Complying in Advance: The enemy inside

Strategies for the conflict averse educator

We know that a flurry or executive orders have come out of the white house since January 20th and each one will affect the American public in a different way. I want to talk about education because that’s where I work. The new Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling executive order is already sending shockwaves throughout schools and libraries across the nation. Everyone is bound to react because there is a threat of reduced funding, but is telling how people are reacting. But let’s talk about what’s in the order.

“Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;

Unifying? History is either accurate or inaccurate. Something happened or it didn’t happen. There were 4,743 lynchings in America from 1882-1968. So what happened in 1968? The Civil Rights Act was passed. A key provision of which institutes federal prosecution for hate crimes. How are you going to talk about the massive changes in this country as it pertains to hate crimes if you can’t talk about who is hating who, who is killing whom. And it is telling that there isn’t a focus on the multi-racial coalition that existed and continues to work for equality for all. If you feel guilty for what people did in the past, you’re focusing on the wrong people, or maybe you just agree with the wrong people.

There is the expected racial aspect of his order, but there is also the focus on gender and prohibition of the term ‘nonbinary’.

Donald Trump is not a politician, he’s a businessman and not a very good one given his multiple convictions for fraud, his bankruptcies and misusing charitable funds. His executive orders are being challenged left and right for being unconstitutional and yet some jump, rush, dare I say dive into the opportunity to comply.

Executive orders are not laws. Again, an executive order is not a law, it is a directive to make sure that laws are executed. You would think educators would either know that or take the time to find out.

Imagine my surprise when I hear that there are librarians, my people, pulling books from the shelves. Tearfully, pulling books from the shelves. With heavy hearts PULLING BOOKS FROM THE SHELVES.

No one has threatened them. No one has brought them to the school board. No one has sent a personal email. They chose to shake their heads and follow along. We all need our jobs. I understand needing a paycheck, but there hasn’t even been enough time to have a faculty meeting about the news before you decided to lay down and let fascism win. You didn’t even put a fight.

Are you going to let DJT erase accurate history? Are you going to let all the joy and pain and prose on your bookshelves get stuffed in a box to be replaced by the Left Behind series?

We’re living in scary times but you have to at least TRY to resist. Here are a few ways people have resisted oppression in the past.

Delay

Don’t do anything unless an authority figure you have a personal relationship tells you to do something. These orders are paper and bluff. They have to be tested and right now they haven’t been. If you really care for your kids you can wait. Don’t take down your pride flag if you have one unless someone personally tells you to. Don’t remove a single book. Don’t change a single display or alter any existing school event.

Distract

So you’re feeling like you can’t be open about your support. Fine. Hide in plain sight. Weave in your queer focused books into existing displays, which is what really should have been done in the first place. Your Black History Month display is getting push back? Put up a big American flag and put out all your Obama books, your Kennedy and the Civil Rights books, your FDR and the Double Victory books.

Dumb Down

Be as dumb as the order. Suddenly you don’t know what executive orders are, there are so many. You’ve been swamped with all kinds of work you didn’t have time to comb through your collection. Challenge, what challenge? My email inbox is overflowing.

Please remember that subtle compliance is how it starts, it’s how you get from these people are bad to these people have to be eliminated. You’ve read the books, you know where this will go. Do you want to help it along or do you want to throw sand in it’s gears?

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