Connecting the Dots

not just for teachers, but for all of us. You know, oftentimes when we talk about education on this show, I forget to make kind of the disclaimer that regardless of whether or not you actually have kids or plan on having kids at all, our education system and the strength of it matters to all of us because they are creating the future thinkers, workers, innovators, or what the Republican Party wants is the permanent underclass in this country in

order to uphold capitalism and the one percent. What Grace Lynch's new show Teaching Texas goes into a deep dive about how the state of Texas has had control over American history, over our textbooks for the last sixty years. The show begins with a historical context, going back to the nineteen sixties into this couple, this white couple, who were uncomfortable, you know, with the way that history was being taught, how it went against their Judeo Christian values.

And that their idea of America was running in contrary to you know, the truth that was being talked about America's founding and subsequent racism and policies of discrimination. But we know that the far right has an all out onsawt against education. Right now, affirmative action is on the chopping block and will be dismantled by the Supreme Court.

We know that affirmative action allowed for people of color, black people in particular, to be able to aspire to higher education at predominantly white institutions because they had a history of what discrimination shocking, and so affirmative action came. And then now you have a rise in the number of people of color black people over the decades going

into higher education. Well, what else do we learn. We know that a majority of black and brown kids of color are who are in public education system, and so we know that that has been the reason for a

quest to defund public education throughout the decades. And now they are using quote unquote the boogeyman of critical race theory as the reasoning behind wanting to run push people of color out of the public education system because with more people taking their children out and putting them in religious institutions are putting them in private schools, will then you're not going to need to have the same kind of investment right into our public education system, which in

turn does what exactly creates a more pliable and under educated working class that won't go against their authoritarian regimes and that will live in a cycle of desperation and poverty, right creating the permanent underclass that this country that Republicans want.

What Teaching Texas in their eight part series do is connect the dots between how this started in Texas and again, what happens in Texas happens around the country because they control the textbook situation that goes into all of our nation schools. So we can't just say to ourselves, well, I'm in New York, or I'm in California, or you know, I'm in Oregon or I'm in Iowa, so like this

doesn't matter for me. No, it does, because they're disseminating their watered down white supremacists encircled vision of America all throughout the country and invading our public school systems. With Grace Lynch, I will also discuss, you know, the rise in violence that we have seen at school board meetings and how political violence isn't just about the violence that is happening at the federal level, but it's what we are seeing at the state and local level that should

be raising alarm bells. So I'm really excited, folks, for you to dig into this conversation with Grace Lynch, audio journalist and the host of Teaching Texas that is coming up next. Hey, there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love, The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Goehler, the president of Emerge BGG, is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world

of politics. Join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issues facing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights, to climate change and more. Tune in every Tuesday wherever

you get your podcasts. Folks. I'm very excited to welcome to woka F for the very first time, Grace Lynch, who is an audio journalist and producer at Wonder Media Network and is host of the show Teaching Texas, which does a deep dive into how Texas has dictated American education over the last sixty years. Grace, as we were talking before we hit record, I was sharing with you that and as my the WOKAF audience knows that I am a former early childhood educator. My master's degree worked

on Capitol Hill doing education policy, was a lobbyist. Education is very important to me and has always been, and I feel like I am, I guess not the only person now because you've got a whole podcast dedicated to how dangerous the state of Texas is to the nation's education. So give us a little bit about why this podcast and why now? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be

here with you and to be on the show. I'm a longtime listener and fans, so this is a real treat for me. And why this show? Why now? Well, I think that if anyone has been even remotely paying attention to the news, or honestly even desperately trying to avoid it, you have still been bombarded with the CRT

debate that is raging all across the country. Parents storming school board meetings, teachers and administrators getting fired over acknowledgements of racism existing, all this anti trans legislation that's been passing about you know, trans kids in schools. It's education

has become the latest front of our culture wars. And I actually pitched the show years ago, long before kind of the CRT debate took over, because I really was just fascinated by the fact that Texas had such an outsized impact on our education and wanted to dive into that more So, I think the why now kind of honestly presented itself to me in a really lucky way, but that as we're heading into a mid terms where you know, democracy is on the ballot in many ways,

I think that something that should not be overlooked is the fact that public education is the bedrock of democracy and is really a foundational element that creates an informs

doesn't read that can function in a democracy. So I feel as if that these debates have been kind of siloed, the discussions over CRT and this you know, acknowledgement of the crisis in our democracy, and really they're one and the same, and so I think that I hope any audience that comes, you know, on and listens to the show as we journey all the way back to the nineteen six season, really look at this grassroots movement that began in Texas that they also connect that to, you know,

and stick with us until we reach the modern day and kind of start to talk about the implications of education and its importance right now. Well, I think what is really important is that you are giving a history lesson rights as well as, you know, bringing folks up to the modern day. The reality in America, though, is that education has always been at the forefront of every

culture war. I mean, we harken back to the images of Ruby Bridges, who by the way, is not an old lady by any stretch of the American imagination, and it's alive now, and the pictures of her being escorted by the National Guard as a as a four or

five year old to desegregate her elementary school. This happened in the nineteen in the nineteen fifties, and what is one of the things that had prompted Brown versus the desegregating schools um came because of Brown versus the Board of Education, and then we had the result being this that children Black children needed to have literal military protection

in order to attend school. So I want you to talk a bit about some of the historical things contexts that we forget right or rather and I say forget, but we're purposefully not really delved into in our education.

Um to have us understand that what we are seeing now with from a book book burning to the narrowing of curriculum, you know, in order to appease white people and as Ronda Santis says, you know, to eliminate any any any, any possible white guilt that could that could ever happen, like we need to uphold white people's comfort. Talk to us about some of the things that have sparked on the show with regard to history that we

should know absolutely. And I think to your point, you know, why we're paying attention to it right now as opposed to the past, where if this has always been present, is the fact that in the past, these conversations, in these debates took place in rooms where people really weren't paying much attention. You know, these were small elected offices where people weren't really sure what these people did. Not

many people turned out for these elections. Grassroots activists showed up to these hearings that many people knew what they were doing, and so I think that the interesting thing about what this show does is it traces it back to those small town activists who started raising concerns over what they saw in their children's textbooks that they didn't think aligned with their what they called Judeo Christian values.

They didn't think it purported the image of America that they wanted their child to have, And in many instances and almost every other state, their impact on education would have ended there. It would have ended with them maybe influencing their local school board, maybe influencing a district wide school board. But instead, because this was Norma and mel Gabler in Texas, where they adopt textbooks K through twelve for the whole state, making it the largest market for

textbooks in the country. Because they were the sole constituency that this board essentially needed to cater to, they ended up dictating what needed to be in these textbooks that were made for the largest market and therefore sold all

over to the rest of the country. So we're not only charting the story of the individuals who become part of this movement, who latch onto a system that they're able to puppeteer to their will, but also the fact that the story could only have ever taken place in Texas, and because it takes place in Texas, it has implications

that spread out all across the country. And I just don't think that a lot of people necessarily realize that the small town activists who have no education background behind you were able to pop a teer essentially a system that then rippled out all over the rest of the country. And it's also worth acknowledging that, like a lot of these folks throughout history, like not only just Melanorma who we feature, but there are many acolytes that they inspire. It's a lot of white folks, and it's a lot

of white moms, a lot of white women. And that's also you know, many leaders of the anti CRT backlash that we're seeing today are white women. And these are women typically of privilege, who have, as particularly in the nineteen sixties through nineties, the ability to stay home and be really engaged in the education of their children and spend time reviewing textbooks, spend time, you know, participating in

school boards. There's a real element of both like racial and class segregation and privilege that's embodied in all of this activism that you know, we slowly kind of weave and chart through over the course of several decades. In today, I'm so I'm so glad that you that you brought up both the race and the privilege element in the stay at home mom mom and mafia bubble, right, because

because it's you know it, you like. A memory just popped into my head from me being an elementary school and I went to elementary school out east on Long Island, in a majority white school district and in New York. And I remember my mother, who at the time was a divorcee, uh you know, mother of two and a working,

full time working mom. And as most those kids built their parents, I had said to her, you know, why why can't you come on my field trips the way that so and So's mother comes on my field trips, or like, you know, come and do like the bakesale, you know and so and so. But my mother looked at me, I'll never forget it, and I'm like a grown ass woman. My mother looked at me grace and was just like, because I have a job, because I because I actually work, and I need you to understand

that life. I don't the spare time that I have, right is this is not what it is dedicated too. And my mother was very very clear. But I think about that, and I think about the way that we don't lift up those working moms and those working parents and don't make it so, for instance, that you would do these meetings at a time when everybody could participate right where you would be, you would be opening up, you know, an opportunity so that every parent has a voice,

everyone's voice is equal. So I just want you to you know, the question for you is I don't think that we tie in the class and tie in the

racial element of school board and school participation. It's like, if you're not showing up for parent teacher conferences, you're the bad parent, as opposed to you're making parent teacher conferences in the middle of the fucking day, right when regular people are working and have jobs, and so like, I just kind of want to talk about the parental influence and what you have learned, But what kind of informed the questions that you were asking in the investigation

that you were doing with this series. Well, one thing I can point to right away is later in the show, when we you know, kind of fast forward into the modern day. We spoke with this group called the Round Rock Black Parents Association, and it's a group that's based on a suburb outside of Austin, round Rock, and it's a group of parents who are parents of color who

are advocating for their students. And it's really unique in not only the state, but a kind of in the country because they have been able to successfully stop books from being banned in their district, which is a really incredible thing to see. And they emphasize so much the ability to like build community and you know, reinforce that community and create a sense of collectivism that has enabled

them to do that. But I will also say that they spoke really candidly about the fact that, like, they don't go to school board meetings because those aren't safe environments for them because right now they're so toxic and filled with such vitriol usually coming from white parents who don't want their white children to feel uncomfortable by learning about systemic racism in America, that they don't feel like

that's really a space for them. So they either send testimony separately, they send letters separately, they somehow make their voices heard outside of that pathway they've had to circumvent the system altogether, or they lean on the white members of their coalition to like kind of go and you do that on their behalf, and so on some level, I thought that was really inspiring to like see a group of people who have had great success who have said,

we're not going to operate within your system that is not built for us and doesn't want us here. But it's also is very disconcerting that a group of parents don't feel comfortable at a school board, meaning because they

risk being attacked essentially. So yeah, it's there's no like even though that's like one of the like I would say, more inspiring episodes that we have where you really do get a sense that this debate is not just completely consumed by people who are advocating for a very loud minority. It is still it still illuminates just how many issues are still just based into the system of how parents

and educators and the people monitoring education all interact. I mean that should be like headline stories in and of itself. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts

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you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday. You know, I will say that at the beginning of COVID, when schools are getting ready to come back from a year and a half of remote learning, we watched school board meetings turn into cage matches right again at the hands

of white parents. And the fact that we don't talk about that and the potential and like the rise in I mean, when we talk about the rise in political violence in this country, we're talking about you know, rhetoric at the federal at the state, federal level, but we're not really talking about the continued violence or threats of intimidation,

which is what you're saying. Your folks, the folks that you interviewed experienced, you know, just the fact that you say that these that this group of parents of color, black parents, brown parents needing to lean on the white allies in this group in order to go to a school board meeting. To me is terrifying. It's not great.

It's certainly not great. And you know, we also did those speak too many wonderful educators or parents that are white that like really want this diversity education in their schools. They either want that for their students, and they want their students of color to be seen in the stories and the books that are in their libraries and in the history of the country, and they want their you know, white kids to know about the history of the country

and to be more responsible moving forward. So there is a strong presence of ally ship, especially amongst people involved in education, but we do need to work on making these spaces safer, and that certainly has not been the

case recently. And I think that what we're seeing even more so as I spoke to the co founder of Moms for Liberty, which is one of the nationwide groups that's really pushing a lot of these book bands, and she is a very strong willed and very animated about you know, getting these books out of schools, getting CRT out of schools, and doesn't seem to see that she is now essentially imposing her vision of parenting onto others, and that is I think illuminating, and I think that

there's also, you know, something to be said for the fact that, like, these spaces were made for her to operate in and not made for some of the other parents we spoke to. And unfortunately, some of the parents of color we spoke to, like they've taken their kids out of public school, and some of them who are in the education profession have left because it's just not

worth that. And that, to me was the real heartache, was to hear you know, this mom talk about how she's had to take her kid out of public school, and ultimately, almost every education professional I spoke to said, yeah, we think that this is that's the result of a long campaign to discredit public schools, to have people distrust teachers,

distrust their local school, distrust public education. And that has been a long time goal of the right, and with the Boogeyman CRT, they have really figured out how to do it. Yeah, I think and you know, I've said it many times on this show and other programs, which is that the goal here is to defund public education,

and they're not. It is not sufficient in the way that they have long been defunding education, which is by virtue of the fact of your parents' income and the taxes, the property taxes that they pay dictate how good or how bad your public school is. Right, that isn't enough

anymore for the far right. They want to ensure that these schools shutter all together, and only the elite, those that can pay for private education or independent schools, will be able to continue, you know, through their path to success, and that we will create a permanent underclass in this country,

one that is under educated. And you know, it is the upholders right, the workers for capitalism, like this is this is you know, and and and you know, because the one percent can exist without having other people's backs to stand on. And if everybody is allowed into college, if everyone is allowed the same kind of access in equity, well then people are going to want to strive out of their pre predescribed cast that they have been put

into in this country. We don't call it a cast system, but that's what it is, because the likelihood that you're able to move out of your parents economic status is reliant upon education right and access to that education. And you see that attacked from the court cases that are before the Supreme Court with regard to affirmative action, to student student loan debt relief, to now K through twelve. It's an attack on the entire system. It is. And

I will say two things to that. One, I believe in like two thousand and seven or two thousand and eight, it was acknowledged that in Texas the majority of students in public schools were students of color, and that is coincides exactly with the states divestment in public schools. So there absolutely continues to be a very present racial element

to all of this. The second thing I'll say is that one of our experts on the show, Charissa Lopez, who is the current political director for Texas Freedom Network, which is a progressive watchdog organization that like watches the Texas State Board of Education, she said to me, point blank, you know, if you want to influence with the next generation of people think politically, you start with what you

teach them in public school. And so not only is this about creating you know, a permanent working class or you know, enabling the one percent, it's also about creating a very pliable voter base, and that shouldn't be ignored in all of this either, like there is a class element, there is a race element, and then there is just a blatant political play to instill in people values that are going to be beneficial to, in this instance, the

Republican Party. One other point to that is that the Texas State Board of Education, I believe, in twenty ten changed textbooks from referring to the Constitution as a living constitution, which is how I remember learning about it in school, to an enduring constitution. She has a very different interpretation of that document, and they actually got the publisher of the textbook that coined the phrase living constitution to change

it to enduring constitution. And like how that immediately invokes these ideas of textualism, of originalism, of returning to this founding idea is completely different than how I grew up learning about it, which is that like, this is a document that is growing with us, that's changing with us.

That's like adapting to society that is meant to live, And like small things like that are really impactful for how a kid conceives of the nation, and it's going to be more willing to accept this idea of like, this is the way it was intended, this is the way it must be as opposed to why don't we reassess and grow and reflect the times? Yeah, because the point of the far right and the Republican Party isn't

to grow, It isn't to expand. It is to narrow, and it is to under educate and undermine our democracy with the quest for power. And what troubles me so much, and this is why I'm just so grateful for your podcast Teaching Texas is that more people need to be aware of what is going on. And it doesn't matter. And this is what I want to state for folks listening. It doesn't matter whether you have kids in the school systems or not, whether you are you know, childless like

I am. How our citizenry is being educated will impact and affect every single one of us, right, And that's the thing that is not mentioned. It's like, oh, well, I don't have a kid, so I can go about my business. No, you cannot. What they are doing now. It is an all out war and assault on our education system, which is an all out war and assault on our actual freedom and liberty. Grace. I want to thank you so much. Tell folks where they can find

Teaching Texas and connect. Absolutely, you can find Teaching Texas anywhere you listen to podcasts, So wherever you're listening to this wonderful show, you can also search for Teaching Texas and find us there. It's an eight episode series for out Weekly. We span many decades of history. It ranges from fun archival tape to really zany characters who are still alive in working today, to really inspiring people who are in education, and to really dangerous folks who are

also trying to manipulate this system. And it's all coming to a head this mid terms with the Texas State Board of Education once again assessing social study standards for the state and therefore for the country. And so it's a really it's an important story. It's a vibrant story, and I really hope people give it a shot. So thank you so much for having me on to talk about it. Thank you for joining us, and I hope to have you back. Thank you, Grace, And again, this

show is Teaching Texas folks, so get into it. Appreciate you, thank you. That is it for me today, Dear friends on Woke app as always power to the people and to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests

and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws, and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.