Paul Cantrell
Such a miserable story: an all white-school board forces a teacher to remove a Pride flag and a Puerto Rican flag from a classroom.
The teacher, one of the few Latine teachers in a 2/3 Latine district, resigns.
“Schools are a neutral place” explains the superintendent.
And tearing down those flags is neutral?!
https://sahanjournal.com/education/worthington-school-board-votes-remove-lgbtq-puerto-rican-flags/
1/
Paul Cantrell
The word “comfortable” is doing a whole lot of work in public debate about schools these days. And it’s true, education is •full• of discomfort:
Students get uncomfortable when learning a an unfamiliar concept.
Students get uncomfortable when they become aware of problems in the world.
Students get uncomfortable when their assumptions are challenged.
Students get uncomfortable when they feel unsafe.
I don’t think the word “uncomfortable” means the same thing in all those sentences.
2/
Paul Cantrell
As an educator, I’m told — by the same people! — that:
(1) Because of politics, students are “coddled” now and get to speak their opinions in safe spaces without being challenged instead of having to face criticism, and this is a crisis
and
(2) Because of politics, students are uncomfortable to speak their opinions because of fear of being challenged instead of having safe spaces, and this is a crisis
3/
Paul Cantrell
(The apparent contradiction between those two statements vanishes when you realize that one applies to marginalized people and the other doesn’t.)
4/
Paul Cantrell
@antnisp Unlikely, and even less likely they care
Anton 🏳️🌈 🇬🇷Pappas (he/him)
@inthehands Do these people know that Puerto Rico is a US territory?
Paul Cantrell
Still, there’s a real tension here: it is my job as an educator both to make students •comfortable• and to make students •uncomfortable•. And by meaning too many different things at once, that word — “comfortable” — complicates the job.
Instead, try breaking comfort/discomfort along different axes:
- seen / unseen
- valued / unvaled
- safe / unsafe
- unchallenged / challenged
- frustrated / unfrustrated
etc.
5/
Paul Cantrell
As an educator, it’s my job to do my best to make sure that every student is seen, valued, and safe in school •so that it is possible• for them to be challenged, both intellectually, socially, and emotionally.
Flatten that out into that one word, and it’s my job to “make students comfortable so it it possible to be uncomfortable.” And that’s catchy — but it’s nonsense, because we’re not talking about a single dimension here!
6/
Paul Cantrell
That is, to me, a foundational premise of school: every student deserves to be seen, valued, and safe in school •so that it is possible• for them to be challenged, both intellectually, socially, and emotionally.
That’s our starting point. The only students who aren’t welcome in my classroom are the ones who don’t accept that premise (ht Karl Popper).
7/
Paul Cantrell
Back to the OP about the flags being torn down:
There is no “neutral” here. Obviously. This is a fight about who deserves to be seen, valued, and safe in school. Do Puerto Rican students in Worthington, MN deserve to be seen, valued, and safe? Do LGBTQIA students there deserve to be seen, valued, and safe?
Should the schools honor people who will go to any lengths to make sure PR and LGBTQIA students are •not• seen? •not• valued? •not• safe?
There is no neutral position here.
8/
Paul Cantrell
“Just focus on the lesson!“ they cry. “Classrooms are for pedagogy, not politics!”
Oh honey. Oh my poor, dear little bigot muffin. Let me tell you about teaching students to code.
Coding is frustration. Learning to code is •very• frustrating. Nothing on this earth will make you feel as stupid as attempting to program a computer. It’s not you; it’s just the nature of the beast. It’s true for me, an expert of 4 decades; it’s true many times over for a beginner.
9/
Paul Cantrell
Dealing with frustration is one of the most important things I teach as a computer science professor. This is a discipline where “ARRRGH why does it not WORK” is your daily life. Figuring out how to work through that, how to be psychologically healthy with it, how to find •joy• in it, that’s important learning. Hard learning!
Hard enough for anyone.
But for a student who’s legitimately afraid that they’ll be hurt by one of their classmates at any moment?
9/
Paul Cantrell
I won’t attempt to describe what it is to be a queer or a Latino / Latina student in Worthington. I recommend that we all try to find and listen to some people who are, who can describe their own experience.
All I’ll say is that it’s impossible for me to imagine the kinds of things those students face on a daily basis wouldn’t harm their ability to face the frustration of coding, to “just focus on the lesson.”
Come on. Get real. Have you ever met a human being?
10/
Paul Cantrell
@MarleyandMe Worthington, MN
Taya Nielsen
@inthehands Worthington or Thomas Worthington High?
Paul Cantrell
To “just focus on the lesson,” you •have• to focus first and always on the human beings in front of you. That’s most of teaching, honestly: ••seeing students and meeting them where they’re at••. That’s it. That’s the work.
11/
Paul Cantrell
The school board of Worthington, MN says “no, you can’t do that work. Whatever harms your students bring into the classroom, you can’t counteract them in any way that visibly diverges from local norms, that makes anything visible that the people in power here aren’t used to seeing..”
They haven’t taken a neutral position. They’ve taken a •default• position.
The default settings are never neutral.
12/
Paul Cantrell
I’m not expecting to change the mind of anyone on the Worthington School Board. Their actions have a directly, obviously racist and anti-queer impact. I can’t know for sure whether that’s conscious intent on each of their parts, and I don’t think it matters. The response to people like that isn’t reasoning; it’s organizing. Give ‘em hell, Worthington.
13/
Paul Cantrell
In this thread, I’m speaking instead to people who are maybe a degree or two removed from the schools, or maybe in the thick of them, truly wishing to find the good choices here, and honestly tangled up in knots by these tarpit words: “neutral,” “comfortable.”
Neither of those words means exactly what you think it means. Neither means just one thing. Neither is unidimensional. Neither is free of hidden baggage.
If you can sift through all that, it’s not as intractable as it seems.
/end
Paul Cantrell
@nicklockwood Oh, 95% parents, I’m sure, but we parents love to talk in terms of what students are feeling.
Nick Lockwood
@inthehands how much of this is actually *students* feeling uncomfortable vs their parents?
Paul Cantrell
@fishidwardrobe Yup, you correctly guessed where the thread was going
Fish Id Wardrobe
@inthehands By "neutral", of course, they mean "white". White is the default. Everything else is non-standard and political.
Paul Cantrell
@geonz True! And tbh that’s a legitimate problem, more legitimate than some of the things these spitball-throwers are whinging about
cognitively accessible math
@inthehands LOL they're also uncomfortable if the room is too hot.
Paul Cantrell
@geonz I’d certainly be curious to see what that looks like.
cognitively accessible math
@inthehands Right. I really, really want to put together the Howard Zinn style education community with a ton of actual reading and math learning :P
Paul Cantrell
@kevinrns Reading the article, I would venture that the teacher’s resignation served a very similar thumb-in-the-eye function.
Kevin Russell
Explaining to the class why the racist school board needs to bully children and employees, multiple times. I would take the order to remove the flags as a performance, and do it daily.
"It's time to obey the bullies! Lets take down our flags. Remember kids self -government is an "all the time forever job" - as soon as tyrants are allowed into power, your only job, your duty, is to remove them."
Paul Cantrell
@kevinrns
I’m not a betting person, but if I were, I’d bet good money that that teacher just turbo-charged a new generation of activists in that school
Kevin Russell
Except for the kids.
Its not a criticism, I'm not criticizing a stranger with a handful of facts. I dont know his life, or any other circumstance of the situation, I'm just erupting at the racists elected to school board. Just giggling joyfully at the kids response.
Paul Cantrell
@failedLyndonLaRouchite
Re the tail end of my thread, Worthington needs organizers right now
OddOpinions5
Voting matters
Getting registered to vote matter
or so I infer
Paul Cantrell
@montyoblivion Yes, and
School are practical tools, a place to help students functions in the world
Schools are radicalization engines, nurseries for contrary and bold ideas
Schools are havens, islands of safety apart from the abuses of home or community
In different places, different moments, different people — all these things. And all of them are always, everywhere in a tag-of-war. There is no neutral position in that tug-of-war.
montyoblivion
@inthehands Anyone who has been to a school knows it is not a “neutral place.” It is a right wing institution created simply to kill the individual mind and morph people into obedient patriotic citizens, and those it can’t control are stamped with a label and provided a pipeline directly to prison. One of my favorite lines I was told was “as soon as you step onto campus you have no rights.” They got us out here believing that children are not equals, and are not guaranteed rights. Then forcing their niche lifestyle on children (get up early, sit in a government institution all day long so that someone else can make money off you, go home, but don’t get too comfortable, you still have to do homework, and don’t hen go to bed by a certain time so you can do it again the next day).
Paul Cantrell
@chapulin_enojado
Me gusto!
Chapulín Enojado
@inthehands
Qué bonita bandera,
Qué bonita bandera,
Qué bonita bandera,
Es la bandera puertorriqueña.
Paul Cantrell
@Sibshops
That’s me, the itinerant grammar activist
Sibshops
@inthehands Unrelated, but I love seeing Latine in the wild. So much nicer than LatinX.
Paul Cantrell
@crumbs Yup, that quote was in the back of my mind as I wrote the thread
Crumbs the Cat
@inthehands this contradiction is summed up in the famous Frank Wilhoit quote:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.”
Paul Cantrell
@crumbs It’s a hell of a quote.
Garrett Wollman
@inthehands Stipulated that polysemy is a thing, but to what extent are the students socialized to understand that these different kinds of "discomfort" are not in fact the same phenomena?
Paul Cantrell
@wollman I’d venture that the students generally understand this better than their parents
Jen
@inthehands "seeing students and meeting them where they are."
This really speaks to me. I visit schools with STEM activities. I'm not a teacher, so I've had to learn on the fly how to teach. The key thing I've learned is that I have to meet them where they are.
You can't do that by ignoring, banning, or demonising key parts of who they are.
I'm now wondering what pin badges I should add to my lanyard to go alongside my bi and she/her ones.
Paul Cantrell
Related thread about people making a nonsensical effort (or so they claim) to opt out of politics, to be neutral in a situation where neutrality does not exist:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707573907442638
Paul Cantrell
@violetmadder I’m mean, it’s all the same because they’re all “them,” right? /s
violetmadder
Being Puerto Rican is too queer now??
Paul Cantrell
@JetlagJen So many paths up that mountain: a pin on the lanyard, a language shift, a thoughtful interaction, making time, making space, just listening, going to bat when it really counts…. Work, all of it, but so many good answers. And good to have different educators exploring all of them for all the different students!
Paul Cantrell
@futurebird I had the same thought about the other flags.
And yes, the details of the article make it heartbreakingly clear that the teacher knew exactly who he was helping, and so did the students.
myrmepropagandist
Is there a US flag or a Minnesota state flag? Those need to go too if they take down the Puerto Rican flag.
Don't blame the guy for leaving. Because really teachers don't just do this stuff, if there's a pride flag some kids wanted it and knew who'd help.
Animal Spirits
I hate it when someone demands that politics be removed from the classroom. Everything about education, who's in the class, what is being taught, and what resources the schools get, has always been inherently political.
They just don't want to have to justify why they don't like what's happening
Paul Cantrell
@animalspirits
“Remove politics” almost always means “remove somebody else’s politics so that only mine remains”
Paul Cantrell
@brokenix “Safe spaces,” like everything in education, like everything in tech, like everything in society, are not perfect realities. Instead, they are at best aspirational endeavors that undergo iterative improvement toward a goal or an ideal.
The important thing about safe spaces is the ongoing conscious effort to create safety — not some abstracted, inherently impossible perfect.
It’s improvement, doing the work, that counts.
brokenix
@inthehands one thing i learnt from my student days , is that safe space is as much an i illusion as an unconditionally inclusive society
so i d wager that the very dichotomy is false
Paul Cantrell
@Chigaze I don’t know the Utah Phillips normal / ordinary distinction of which you speak!
Paul Turnbull :CApride:
@inthehands I love this distinction and I love getting a word for something so obvious I’d never thought of it. I’m reminded of when I heard Utah Phillips distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’
montyoblivion
@inthehands I’ll just have to take your word for it. Everyone I know experienced nothing but trauma in school. I was beaten by the janitor, then suspended for it, and nobody believed me even though a hundred kids witnessed it and reported. So I’m not buying the rosy colored perspective of those prisons.
Paul Cantrell
@montyoblivion That is horrid. And yes, some schools — many schools — are hellholes. Conformance factories. Torture chambers.
No rosy colored glasses here.
My point — and it may be a hard one to hear, but it is true — is that different schools are very, very, very different from each other. Some of them are so cushy, or so truly nurturing, it’s impossible for those who only know that kind to imagine what you describe could be real.
Adrian Riskin 🇵🇸🍉
@inthehands @montyoblivion all of this would be marginally more convincing if students weren't required by law to attend under threat of police violence against them or their parents. Which benefits are so good that it's worth inflicting violence to force attendance?
Paul Cantrell
@AdrianRiskin The school where I teach does not enforce attendance.
The point of my post above is note that schools are Actually Very Nice. It is that different schools are very different from each other, and a lot of very different things happen within the same walls.
I’d venture that your ability to (correctly) identify mandatory attendance as being coupled to state violence comes from ideas that were developed in, among other places, schools.
Paul Cantrell
@failedLyndonLaRouchite
I…what
Is that first sentence gross ignorance or merely failed sarcasm?
OddOpinions5
@inthehands
also
public school teachers are grossly overpaid and barely work
and, at the same time
every public school district: we are having trouble hiring and retaining teachers
OddOpinions5
sorry
the 1st sentence is what right wingers say all the time - they are constantly going on about the evils of public school teacher unions, how the unions make it so the teachers are grossly overpaid and don't have to work
it is , afaik, almost a std GOP meme
Paul Cantrell
@failedLyndonLaRouchite
Ah, the train of thought makes sense now. Because it is as you say something that people really do say, the implicit mocking tone wasn’t clear. Gotcha now.
Paul Cantrell
@failedLyndonLaRouchite
Communication online (no tone of voice, near or total strangers, low trust) is just hard!
OddOpinions5
sorry, that was my fault for assuming
and if you have kids, you know what they say about when you assume:
it makes an ass of u and me
Paul Cantrell
@Uair
Send them a link to the first post and it will show the whole thread perfectly reasonably as a web page, even if they don’t have a Mastodon account:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111789225507625929
Poloniousmonk
That was pretty freaking awesome.
I'd like you to string it together in one piece and post somewhere. If you have the time.
I'd email it to an old teacher i know.
QueerInTheCountry
@inthehands Sounds like the school board is not only bringing politics in the classroom, but religion, which also comes with bigotry these days.
I don't even travel in the US any more, because it's not safe for LGBTQ people in a lot of the country.
Paul Cantrell
@QueerInTheCountry The situation here is indeed dire.
Court Cantrell prefers not to
@inthehands Thank you so much for this. Long story short, I have gone from being a person who thought politics was a stupid concept that didn't belong anywhere except in official government offices...to being a person who believes that absolutely every single thing we humans do & say and think is political. We can't escape it, and we shouldn't want to.
The moment we try to "take politics out of the classroom" or out of any other human arena, that's the moment when we have harmed the powerless.
Paul Cantrell
@courtcan Well said. Hat tip to a fellow Cantrell.
(Which way does your branch of the family say it: stress on the first syllable or the second? i.e. CAN-trəll or can-TRELL?)
Paul Cantrell
@courtcan Solidly CAN-trull, via Pennsylvania. Growing up in Colorado, most people assumed can-TRELL — and that’s how we recognized telemarketers on the phone!
I haven’t figured out what the geographic pattern is, if any.
Court Cantrell prefers not to
@inthehands Well, it's both, really! It's my husband's family. The relatives in eastern Oklahoma pronounce it CAN-trull. But Ed grew up in Denver saying it can-TRELL, even though his dad was from eastern Oklahoma. His siblings all say/said can-TRELL, but his brother has spent the last 30 years living in eastern Oklahoma and has acquired the CAN-trull pronunciation.
And every so often, if Ed is talking about the eastern Okies collectively, he'll say "CAN-trulls." 😆
How about yours?
Court Cantrell prefers not to
@inthehands I'm going to look up the ancestry records we have and see if this family branch has any Pennsylvania connections. If they do, it might explain why eastern Oklahoma is so similar!
Paul Cantrell
@courtcan I’d be curious to hear! My Cantrells came from Ireland, IIRC.
Court Cantrell prefers not to
@inthehands okay, near as I can tell, our Cantrells are descended from a Richard Cantril born in Blakewell, England, in 1630. But I'm not 100% sure somebody didn't fudge their research.
This Richard's grandson, Joseph, was born in Philadelphia!!! in 1695.
Joseph's son, Isaac, a reverend, was born in New Castle, PA, in 1729.
Isaac had two sons, Reuben & Charles, both born in NC.
My husband's line descends from Reuben.
Reuben's great-grandson, Noah, was born in AR in 1883.
Noah moved to OK.
Court Cantrell prefers not to
@inthehands At 26, Noah married Ethel, who was only 14. 🤢
Ethel gave birth to Clyde, my husband's grandfather, when she was 15. She died at age 20. 🫤
Noah remarried in 1914, his bride a woman who was 8 years older than his first wife.
Paul Cantrell
@courtcan My earliest known Cantrell ancestor of whom we’re confident is a Robert Cantrell who came to the US from Ireland in 1847. We know very little of him on the Irish side! I should look online and see if there’s new research since my Nana tracked him down in pre-internet days.
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