Hours before President Biden arrived in Pittsburgh on 1/28/22, to talk about his Infrastructure & Jobs Act, which passed in 2021, a two-lane, 52-year-old bridge collapsed with a semi, 2 buses, and several vehicles on it, and miraculously no one died; 10 people were injured, and treated after a heroic search & rescue. The collapse caused a gas leak, which was shut off. There are another 3300 bridges in Pennsylvania, deemed structurally deficient! Imagine how many bridges across our country are long overdue for renovations. President Biden vowed, “We’re going to fix them all!” Nineteen GOP senators helped pass BIF, but too many to name here, who voted against it, are telling their constituents how these funds will help their states, AS IF they helped bring it to fruition. HYPOCRITES!
Holocaust Remembrance Day was Jan 27th. On Jan 10th, a Tennessee school district decided to remove from their curriculum, the book: MAUS, written by Art Spiegelman, in which he told the story of his parents living in 1940 Poland, and depicts him interviewing his father, as a Holocaust survivor. MAUS won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992; that same year I purchased the two-book set, and within the next two years my twelve-year-old son found it on the bookshelf and read it. The TN school district banned the graphic-novel due to inappropriate language (it contains 8 curse words) and an illustration of a nude ‘woman’, drawn as a mouse; the Jews are drawn as mice, the Nazis drawn as cats. The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted, “MAUS has played a vital role in education about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors”.
Conservative officials across our nation are increasingly trying to limit the type of books that youth are exposed to, including books addressing structural racism & LGBTQ issues. In 2021, Texas Governor Abbott, signed a bill regulating how U.S. history and certain ideas about race can be taught in schools. Then, TX state rep, Matt Krause, released a list of 850 books he wants banned from school libraries. He claimed the books, “make students feel discomfort, because of their content about race and sexuality”. We must join in fighting back against these anti-modernity, Orwellian-tactics fueled by ‘White Fear’, with its attempts to whitewash our history, (as the Texas Round Rock Black Parent Association mobilized & fought back against attempts to ban the book: “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You”, and other books). Students, despite discomfort, need to learn about the Native American Holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust, the African Holocaust, that happened here, and the 250 years of slavery in America. Genocide shouldn’t be a comfortable topic. Modern schools should encourage an inclusive environment for ALL students. (Personally, as a student, I suffered great discomfort in having to study several years of MATH! UGH!)
Trish Forsyth Voss
Feb 4 2022
Teach Inclusivity!
Hours before President Biden arrived in Pittsburgh on 1/28/22, to talk about his Infrastructure & Jobs Act, which passed in 2021, a two-lane, 52-year-old bridge collapsed with a semi, 2 buses, and several vehicles on it, and miraculously no one died; 10 people were injured, and treated after a heroic search & rescue. The collapse caused a gas leak, which was shut off. There are another 3300 bridges in Pennsylvania, deemed structurally deficient! Imagine how many bridges across our country are long overdue for renovations. President Biden vowed, “We’re going to fix them all!” Nineteen GOP senators helped pass BIF, but too many to name here, who voted against it, are telling their constituents how these funds will help their states, AS IF they helped bring it to fruition. HYPOCRITES!
Holocaust Remembrance Day was Jan 27th. On Jan 10th, a Tennessee school district decided to remove from their curriculum, the book: MAUS, written by Art Spiegelman, in which he told the story of his parents living in 1940 Poland, and depicts him interviewing his father, as a Holocaust survivor. MAUS won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992; that same year I purchased the two-book set, and within the next two years my twelve-year-old son found it on the bookshelf and read it. The TN school district banned the graphic-novel due to inappropriate language (it contains 8 curse words) and an illustration of a nude ‘woman’, drawn as a mouse; the Jews are drawn as mice, the Nazis drawn as cats. The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted, “MAUS has played a vital role in education about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors”.
Conservative officials across our nation are increasingly trying to limit the type of books that youth are exposed to, including books addressing structural racism & LGBTQ issues. In 2021, Texas Governor Abbott, signed a bill regulating how U.S. history and certain ideas about race can be taught in schools. Then, TX state rep, Matt Krause, released a list of 850 books he wants banned from school libraries. He claimed the books, “make students feel discomfort, because of their content about race and sexuality”. We must join in fighting back against these anti-modernity, Orwellian-tactics fueled by ‘White Fear’, with its attempts to whitewash our history, (as the Texas Round Rock Black Parent Association mobilized & fought back against attempts to ban the book: “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You”, and other books). Students, despite discomfort, need to learn about the Native American Holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust, the African Holocaust, that happened here, and the 250 years of slavery in America. Genocide shouldn’t be a comfortable topic. Modern schools should encourage an inclusive environment for ALL students. (Personally, as a student, I suffered great discomfort in having to study several years of MATH! UGH!)
Trish Forsyth Voss
By spiritspeak • Uncategorized 0