Maskachusetts Democrats want social justice, but not for their children
“The parents who dared to question Newton’s educational equity experiments” (Boston Globe):
The three mothers had always voted Democrat. One had a Bernie Sanders mug on her desk. They worked in helping fields — international aid, mental health, yoga instruction. They volunteered at their children’s schools. They fit right in to suburban Newton, with its liberal leanings and vaunted public education.
(Note that may be “vaunted” simply due to high test scores and the magic of heritability; the children of parents who scored well on tests tend to score well on tests.)
It turns out there’s trouble in River City:
“At first we were just trying to understand the drastic changes that took place while no one was in school during COVID,” says one of the mothers, Vanessa Calagna. “It was like we were trying to put a puzzle together. And then we were trying to ring the alarm.”
Those changes involved a heightened emphasis on racial equity and antiracism, including a district commitment to “dismantle structures rooted in racism” and seek “more equitable outcomes for all students.”
Among the moves made in the interest of equity was an initiative by Newton’s two celebrated high schools to combine more students into “multilevel” classes. Rather than students being divided into separate classes by level, students at varying levels would learn together — even in math, science, and languages. The goal: to break the persistent pattern that white and Asian students predominated in “honors” classes while Black and Hispanic students tended to be clustered in less-challenging “college-prep” classes.
The Bernie voters get tarred as “right-wing” (not quite all the way to “far right” like Nazi Party member Elon Musk?):
In late 2022, the mothers and their allies launched a petition to create an advisory panel that would give parents more voice on academic issues, modeled after a similar Dedham committee that had been well received there. The proposal drew more than 300 signatures.
It also drew fierce opposition. The mothers and their allies found themselves portrayed online and in public as dog-whistling bigots doing the bidding of right-wing national groups.
Social media comments painted their side as “racism cloaked as academic excellence” and “right-wing activism cloaked as parental concern.”At that four-hour-plus meeting, one speaker — a professor — compared the petition’s backers to the white women who helped perpetuate segregation and white supremacy.
Speaker after speaker declared that academic excellence and racial equity are not contradictory at all, and in fact complement each other.
Are these folks aware that there is a founded-in-1854 political party that shares their point of view? No:
As for Calagna’s trio, they identify as people with “traditional liberal values.” Calagna herself has never filled in a Republican circle on a ballot, she says.
What’s next? Aping Donald Trump in getting rid of the word “equity”!
In fact, the district’s existing tagline — “Equity & Excellence” — has become “divisive,” Nolin said.
It will soon be changed to “Where All Children Thrive.”
Summarizing all of the above… Democrats in Massachusetts want and vote for social justice, equity, etc. But they don’t want it for their own children.
Loosely related… I was riding the MBTA’s Green Line out towards Newton last month (while up in Cambridge to teach at MIT). Here’s one of the righteous who has taken the trouble to wear a mask on the train, but refuses to follow the directions and shave his/her/zir/their beard (note that he/she/ze/they sits in a seat reserved for the disabled):
