March 22-23, 2025: 21st Century Attacks on Educators

[100 yearsago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the ButlerAct, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. Sothis week I’ve AmericanStudied that law and the famoustrial it produced, leading up to this weekend post on current attackson educators.]

On what’snew about our spate of anti-education attacks, and what’s not.

In mypost-Valentine’s non-favorites series two years ago, I included this post on“Non-Favorite Trends: Attacking Teachers & Librarians.” Such attacks havesadly not dissipated at all since that time—indeed, there seem to be even moreof them over those subsequent two years—and so I’d ask you to check out thatpost if you would and then come on back with a couple further thoughts.

Welcomeback! I don’t want in any significant way to echo recent voices (most notably avery frustrating Atlantic cover story published after the insurance CEOmurder, to which I will not link here as I think it was as a-historical as anythingI’ve read in a while) who have argued that contemporary America is moreviolent, or at least more accepting of violence, than in the past—I’m withRichard Slotkin when it comes to the foundational presence and role of violencein American history and identity. But I would agree with the author of thisDailyKos post—our frustrating acceptance of right-wing violence, and indeed theendorsement of it by some of our most powerful political figures, is withoutquestion a deepening and terrifying trend in early 2025. No single day betterreflects that trend than January 6th, 2021, but the truth is that institutionslikeschools and libraries have been threatened more consistently than any otherpublic spaces, both in the ostensible context of specific events like drag storytimesand just because, y’know, they have books and larnin’ and whatnot.

Like massshootings and open carry and all sorts of other corollaries to our ever-more-ubiquitousgun culture, these right-wing threats do seem to have increased dramatically inrecent years. But it’s really important to locate them as part of America’slongstanding, if not indeed foundational, legacy of attacks on educators andeducational institutions from right-wing (and generally white supremacist) domesticterrorists. Up here in New England we’ve got one of the most overt suchattacks, the 1835destruction of Canaan, New Hampshire’s groundbreaking, abolitionist andco-educational NoyesAcademy for African Americans. While I wouldn’t disagree with folks whowould want to locate those histories as part of America’s overarching andequally foundational streakof anti-intellectualism, it doesn’t seem to me that anti-intellectualismalone would be enough to motivate people to physically and violently attack institutions—ittakes the all-too-American marriage of anti-intellectualism with white supremacyto really produce this legacy, in which our own moment remains firmly located.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?