"The author was 12 when these things happened to him. Such things happen to 12 year olds..."

[kpete]

[Girard442]

1. Bravo!

[erronis]

2. I remember reading the repuglicon strategy to take over local organizations

PTAs, school boards, etc.

I think it was back in the 80s and I thought "how quaint."

Now I realize that they were planning all along to change/destroy public education in the US.

Good for that 6th grade teacher. I hope her resolve can be matched around this country.

[AllaN01Bear]

5. my late mom felt that the rs owned the white house , the congress,

the state house . and they came up thru all sorts of ways even the local dog catcher if they had one .

[usaf-vet]

7. In the late 1980s Iwas elected to the local school board. We were expected to attend "new"....

.... school board members training. In one break-out session, we were told that on a national level, there was a long-range plan to take over school boards, PTAs, local councils, and all state-level elected offices possible.

This is precisely what they have done. At the local level, on the board that I sat on for two elected terms, their first target was sex education. It took them time to make it happen, but in the end, they won.

Since the early 1990s, ignorance has been the lesson of the day.

[OldBaldy1701E]

18. Yep! (n/t)

[CrispyQ]

22. They are using the same plan to take over positions of influence in our electoral process.

It's insidious & our side has been slow to respond. Even now, I'm not sure the old guard dems recognize the magnitude of threat that the entire Republican Party establishment has become.

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." ~Karl Rove

[jaxexpat]

27. What was the response from the board members? Did they just take it?

Or was the energetic blather from the right so incomprehensible that people simply gave up arguing with them. I've often wondered if the mania of the right is the key to their successes. That's a pretty wild concept, really, when you examine the mechanics of it. That the very thing which reveals persons as dismissably sociopathic is the fuel which they use to stay their course, the energy to tear down social contracts, such as schools and rendering the school system non-functional.
It's a force hard to beat, even absolutely unbeatable if civility is held as a prerequisite to legitimize the cause of those aligning themselves to stop the radicalism. In other words, I don't think "civilized" folk are up to the task of taking down these scumbags.

[usaf-vet]

31. Great question. I'll admit the meeting to meeting happenings are a bit foggy after 30 years but..

... here is what I would say.

1. the reason it took a good deal of time for them to "water down" the sex education classes was that we were dealing with another high-level issue simultaneously.

We were trying to build a new elementary school to replace three post-WW II buildings. So lots of effort was expended by both sided pros and cons of building a new school.

2. Over several elections, we lost board members for many reasons. Some were exhausted with the new school issue (BTW, which passed via a binding referendum). Some had served for years and chose not to run. Some were replaced by new board members who the anti-sex education group supported.

3. We lost the female biology teacher who taught sex-ed to another school district when the family moved.

4. in our favor, we had half the board members who had college degrees and believed in science and data.

5. In the end, their long-term persistence and lobbying of individual board members who were "on the fence."
They managed to kill a meaningful sex-ed class based on facts and science to a class taught by a female coach with a degree in PhyEd.

[jaxexpat]

32. I get it. Atrophy.

My mother retired from teaching as soon as she was eligible for the pension. She told me it was underinformed and proudly uneducated parents who drove her from her elementary teaching career. She just felt useless and impotent to push back against the flow. That, however was 1981 and she was a Lincoln Republican, so it's hard to say what Jimmy Carter did to piss her off.

[HUAJIAO]

9. Very early 80s reagun... and even before..

[IronLionZion]

11. Most Republican politicians send their own kids to private schools

and that's the case throughout America for Republicans with money. They want to screw over families who depend on public schools.

[albacore]

34. And those Repub parents don't want sex ed... but they can afford "vacations" for a semester....

..when little Suzie gets knocked up.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

16. Pat Robertson set up a PAC to fund school board campaigns...

... I recall clearly that the Christian Coalition PAC would make, "donations", to selected, ie... fundy/right wing candidates for local school boards. Usually about $2,000 or less, depending on how much mailing and advertising/posters had to be purchased for the school board campaign by their selected candidate for name recognition.

Ralph Reed was in on it, too. He was in on much of the RNC hijinx of the early 90's.

[jaxexpat]

28. You recall correctly. A drib here, a drab there and pretty soon you got a silent insurrection.......

from that "silent majority", no less. The same "majority", I think, who Henrik Ibsen warned about in his short play "An Enemy of the People", the conclusion of which was embodied in the protagonist's final lines, "the majority is never right unless it does right".

[niyad]

3. Brava!!!

[AllaN01Bear]

4. pox the harper valley pta. doing her job:)

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Dedicated to his parents, sister and grandparents who disappeared into the night.

https://www.acpsd.net/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=69275&dataid=142567&FileName=Elie%20Wiesel%20%20Night%20FULL%20TEXT.pdf

[NJCher]

12. thanks for the link, kidberwyn

One of the hardest books I ever read was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. It's about how he maintained hope while in the Nazi concentration camps.

I read the book in 1981. I see there is now a young adult version.

[spanone]

8. K&R

[NJCher]

10. you go, Mrs. Gussky

Teach that book.

It's hard to teach kids about this kind of ugliness. Even in my capacity as an educator on nutrition, I see how incredulous elementary age kids are when I tell them about, for example, why they should not by Chinese garlic.

It's so hard for them to understand that someone would intentionally harm them--for profit or just from pure evilness.

[wnylib]

13. When I was in 6th grade, the trial of Adolf Eichmann

was televised.

Our 6th grade teacher, following the school district curriculum, had been encouraging us to become more aware of current events through newspapers, TV, and radio. She set aside class time for us to say what we had read or heard.

One boy mentioned the Eichmann trial. The teacher immediately cut him off and said, "We don't talk about such things here."

So naturally I wanted to know more about it. This was a neighborhood city school, so we went home for lunch each day. When I got home, my mother and her aunt, an immigrant from Germany (long before WWII), who lived with us, were watching TV. I saw Eichmann inside his glass booth before they noticed that I was there. They sent me to the kitchen and refused to let me watch. They said that it was inappropriate for children.

But after school, I slipped away with the newspaper and read about it.

[riverbendviewgal]

25. I read about and watched the Eichmann trial

I was in 8th grade. Luckily my parents didn't stop me. They were too busy with their lives. Shopping and watching sports. The trial made a profound effect on me. The photos of what the nazis did are still embedded in my mind. Like the lampshades made with jewish children's skin.

It made me think so differently than my parents and brothers. It made me totally anti racist and anti fascist. It was the beginning of my progressive beliefs. Also seeing the film On The Beach made me more aware of what war could do

My family are all trumpers.

[wnylib]

26. My parents were Dems, and not racist or anti Semitic,

but they thought it was too gruesome for children to hear about.

I read On The Beach when I was in 8th grade, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was not a class assignment, just a paperback that I saw in a drugstore and bought with my allowance.

I also read the Diary of Anne Frank, which I got at the junior high school library after seeing the film on TV. I'm not sure where my mother was when I watched it, but I do remember that she was not there, and my father worked second shift at that time. My live-in aunt had gone to a nursing home by then.

[riverbendviewgal]

29. Your parents cared about you

They are Democratics.. Yes, . I read Anne Frank too.
The library was my second home. Loved history and geography, current events. My mother told me I was weird because I loved reading.

My mother was a female Trump.

[wnylib]

35. My father taught me phonetics and a few

printed words before I started kindergarten. Then I built up my reading vocabulary from there, asking meanings for words that I could sound out but had not heard before. So I became an avid reader.

My older brother tried to stump me by giving me words to spell that had silent letters, like "knife." But my mother clued me in by pronouncing the "k."

There were times, though, when my mother said that too much reading time was not good and sent me outdoors to play or distracted me with something else.

[riverbendviewgal]

41. You were fortunate

To have caring parents.

[BobTheSubgenius]

14. "I know! Let's have a good old-fashioned book-burning."

"We'll march around the bonfire, sing rousing songs and make a night of it."

[jaxexpat]

30. ......we could all become very merry, very tired, riding back and forth on the Stygian ferry*.

*apologies to E. St. V. Millay (sorry Edna)

Or the last train to Clarksville. Obviously, with apologies to M. Dolenz.

[BobTheSubgenius]

38. Nice!

[world wide wally]

15. "We love the undereducated": DJ Trump 2016

[Jetheels]

17. I read that book, but when I was around 40. Highly recommend it.

I’m not sure it would be appropriate for a 12 year old tbh.
Has any one read it that is commenting?

[Quakerfriend]

20. I read it when I was in my 40's.

It might shatter the innocence of a 12 year old but,
they would learn about man’s inhumanity to man at some point.

[OldBaldy1701E]

19. Hear Hear!

[70sEraVet]

21. Mr. Weisel would have been proud of that teacher.

[Ziggysmom]

23. The PTA knobs don't want their precious spawn reading this book, they say it is too

violent. Then the kid wanders off to their bedroom to play World of Warcraft online. I call repube hypocrisy bullshit!

[alphafemale]

24. remember the movie "Carrie" and how religio insane her mother was?

That is not far from reality for some kids

Someone needs to be there to tell young girls by as early as 8 that this is going to happen.
And she is not dying or cursed.

Someone needs to tell young boys entering puberty that they are going to have odd ball sex dreams and get erections in a stiff (heh) breeze. But that is perfectly natural. They are not bad or cursed for thoughts. Just don't act on them.

[BlackSkimmer]

33. I remember reading that book at an older age than 12.

Horrific. All of Wiesel's books should be required reading.

I doubt I could read them again now though.

[trickyguy]

36. "Night" is an excellent book with a big lesson in it.

I re-read it from time-to time it's that good.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

39. And those things happened to children much younger than 12.

Just as slavery happened to children.

[ancianita]

40. Now THAT is a professional. Teachers are the scholars of their communities, and

communities should not second guess them, but trust and respect their expertise.

[ymetca]

42. Sex education should be taught

around middle school, or puberty age, at least. It used to be. It was mainly about the "plumbing", and "here's how you'll look with uncontrolled syphilis", but it was something anyway.

Why is sex the one subject Thou Shalt Not Teach kids?

This lack of sex education, arguably, is what makes so many of us monsters toward each other. All the anguish in life starts right there.

Lately Republicans appear more interested in being "groomed" than most, which is clear evidence of their paltry education in the subject!

[Ziggysmom]

43. Most of these things ARE HAPPENING right now to children in Ukraine. Are parents unplugging

their children from all news sources? I think NOT!