (That is SO divisive!)

I’m living the dream because state law mandates that every valley be portrayed as already exalted, every hill and mountain taught as if socioeconomic mobility means they could just as easily become low, that rough places will be ignored, crooked places denied via assertive gaslighting, and the glory of the one true Lord revealed in public funding choices and morally-driven legislation.

With faith we will be able to transform the complex history of our nation into a beautiful country song of brotherhood. With faith we will be able to work together (but away from those people), pray together (but not with those people), to struggle together (hey, everyone struggles, so stop pretending you’re the only one who’s had a few challenges along the way when most of us don’t even see color), to celebrate our shared freedom together, knowing that we are all free as free can be today (except for straight white men who – let’s be honest – really have it rough these days… it’s SO unfair).

This will be the day we add yet another bill requiring all God’s children to sing together like they mean it: My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let capitalism reign! 

America is a great nation. This must be true. (I’ll link to the website where you can report any of your children’s teachers who suggest otherwise.) Freedom rings from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Freedom rings from the mighty bastions of Wall Street. Freedom rings from the prosperous ski lodges of Colorado. Freedom could ring from the curvaceous slopes of California if they’d get rid of about fifteen million hippies and academic elitists. Freedom rings from the prison system of Georgia, in the sense that so much inmate labor is available to the state and local businesses without financially compensating those doing the work. 

From every political platitude and state-mandated textbook, let freedom ring!

And when we require “freedom” to ring, when we insist it rings for every ZIP code and every demographic, in every state and every city, and has throughout most of history, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to finally get it together and join my preferred denomination and appropriate the words of the old Negro spiritual: Living the Dream! Living the Dream! Thank God almighty, we are living the dream!

Trying To Simplify The Thirteen Colonies

~ Blue Cereal

Colonies 4 RegionsGiven my penchant for delusions of grandeur, I opted not to commit to much this summer other than attending a single AP English institute and gradually working through a long list of “to do” stuff around the house. My hope was to make noticeable progress on a book I kinda laid the groundwork for years ago when I began adding “Have To” History articles to this site.  

The idea was to offer students, teachers, or other interested parties engaging summaries of key figures, events, or issues in history which they maybe didn’t actually want to know about but for some reason had to – for a class, for a paper, or to better fake their way through an argument on social media.  

The idea is solid, even if implementation to date has been spotty. It’s also one of the most utilized sections of the website – so who saw that coming? 

After publishing “Have To” History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases, which fits the theme nicely, and “Have To” History: A Wall Of Education, which kinda doesn’t but I liked the topic and wanted to keep the name, I’m returning to the initial premise in its purist form. “Have To” History: Stuff You Really Don’t Want To Know About The 25 Most Boring Issues & Events In American History will target those subjects that seem to show up on every course outline, curriculum guide, and standardized test year after year despite the fact that we can never quite remember what the hell they were or why they mattered.  

I surveyed thousands of teachers and students (well, OK – I asked, like… seven or eight of them) which topics were hardest to teach, care about, or remember, and selected two dozen of the most common responses. The Whigs. The Bessemer Process. The Interstate Highway System. All real knee-slappers in their own way, but so few Crash Course videos or feature films to substitute for an actual lesson plan.

Many of the responses were variations of “trying to remember stuff about the original thirteen colonies.” Most of us do pretty well with Jamestown, at least in its earliest incarnation, and we can fake our way through the Puritans or Roger Williams. Somehow, though, we’re expected to juggle things like joint-stock company charters vs. proprietary charters or remember which sections relied most heavily on the export of natural resources and how that shaped their feelings about potential rebellion.

If I’m being completely honest, it’s been the most challenging chapter I’ve tackled so far. The subject simply does not lend itself to the predictable formatting and pithy summarization I find most appealing about the whole project. To complicate matters, it’s also likely to be the first chapter of the finished book – meaning I don’t particularly want to alienate or confuse readers right out of the gate.

After what feels like several millenia of wrestling with it, I have a rough draft of what might be the chapter about the thirteen colonies. At the moment, it’s subtitled “Three (or Four) Regions – Three (Evolving) Formats – Three Approaches To Religion.”

I know. Even the subtitle needs work.

Nevertheless, I’ve posted the initial draft on “Have To” History right here on Blue Cereal Education. To keep it at least somewhat manageable, it’s currently broken into two parts. I’d love for you to give it a readthrough and let me know what you think.

Like, seriously – I’m looking for thoughts and feedback, good, bad, or indifferent, from any direction on this one. Your comments are welcome below or you can email me at [email protected].

In the meantime, I’m moving on to other chapters and will return to this one when I can do so with fresh eyes and new energy. I look forward to your responses.

“Have To” History: The Thirteen Colonies (Part One)

“Have To” History: The Thirteen Colonies (Part Two)

 

The Bessemer Process (from “Have To” History)

~ Blue Cereal

Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About… the Bessemer Process

Three Big Things:

1. The Bessemer Process made better steel more quickly and more cheaply.

2. Better, affordable steel played a significant part in the Second Industrial Revolution. It may have been its primary cause; it was at least a major catalyst.

3. Bessemer steel made it possible to build skyscrapers, massive bridges, and reliable railroad tracks, as well as lots of other cool stuff. That makes it way more interesting than it sounds.   

Context and Background

Prehistoric man used a number of elements he discovered in nature. Stones of various sorts were made into weapons or used to grind food. Lead was shaped into vessels for storing or transporting liquids. Copper was used to create some of humanity’s earliest tools, until eventually a few clever types figured out how to combine it with tin to make something even cooler – bronze.

Bronze was king for a while until iron became practical enough to replace it. Its earliest uses were in jewelry or ceremonial items using iron from meteorites which had fallen to earth – a gift from the gods, as it were. Over time, people figured out that Earth actually had plenty of iron; they just had to mine it and refine it and make it usable. (Seems like there’s a controversial metaphor in there somewhere.) The iron used to make weapons or farming implements was the same substance you need to ingest in order to grow up big and strong, albeit it in a different form. In its swords-n-plows form, however, iron can be brittle. It corrodes easily when exposed to moisture, limiting its usefulness.

Still, it was a big enough deal that human pre-history is typically divided into three general eras – the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and… well, you get the idea.   

Eventually, somewhere around 1000 BCE, iron was alloyed with carbon to make a new metal – steel. Steel was (and is) super-nifty and comes in several varieties, depending on the exact mix. Steel is ridiculously strong but can still be shaped into useful items once heated sufficiently. As of 2021, something like 95% of all metal used in the world is some form of steel.

It’s kind of a big deal, is the point.

Before the Bessemer Process, however, steel was laborious to produce and quality could be inconsistent. It was a very popular metal for certain small items – expensive cutlery, sophisticated springs, etc. – but in practical terms, it was a limited resource.

What IS The Bessemer Process?

The technical details aren’t particularly important for understanding its historical significance. The short version is that it forces cool air through molten iron to remove impurities. It’s named for its supposed inventor in the 1850s, a British fellow named Sir Henry Bessemer, although an American chap known as William Kelly may have stumbled across the same idea at around the same time independently, but generally it’s thought Bessemer beat him to it. (A real patriot would nevertheless insist on calling it the “Kelly Process.” Brave men and women fighting and dying for this country and you’re afraid to stand up for one of our greatest innovators just so you don’t flunk history? Pathetic.)

It took a few decades of refining and improving the process, but by the late 1800s it was possible – thanks to the Bessemer Process – to produce vast quantities of high quality steel far more cheaply than before.

Honestly, this statement alone should be sufficient to excite anyone. Over the generations, however, we’ve allowed silly things like electricity and child labor laws to somehow overshadow just what all this keen steel meant for the nation.

Why It Matters

Bessemer steel became feasible just as the nation was heading into the Second Industrial Revolution, leading many to argue that the Bessemer process itself was largely responsible for the results. Those railroad tracks that began connecting the nation after the Civil War? They lasted far longer and could handle heavier loads and more severe environments once the Bessemer Process was involved. Factories and manufacturing? Sure, they existed before Bessemer steel – but machinery became more affordable, more accurate, and more durable thanks to the Bessemer process. High pressure boilers made from Bessemer steel meant better steam engines. Over time it allowed the evolution of larger and safer ships, automobiles, and airplanes.

And that’s not even the best part. Steel girders meant that man could finally build structures taller than a few stories. Skyscrapers became a thing in America’s wealthiest cities – twenty stories, thirty stories, and eventually a hundred or more. Safe, affordable, strong, and available – steel was (and is) pretty much magic when it comes to building stuff.

Taller buildings meant more people and more business and more activity were possible with less urban sprawl. The country could pack its population, services, workplaces, shopping, and whatever else it might desire into relatively few square miles by going up instead of always having to extend out. Those same steel girders combined with some fancy steel cables allowed seriously heavy-duty bridges to be constructed over major bodies of water so that the people and commerce could move back and forth far more quickly and easily.

Eventually, technology found an even better way to produce high quality steel efficiently and affordably. By the late 1960s, the Bessemer Process had become the “old way,” replaced by more modern methods which you don’t need to know about because there was way too much else going on in the 1960s for your teacher to ask you about Blast Furnaces or the Electric Arc Method. Today the U.S. only makes about 4% of the steel produced in the world. China produces over half; no other nation accounts for more than 6% or so.

How Do I Remember This?

Imagine life before the microchip (no computers, at least in the modern sense of the term), or before the internet. Imagine your world before automobiles or cell phones. The introduction of each of these technologies sparked massive changes far beyond what the items themselves actually did. That’s what Bessemer steel did for construction, industry, business, infrastructure, and the rest of the Second Industrial Revolution.

And don’t forget those trains. Choo-choo.

There’s a famous photo from the Great Depression of eleven men sitting on a steel beam having lunch, way up in the sky. (Google “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper” if you’d like a visual.) Imagine these men are all wearing shirts (sorry ladies) with large, fraternity-style letters on the front. Eleven men means eleven letters: “T-H-E-B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R.”

I supposed you could add two more guys in your mental image and go with “B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R-S-T-E-E-L,” or add seven more guys to spell out “T-H-E-B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R-P-R-O-C-E-S-S.” But come on – there’s really not that much room on the beam to begin with. (You want someone to fall off? Your professor’s never going to accept “H-E-S-S-E-M-R-S-T-E-E” as a valid answer, so best keep them all alive and fully dressed if possible.)

What You’re Most Likely To Be Asked

Unless your teacher is particularly weird, you’re unlikely to be asked to elaborate on the Bessemer Process itself or even produce an extensive list of what it made possible in its day. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to rattle off some of the examples covered above, however – they make for excellent supporting details and fit in well with a variety of related “Second Industrial Revolution” topics.

Most likely, however, “the Bessemer Process” will be the answer to a fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice question of some sort. “Which of the following contributed to the massive increase in manufacturing, the expansion of railroads, and the first skyscrapers in the late nineteenth century?” Something like that. As long as you know your Bessemer basics, you won’t have any trouble.

You may discover that your instructor seems anxious to establish the basics of the Second Industrial Revolution so they can get into the far more interesting stuff – child labor, early workers’ unions, the social ills associated with crowded tenements and dirty cities, and of course the arrival of the Progressives to try to make it all better. For example, here’s how New York’s Social Studies Framework presents the era:

11.5 INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION (1870 – 1920): The United States was transformed from an agrarian to an increasingly industrial and urbanized society. Although this transformation created new economic opportunities, it also created society problems that were addressed by a variety of reform efforts.

(a) New technologies and economic models created rapid industrial growth and transformed the United States… Students will examine the technological innovations that facilitated industrialization, considering energy sources, natural resources, transportation, and communication.

In APUSH, Bessemer fits perfectly into the Thematic Focus of Work, Exchange, and Technology (WXT):

The interplay between markets, private enterprise, labor, technology, and government policy shape the American economy. In turn, economic activity shapes society and government policy and drives technological innovation.

It’s also an ideal example to trot out for Learning Objective ‘D’ in Period 6 (1865-1898):

Explain the effects of technological advances in the development of the United States over time.

Finally, although not mentioned by name, Key Concept 6.1.I.b.i (yes, that’s a real thing) just begs for it:

Businesses made use of technological innovations and greater access to natural resources to dramatically increase the production of goods.

It all just screams “TALK ABOUT THE BESSEMER PROCESS!” Just make sure you connect all that innovation and production into the reform efforts and expanded government of the early twentieth century. Teachers love that stuff.  

Bonus Points: How To Sound Like You Know More Than You Do

The Bessemer Process was burgeoning at roughly the same time that Alexander Graham Bell was taking innovations he’d originally hoped might assist the deaf or save wounded presidents and used them to invent the telephone (and the metal detector, and a better phonograph player, and some other weird stuff). Edison was improving the light bulb and inventing pretty much everything else with the help of his “invention factory” at Menlo Park. The Second Industrial revolution was transitioning from steam to electrical power, and the nation wasn’t far away from manned flight and the Model T automobile.

If you (or your teacher) lean a bit “GO AMERICA!” in your historical perspective, use the Bessemer Process as a demonstration of one of the many marvelous ways in which capitalism makes life better for everyone. Because steel was needed for so many commercial purposes, there was natural motivation to make it better, faster, and stronger than before. (If your instructor is ancient enough, you can drop in a Six Million Dollar Man reference here.) Industrialization brought the common American citizen more safety, more convenience, and more cool toys, and steel was the reliable, free-market foundation for it all.

If you prefer a more High School Musical “We’re All In This Together” approach, you can use Bessemer as an example of how no one person is responsible for progress. Maybe Bessemer and/or Kelly discovered the basics of the process, but they didn’t invent steel. They were improving on something already being done. Their innovation in turn required tinkering and experimentation from others, including by most accounts a Swedish ironmaster named Goran Goransson, who redesigned the furnace used to actually, um… Bessemize stuff, thus making it reliable and effective enough to transition into mass production, etc., etc. Very few innovations or inventions are the result of a single individual acting in isolation, America is most productive when more people have a voice, grazing in the grass is a gas baby can you dig it, etc.

Now bring it in for a group hug and we’ll all go around and say something we find special about the person to our left.

Either way, don’t get too hung up on the process itself. It’s all about what it allowed, created, represented, etc. Cover it, then launch from it – don’t dig in on it. That could get boring.

Keeping, Culling, and Forgetting

~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Edward Scissorhands

I had an embarrassing moment a little over a month ago.

I’ve been fortunate over the past two years to teach next door to a lady who (a) is generally as cynical as I am about most things, (b) has been in public education for long enough to have seen and heard it all, and (c) is supernaturally gracious when it comes to my shortcomings as an English teacher.

Several years ago, I reached a point at which I needed to either get out of public education altogether or find myself a dramatic new change of scenery, focus, and attitude. I ended up doing the latter. I became certified in English Language Arts (ELA) and I jumped to a district completely unlike anywhere I’d ever taught before.

Time to put your daily grind where your big talk is, Blue.  

Of course, certification is one thing; being able to actually teach ELA effectively is something else entirely. I could read and write well enough, and I considered myself respectable enough when it came to analyzing literature or composing a coherent argument. But a real English teacher? Hardly.

I worried I’d show up to my first department meeting and we’d all be taking turns reading from The Dubliners in the original Greek and discussing how James Joyce Carol Oates used it as inspiration for his adaptation of Undercover Brother, Where Art Thou?

I needn’t have been concerned. We haven’t had a department meeting in the entire two years I’ve been there, so the danger seems fairly minor at this point.

I made it through a little over a semester before the pandemic hit and everything got weird(er). We were entirely virtual in the fall of last year, but by second semester we had at least some in-person learning. While there were few positives in the entire mess, I at least had plenty of time to brush up on the ELA curriculum and reacquaint myself with things like gerunds, antecedents, and passive tense. There were times I almost felt minimally competent!

Until this past May, dammit – which brings me back to that embarrassing moment I mentioned.

There were only a few weeks left until semester exams, which matter more in my district than they probably should. I was flipping through the official curriculum when I came across something I suspected I should have covered at some point, pandemic or no pandemic. Somehow, I’d overlooked it.  

I walked next door to my trusted mentor-slash-colleague and shared my thoughts relatively unfiltered, as was our wont. “I wonder if we should have done ‘elements of a story’ – plot, setting, types of conflict, and all that. Seems like maybe that should have come up before now.”

She started laughing, which confused me for a moment until I realized she assumed I was kidding. It was as if I’d walked in and suggested maybe I should have worn pants today since I had a meeting with my evaluating administrator. Not particularly sophisticated humor, but enough to share a chuckle in the workplace.

I suppose the look on my face tipped her off that she’d misread the situation and her smile quickly faded. “Wait, you’re serious?”

If this were a sit-com, I’d have quickly covered my snafu by heartily joining in with uncomfortable laughter at my own expense. Instead, I had a rare moment of embarrassed silence.

She quickly shifted gears and assured me that this past year had been so weird anyway that the best any of us could do was to reboot and start fresh in the fall. She shared a few approaches she’d used to teaching elements of a story – you know, way back earlier in the year – and was generally encouraging and supportive while never quite losing that look of bewildered pity for the well-intentioned fool next door. Then again, I was the best they could hold onto in this particular place, so… that’s what you get.

The whole experience got me thinking about other stuff in the official curriculum which I’d never actually gotten around to in class. So far, these omissions have largely been externally-driven – casualties of modified schedules and ever-changing circumstances. In a few months, I’ll have live students, many of whom haven’t been in school in any way, shape, or form for nearly eighteen months.

I’ll need to make semi-informed decisions about what matters and what doesn’t with these darlings. Of course, we’re supposed to cover all of it, passionately and thoroughly. But… between you and me? That’s delusional in the best of circumstances and it’s just not going to happen. I was hired to teach a specific curriculum, but part of that obligation is using my professional judgement to determine what’s most effective with the kids in front of me.

Plowing through all of it one way or the other isn’t what’s most effective in this case. So what do I, in my pompous wisdom, prioritize? And what legit ELA undertakings do I discard as less worthy of our limited time? Like any subject, it’s all interesting and potentially important if given unlimited time by the system and  unwavering commitment from each and every student. Lacking that, however, I have no ethical problem cutting some “required” matter loose in order to improve the odds the rest meaningfully sticks – at least a little.

Hence my “Keeping & Culling” list, initial rough draft.

We’re going to keep setting aside time to read in class several times each week whether it’s officially part of the “curriculum” or not. I’m too sold on the power of that time modeled and practiced regularly in class, by myself and any other adult in the room along with my kids. And yes, we’ll definitely look at the most common elements of stories and the so-called “hero’s journey.”

I’m culling analysis of imagery and theme, at least as discrete topics. Oh, and gerunds. We won’t be quizzing over gerunds.

We’re going to keep writing. I love an approach I borrowed from a real English teacher years ago. Every writing assignment receives two grades. If students submit work which meets the general requirements, they receive full credit – a completion grade. No matter how good or bad a piece is, I promise them three comments or suggestions. They consider these, revise, and resubmit a final version, which is then graded on improvement. Did they demonstrate thought and effort and find ways to make it better than it was?

I’m culling anything resembling a research paper or formal argumentative essay with footnotes and citations. This one hurts my soul a little; I believe these are valuable undertakings in other situations. My kids are capable of many great things, but they’re not academically at a point which makes this a good use of our limited time and energy.

We’re keeping short stories. My students will complain that I assign to many short stories – sometimes a new one every week! They whine that I require more reading than anyone else in any subject at any level EVER. (I do not believe this is factually true.) We’ll work on objective summaries and a few close reading strategies.

I’m culling several of the recommended stories from district guidelines. With all due respect to Poe and Hawthorne, some of their writing is simply too thick for my freshmen. Yes, students should be challenged. Yes, there’s value in stretching them academically. But that’s different than pushing them off a cliff while yelling at them to flap harder. For now, I’ll be focusing on stories with interesting wrinkles but which are quite readable for almost anyone with minimal willingness.

We’ll keep the discussing, recognizing, and using similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, allusion, implication/inference, repetition, and personification. Many other elements, however, are culled for now.  

I was trapped in a training last month during which – I kid you not – we spent the better part of 90 minutes on strategies for teaching appositives. (For those of you with a life, an appositive is a “noun phrase” that restates with new information or clarification the noun which precedes it. “Blue Cereal, pith-laden blogger, is seriously underappreciated in his own time.” “Pith-laden blogger” is an appositive.)

Now, appositives are important enough in their own way, but are they essential for my specific students to make meaningful progress this year? I’m going to risk the ire of English teachers everywhere (not to mention anyone from my district who happens to be reading) and say no. Other terms on shaky ground despite their inclusion on official lists include anaphoric, cataphoric, modal auxiliary verbs, participial adjectives, and the aforementioned gerunds.

I’m nowhere near vain enough to suggest anyone should adapt my druthers about what parts of the curriculum are essential and which can be saved for another time. I suppose I’m partly just writing it all down to help clarify my own thinking, and to suggest that maybe as we return to whatever “normal” looks like this fall, we all take a deep breath before we do anything else.

Empty talking heads will keep pushing their weird “students are all behind now!” narratives. Districts will scramble to increase scores on whatever big magical tests control your state. A few eager colleagues troubled by last year’s shortcomings will try to make up for it by doubling down this fall. Politicians will continue being politicians and find ways to blame you for everything that’s ever happened – and probably several things that haven’t.

I respectfully suggest that while yes, you should pay attention to whatever specifics you were hired to teach, no, you don’t have to plow through them all no matter what, whether your kids keep up or not.

2021-2022 will no doubt get off to a rocky (and weird) start in many places. Go in positive, go in prepared, and go in with high hopes and high expectations. But if giving your students what they need most means you jettison some non-essentials along the way… you have my permission. If that’s what’s best for your kids, do it.

If anyone complains, just show them this post.

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Blessed Are Those Whose Pronouns Reflect Biology At Birth

~ Blue Cereal

Republican JesusA few days ago, Peter Greene at Curmudgucation wrote about a Physical Education teacher named Tanner Cross who was suspended for refusing to refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns. I wholeheartedly agreed with everything Greene write about the situation and intended to tweet it a few times then leave it alone.

But it’s bugging me. The whole situation. The claims being made – especially the moral indignation of this public school teacher demanding the right to assert his personal religious beliefs in class.

Because that’s not how public school works.

There are a number of factors making this more complicated than it might otherwise be. The first is that Cross’s suspension came after he objected to the policy at a school board meeting and announced that he’d never “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl, and vice versa.” He equated using transgender teens’ preferred pronouns to “lying to a child” and “abuse {of} a child” before adding that it was also “sinning against our God.”

A few days later, Cross was suspended and – because school districts are pretty much required to dramatically overreact in every possible conflict – banned from campus, prohibited from attending school events, and essentially treated as if he’d already mowed down a half-dozen LGBTQ+ kids with his church-issued AK-47.

He hadn’t.

The policy wasn’t even finalized yet, let alone implemented. Presumably, the Board was taking comments on the thing when Cross spoke. There’s no indication in the stories I found that he jumped up in the middle of unrelated business and began ranting unexpectedly. I think his position is inane and unethical (more on that in a bit) but based on the information available it seems to me the district might have flipped the panic switch a bit prematurely.

I mean, can you even violate a policy that hasn’t been instituted yet?

But here’s the bigger problem. The swell of right-wing support rallying behind Cross for sticking it to them transgender kids and all their liberal nonsense about “gender identity” are taking the position that as a teacher in a public school he has freedom of both speech and religion, as if he can say and do whatever he likes in this role thanks to the First Amendment.

That’s not how it works.

On the one hand, the Supreme Court made it very clear a half-century ago in Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) that

First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

This right is not absolute, however. Most of the cases I examined for “Have To” History: A Wall of Education (insert book promo here) which involved public funding being used to push religious beliefs involved “school choice” programs – taxpayer funded private schools indoctrinating students with their own versions of history, science, etc. The few “teacher free speech” cases involving public schools were mostly situations in which a teacher wished to teach creationism as being scientifically comparable to evolution scientifically, despite district curriculum policies to the contrary.

None of these teachers won. Evolution is (so far) a scientifically accepted theory of man’s development; Intelligent Design is an effort to replace evolution with unsupported religious beliefs. God may have created the universe, but to date that reality has to be accepted on faith.  

Teacher’s aren’t allowed to attack students for their beliefs or push their own faiths on students. I’d never kneel or protest during the Pledge of Allegiance during First Period because I’m not there as Blue Cereal flinging liberal pith everywhere; I’m there as an employee and representative of the state and school system, and they want to do the Pledge. When I didn’t like military recruiters coming to my school, I took it up with my administration privately. (If they’d asked me to fire a weapon on the other hand, I might have refused. Perhaps Mr. Cross would see that as comparable?)

I’ve had kids who loved Donald Trump. I might needle them a bit, but I’d never intentionally risk my connection with them by challenging their passion the way I might with other adults. I had a kid a few years back who repeatedly wore a shirt with Trump heavily armed and riding a T-Rex and who always made sure I noticed. We laughed about it, but I promise you that kid knew I loved and accepted him just the same.

Obviously the same thing is true for my gay kids, my Muslim kids, my atheists, my Mormons, or whatever. I’ve only had a few transgender students, and I try to show them the same love and respect as well. This isn’t something heroic on my part; it’s true of almost every teacher I know with every kid. It’s the norm. It’s how school is supposed to work.

Now, here’s something I don’t usually bring up. If I’m being honest, I don’t fully understand the whole transgender thing. I can’t quite get my head around it the way I’ve managed to do with race, religion, homosexuality, or whatever.

I share this not because I want to argue with anyone about it, but because the whole point is that I don’t need to “understand” or even “accept” it (let alone “approve” of anything) when it comes to my kids. My job is to teach them English and History and to treat them with respect and decency while I do it. I want to help them think, and yes – I sometimes care a little about all their weird personal drama, but only because (a) it tends to interfere with their ability to care deeply about appositives, and (b) I want them to feel validated and supported as human beings whenever possible.

What I’m not there to do is take a stand on my progressive ideals. The nice preacher’s wife next door to me feels the same way about her very conservative Christianity. Her faith is everything to her, but she doesn’t talk about it with kids unless they ask, and then only in the right circumstances. She wants to make sure nothing she says leaves anyone feeling “otherized” or degraded. That is, in fact, central to her faith. 

I know, right?

Teenagers are a sensitive, melodramatic bunch. It doesn’t take that much for them to feel marginalized – particularly if they belong to a group which is already kicked around and rejected, sometimes by their own families.

I said above that there were too many things in this case which complicate it, and I worry they’re going to be completely overlooked by the majority of people who end up taking very dramatic stands about it as things progress. Here are the last two I’ll be ranting about today.

Mr. Cross insists that using the preferred pronouns of transgender kids is against his religion. I’m curious what religion that might be. I like the way Greene covered this part in his post:

Exactly which part of the Christian faith, which teaching of Jesus, requires people of faith to object to trans folks? Cross (and his attorneys) are trying to hedge bets by suggesting the problem is the lying, that telling anything but the unvarnished truth is unChristian. I’m…. dubious. Cross teaches elementary school; I’d like to be there for the days when he blasts kindergartners for talking about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny…

The courts, however, do not look to the validity or accuracy of a theological position. At best, they consider sincerity (does the person really believe this, or is it being used as an excuse for their behavior?) No judge worth his gavel will decide this one based on the complete lack of New Testament mandates regarding pronoun usage.

What I hope the courts will consider is the difference between religious or political speech outside of school hours (which is sometimes protected, although not always) and “I refuse to demonstrate this form of decency and acceptance to trans students specifically because they are going to hell for their perversion and lies.”

Which brings me to the last messy bit of this whole situation. Because Mr. Cross was suspended before the policy was even implemented, I’m curious what his solution in class with real students might have been (or might be, since he’s apparently been reinstated via court order). In my mind, the answer matters.  

Despite my hyperbole, I have no reason to think he intends to go full Santa Fe ISD and berate his kids for being hell-bound. If he did, I’d like to think the courts would refuse to categorize that as protected free speech or free exercise of his religion. But what if he defied the policy by always using the child’s name instead of what he believes to be the “correct” pronoun? Or what about using “they” instead of “he” or “she”? Are evolving grammatical norms the same sort of violation of his faith as, say… “lying”?

I’m not saying he shouldn’t still be held accountable for defying the policy, but morally and professionally, that would be a very different sort of violation, wouldn’t it?

Left unaddressed in the coverage of the case so far is the question of whether the transgender students of Loudon County, Virginia, have expressed any sort of preference themselves about how this could or should behandled. Is this policy an effort to respond to their concerns, or has someone been feeling all “woke” lately and decided to straight-white-savior everyone based on their enlightened Twitter feed? I’d like to assume the best, but…

Despite my own ambiguity about some transgender issues, I’m having a hard time sympathizing with Mr. Cross on this one. My inclination is to defend the kids and err on the side of acceptance, respect, and support. When conflicts like this erupt, the people most impacted tend to be the group already marginalized and mistreated to begin with, and this case has the potential to be a complete mess with plenty of point-missing and grandstanding from all sides.

I hope both parties surprise me and find a decent compromise before things escalate further. We’ll see.