Why mockery might be our best asset right now to keep our sanity AND steel our resolve for the shit storm that is the U.S. right now PLUS a Reader-Nominated GWM Award of the Week!

In this post: I comment on the teacher crisis, the teen mental health crisis, and the Texas Board of education, plus another GWM award recipient.

Last week: The literary trope of the GWM has been around this here newsletter for a while, haunting our minds and enraging our hearts.

Next week: The realness of the school to prison pipeline, my burn-out, how I knew I needed to quit teaching, and Tales from the White Savior Crypt.

Hi folks,

How are y’all doing? This summer is wild. The supreme court’s going apeshit, I can’t decide which I dread more: a Trump presidential run or a de Santis presidential run, and the Dems have never looked more… well… like republicans dressed up in an inept sheep’s clothing. 

As education rhetoric continues to dominate news headlines, you know what’s not? The teacher crisis, which has teachers leaving in droves because working conditions are absolutely miserable (I would know since I am one of them). We also aren’t talking nearly enough about the teen mental health crisis and the reality that the kids aren’t OK, nor are they learning very much. The future is not looking bright. 

One just need to look at the recent stunt of a Texas educator group proposes referring to slavery as “involuntary relocation” in second-grade curriculum. Sometimes it’s all in a name, and as we can see here, the US has always had problems with both truth and reality. Here’s a great article by The Atlantic on why Slavery called by any other name does not smell as sweet: “Just call it slavery” by Graeme Wood. 

A bit of silver lining to those of you horrified by the above: let’s be real, teachers are not getting much teaching in any way, so it’s not like they’re going to learn anything effective about renaming slavery to “involuntary relocation” because most teachers are so burdened with their normal lesson plan, that this won’t make much of a splash in classrooms (just yet…). (Yes, the silver lining is actually a MORE depressing reason if you think too deeply about it, so I suggest just staying at the surface of it).

And luckily, for now, that measure did not pass. See: “Texas Board of Education Rejects Proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation,” by Adela Suliman for Washington Post.

Like many of you, I’ve had a sinking feeling for the past five years that everything is going to get a whole lot worse before we even talk about how to make things better, and damn it’s hard being right at times.

So what’s a nerd to do?

My answer is, of course, mockery. And ad hominem attacks on white men (which, by the way, are a perfectly valid form of debate if the person’s character you are attacking is related to the subject matter of the debate, see Scientific American’s “Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem.”

To that end, thank you to my readers who wrote in to nominate GWM for this week. The one I decided to go with was the first nomination I received, and from a white man no less. 

Good job white man, gooood job ::pats on head nicely but still in a somewhat condescending way:: SEE?! There are some good white men out there! Keep up the good work, and if you’d like to nominate a mediocre white man for Not Safe for School’s Generic White Man award, simply respond to this email!

Generic White Man Award: Reader-Nominated Edition

Our Good White Man nominates Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee for the Generic White Man Award of the week, and boy does he deserve his tiara.  As this NSFS reader reports in: 

“I humbly nominate Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who is using our state’s public school system as a lab for state-funded Hillsdale College right wing charter schools. Also championed an insane trigger law. And is trying to bring the RNC to Nashville in 2024 and threatening our liberal local government with retribution if they refuse to go along with it.”

The Tennessee Education Report, an excellent blog run by a PhD in Public Policy for Education, has given their review of Gov. Bill Lee as “Exceptionally Bad.”

Which, considering what a small-minded sack-of-shit of a mediocre white man that is Gov. Bill Lee, that’s pretty impressive to do anything exceptionally.

Why is GWM Bill Lee such a sack of shit? Allow us to explain:

Charter schools v public schools: Charter schools are deregulated private entities (with very deep lobbying pockets) promulgating the lie of “school choice,” when what they really mean is “the illusion of school choice because now some parents can choose between equally shitty and equally segregated education options. 

It being the Deep South, of course, Gov Lee’s payday from Hillsdale Charter Schools is about weaponizing white Christianity for all the reasons why RNC loves to pretend they’re religious: namely out of racism and sexism. Read Chalkbeat’s “Why a small private Christian college in Michigan is having an outsize influence in Tennessee,” by Marta W. Aldrich.

NSFS has written a lot about the evils of charter schools, why they are basically fronts for laundering, and why they are not good for education in any sense of the term. Our GWM Gov. Bill Lee is yet another dazzling example of just how broken our democracy is, and just exactly how our children are paying the price. 

Also, as per usual, NSFS was ahead of the curve with our last post on Prayers to Offend White Women and the Patriarchy, because apparently an activist asks to lead satanic prayer at the FL high school football game. I am here for the shade of it all, HAIL SATAN!

And now, to close out, I’d like to end in prayer and thoughtful contemplation, in Audre Lorde’s name we pray:

Our father who art in hell, hollowed out be his name Your kind done came. May thy will be aborted on earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Plan B We ask not for forgiveness, Just as we will not forgive this bodily trespass Lead us not into temptation May Audre Lorde deliver us from your evil For thine is a shitty ass kingdom We take thy power, and thy glory For ever and fuck off Awoman.

What I’m Reading:

“Just Say ‘Slavery’: Involuntary Relocation and enslaved person are misguided euphemisms.” by Graeme Wood

“Teachers are heading for the door-- and not coming back,” by Katlyn Barton and Christine Dickason for Ms Magazine. 

“‘It’s life or death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens,” by Matt Richtel for NY Times.  

“Texas Board of Education Rejects Proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation,” by Adela Suliman for Washington Post.