The Press Has Picked a Side, and It’s Not the Parents

By Becket Adams

Sunday, June 11, 2023

 

In the war between conservative parents and school administrators over the future of U.S. education, the corporate press clearly has chosen a side.

 

Major news organizations sided with teachers on Covid-19 school closures, even long after the closures made no sense. They repeatedly give the kid-glove treatment to teachers’ strikes, which have become increasingly unreasonable and self-serving. They helped trumpet the activist-designed nickname “Don’t Say Gay” for Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act (the word “gay” is nowhere to be found in the bill). They also promote a view of homeschooling that is as negative and slanderous as the one pushed by leading school officials.

 

For the press and the education establishment, the overlap in interests and beliefs is hardly coincidental. And there’s more.

 

Consider, for example, the following Associated Press headline published last week: “As conservatives target schools, LGBTQ+ kids and students of color feel less safe.” It’s bad enough that the headline alone is stacked with loaded terms, but it gets worse when one digs into what the article says and doesn’t say. That the main thrust of the story matches perfectly what teachers and other activist groups (erroneously) claim about schools’ “bans” is a detail that cannot be missed.

 

The AP story focuses on a group of anxious teenagers, including Harmony Kennedy, 16, who sincerely believe minority representation is being erased from school curricula all over the country, including in Harmony’s state of Tennessee.

 

“As protests for racial justice broke out in 2020,” the AP reports, “white students at [Harmony’s] Tennessee high school kneeled in the hallways and chanted, ‘Black lives matter!’ in mocking tones. As she saw the students receive light punishments, she grew increasingly frustrated.”

 

The story goes on: “So when Tennessee began passing legislation that could limit the discussion and teaching of Black history, gender identity and race in the classroom, to Harmony, it felt like a gut punch — as if the adults were signaling this kind of ignorant behavior was acceptable” (emphasis added).

 

Let’s talk about that legislation.

 

Tennessee law prohibits schools from receiving public funding if their curricula promote “divisive concepts,” including that “one race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex” or that “this state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist,” among other concepts. The state’s definition of “divisive concepts” also includes the promotion of “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people,” as well as “stereotyping” or “scapegoating” on the basis of race or sex.

 

Remember, this is the law that the AP warns could “limit the discussion and teaching of Black history, gender identity and race.”

 

As telling as what the AP says about the Tennessee law is what it doesn’t say about the state’s current educational standards. You will not learn from the article that the term “African American” appears 54 times in Tennessee’s current social-studies standards, as helpfully noted on Twitter last week by Zaid Jilani of NewsNation. In fact, on page 116 of the most recent edition of the Tennessee Academic Standards for Social Studies, under the heading “African American History,” is the following passage:

 

Course Description: Students will examine the life and contributions of African Americans from the early 1600s through the contemporary United States. Students will explore the influence of geography on slavery and the growth of slavery in the U.S. Students will consider urban and rural African American communities and institutions in the North and South leading up to and during the Civil War. Students will investigate the rise of Jim Crow and the subsequent effects of the laws and trace the impact of African American migration through the early 20th century. Students will explore the impact of the Harlem Renaissance as well as the contributions of African Americans during the Great Depression and World War II. Students will examine the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement and consider the contemporary issues confronting African Americans.

 

The state’s standards include specific mentions of the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee, Brown v. Board of Education, the “various methods employed by African Americans to obtain civil rights,” legal victories of the Civil Rights Movement, and much more.

 

“Tennessee also has state standards for current events,” Jilani notes. “It’s not only black history they’re teaching.”

 

Yet if you relied entirely on the AP’s reporting, you’d think the exact opposite were true.

 

“When I heard they were removing African American history,” Harmony told the reporters from the AP, “I almost started crying. We’re not doing anything to anybody. Why do they care what we personally prefer, or what we look like?”

 

Amazingly, the newswire does nothing to correct the teenager’s tenuous grasp of reality. Indeed, the AP appears to want her — and the reader — to believe something that simply isn’t true. Its curiously opinionated coverage regurgitates her fears.

 

The report concludes by lamenting that, “as conservative politicians and activists push for limits on discussions of race, gender and sexuality, some students say the measures targeting aspects of their identity have made them less welcome in American schools” — and now for the kicker — “the one place all kids are supposed to feel safe.”

 

“The one place all kids are supposed to feel safe”? Is this a news report or a National Education Association press release?

 

The thing that’s particularly galling about this slipshod style of reporting, aside from the fact that it plays a big role in scaring the living bejeezus out of teenagers, is the likelihood that the reporters and editors can’t hide behind ignorance. Associated Press staffers are almost certainly aware of what the Tennessee law actually says, that African-American history is still being taught in the state, and that teens such as Harmony are needlessly worried. It is probably because the reporters know the truth of the matter, in fact, that the story includes this unforgivably sleazy line: “The law was broad, but to her, the potential impact was crushing.”

 

It’s as if to say: We know she’s wrong, but her feelings are more important than the truth. 

 

This isn’t reporting. This is advocacy. And the fact that this type of advocacy always seems to favor school administrators and bureaucrats is not something that can be overlooked.

 

Whether it’s school closures, fights over hypersexual curricula, or homeschooling versus public schooling, reporters and editors at mainstream news outlets will side with academic bureaucrats and teachers’ unions nearly every time. It’s just reality.