[100 years ago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Butler Act, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that law and the famous trial it produced, leading up to this weekend post on current attacks on educators.]
On what’s
new about our spate of anti-education attacks, and what’s not.
In my
post-Valentine’s non-favorites series two years ago, I included this post on
“Non-Favorite Trends: Attacking Teachers & Librarians.” Such attacks have
sadly not dissipated at all since that time—indeed, there seem to be even more
of them over those subsequent two years—and so I’d ask you to check out that
post if you would and then come on back with a couple further thoughts.
Welcome
back! I don’t want in any significant way to echo recent voices (most notably a
very frustrating Atlantic cover story published after the insurance CEO
murder, to which I will not link here as I think it was as a-historical as anything
I’ve read in a while) who have argued that contemporary America is more
violent, or at least more accepting of violence, than in the past—I’m with
Richard Slotkin when it comes to the foundational presence and role of violence
in American history and identity. But I would agree with the author of this
DailyKos post—our frustrating acceptance of right-wing violence, and indeed the
endorsement of it by some of our most powerful political figures, is without
question a deepening and terrifying trend in early 2025. No single day better
reflects that trend than January 6th, 2021, but the truth is that institutions
like
schools and libraries have been threatened more consistently than any other
public spaces, both in the ostensible context of specific events like drag storytimes
and just because, y’know, they have books and larnin’ and whatnot.
Like mass
shootings and open carry and all sorts of other corollaries to our ever-more-ubiquitous
gun culture, these right-wing threats do seem to have increased dramatically in
recent years. But it’s really important to locate them as part of America’s
longstanding, if not indeed foundational, legacy of attacks on educators and
educational institutions from right-wing (and generally white supremacist) domestic
terrorists. Up here in New England we’ve got one of the most overt such
attacks, the 1835
destruction of Canaan, New Hampshire’s groundbreaking, abolitionist and
co-educational Noyes
Academy for African Americans. While I wouldn’t disagree with folks who
would want to locate those histories as part of America’s overarching and
equally foundational streak
of anti-intellectualism, it doesn’t seem to me that anti-intellectualism
alone would be enough to motivate people to physically and violently attack institutions—it
takes the all-too-American marriage of anti-intellectualism with white supremacy
to really produce this legacy, in which our own moment remains firmly located.
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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