Public Schools Can ’t Force Employees to Support Ideas They Oppose

Thomas A. Berry andNicholas DeBenedettoIn the Fall of 2020, public schools in Springfield, Missouri implemented mandatory “equity” training. All employees of the school district were required to attend a session, not just teachers. The employees were told that if they did not participate, the school district would dock their pay and they could lose necessary professional development credit.The training topics included “Oppression, White Supremacy, and Systemic Racism” and tools on “how to become Anti‐​Racist educators.” Training sessions included several interactive exercises that required participants to share reactions to videos, write down answers to instructor questions, answer multiple‐​choic e questions, and fill out charts related to concepts presented by the training.Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley, two non ‐​teacher employees, strongly disagreed with many of the views advanced by the school district through the training sessions. These sessions taught that believing in colorblindness is a form of white supremacy; that systemic racism is “woven into the very foundation of American culture, socie ty, and laws”; and that American institutions all contribute to or reinforce “the oppression of marginalized social groups while elevating dominant social groups.” Participants were also told that being sufficiently “anti‐​racist” means not remaining “silent or inactive” because do ing so constitutes “white silence”—a fo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs