Donald Trump and those on the political Right have rode into town on their high horses brandishing their right, so they say, to change America’s school curricula.  Oklahoma’s State Superintendent, Ryan Walters, has claimed that President Joe Biden, teachers unions and “their enablers” have pushed the Bible out of schools. “I’m proud to bring it back,” Walters has said, according to the Oklahoma Voice.

In Florida, Politico reported, Governor DeSantis has “rolled back higher education diversity programs, engaged in a high-profile feud with the College Board over its African American studies course and worked with other Republicans to reshape higher education in Florida by installing key allies in statewide posts.” “Because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke,” DeSantis said.

In Texas, according to Spectrum News 1, the State Board of Education was recently told by that State’s Attorney General Office, that “U.S. Supreme Court precedent allows for the bible and religion to be taught in public schools in a non-proselytizing way.”

The Right is rallying around a bigoted and arrogant self-professed guru on all things educational, Dennis Prager. In one video, he role-plays the voice of his ideal public school principal saying to the students on the first day of school, “If you want to claim an ethnic identity as a student here, other than American, go attend some other school.”

Collectively, the Right wants to whitewash American history by deleting or banning all Black History classes because, as they widely tout, they make students feel “guilty” about being American. The problem is, if you spend any amount of time carefully listening to most of these advocates, their ignorance of both American history and educational practice, is shockingly obvious, and their racism, almost always, painfully apparent.

A recent poll asked the question, Should American schools should teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum? The survey completed by 2,313 people revealed the following results:

Yes…………….29%

No………………57%

No opinion…..14%

To many, the term “Arabic Numerals” sounds foreign and threatening. I suppose then it would make sense that the term would stoke fear in the American Heartland. School Boards throughout the country will no doubt be adding a discussion of a response to this threat to agendas at their board meetings. “Arabic Numerals” are, of course, the numbers we all currently use in all our schools, the digits 0-9. The numbers are called “Arabic Numerals” because they came to Europe via the Arabic, or some offer, alternatively, the Indian, world.

Debates are certainly in order. But that’s just it, how can we have a reasonable debate about how to teach our children well, when the Ryan Walters, Ron DeSantis’ and Dennis Pragers of the world, hold advanced degrees in fear, loathing and racism?