The school district that my kids are in has been taken over by christian nationalists. I’m sorry, there’s just no sugar coating it.
They recently passed a “Flag Policy” which bans the display of rainbow flags in classrooms. Never mind what the class actually wants. Ostensibly, the policy claims to strive for neutrality of viewpoints. But then this is the same Board that is inching more toward display of the Ten Commandments and already has a jingoistic obsession with display of the American flag. So it hardly is very neutral in all viewpoints; just LGBTQ support.
All this is just headline fodder. Here’s where it hits home: in one of my kid’s class, their band teacher refused to remove his flag. He boldly informed the parents during an open house that it was not, in fact, a flag but a teaching tool. Each color represented an acrostic aid for music education, thought the exact decoding escapes me now.
I knew I liked this teacher; I liked him more that day. I also knew that he would soon be a target.
That day came this week. My kid reported that his flag — er, teaching tool — had been remove under the cover of night and replaced by permanent market on cinder block, the words reading:
Your flag has been removed by District. We told you so.
So I proceeded to start writing a letter of support to my kid’s teacher. Here is the text…
Hey Mr. {teacher name}, I wanted to write to you a message of support, that my family is very much in favor of all the various teaching tools that innovative instructors, such as yourself, employ in teaching my child. We love the rainbow, aren’t afraid of it, and recognize its many applications in the service of education.
A stark contrast to this teaching tool is the premeditation required to scrawl the Kafkaesque graffiti in its place: “we told you so.” That is a level of intimidation, birthed in our authoritarian zeitgeist.
I applaud the educators that are boldly teaching truth to power.
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