A public charter school in Utah sparked controversy over the weekend after announcing that students’ parents can ‘exercise their civil rights’ and withdraw their children from the curriculum offered at the school. Now, after widespread setbacks, it is reversing this decision.
“We regret that a sign-off form was sent after receiving requests regarding activities planned during this month’s celebration,” Maria Montessori Academy Director Micah Hirokawa told Yahoo News in an email on Monday. “We are grateful that families who initially had questions and concerns willingly came to the table to resolve the differences. At this time, no families are choosing their planned activities, and we have removed this option.”
Hirokawa initially announced the option to resign on North Ogden School’s private Facebook page on Friday, saying he had “reluctantly” sent a letter to parents giving them the choice to take their children to school. Black History Month curriculum to participate or not. The director said the decision was led by ‘a few families’ who asked not to take part in the month’s assignment but did not provide further details on how many families asked or why they requested it.
Local leaders overturned the school’s decision to give parents the option.
“I strongly believe we can not learn American history without learning black history,” U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican with North Ogden, said in a statement last weekend. “It is crucial to accept our shared history.”
“It’s just part of the problem,” said Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell. tweeted after I saw the story. ‘Racism is taught. And the fact that children are told by their own parents that they should not learn about black history and black excellence is sick and sad !! ”
Maria Montessori Academy, about 45 miles outside of Salt Lake City, serves elementary and middle school students. Of the 322 students, only three are black, with white students making up about 70 percent of the school’s population, according to the Utah State Board of Education. According to the census data, the community of North Ogden is more than 94 percent white.
Despite the school’s decision to teach black students to all of its students, the first step in making education optional is problematic for many critics.
“The history of black people in America is American history, period,” Robert Sanders, chairman of the National Security Department at the University of New Haven, told Yahoo News in a telephone interview. “When you talk about America, black people should be put in it. People of color were here before Europeans were here and have since participated in every movement and moment. ”
“The Capitol was built by black Americans,” Sanders added. ‘The streets around the Capitol were designed by a black man, Benjamin Banneker. Officer Eugene Goodman, the officer who rescued the Capitol a few weeks back, was a black man. … How much more American history do you need to understand that American history is black history? ‘
Black people have made a contribution to America since being abducted from their native African villages and forcibly transferred to slaves as slaves dating back to 1619. Millions of enslaved Africans were brought to America and sold to colonists to cultivate land and others work, as in the New York Times’ “1619 Project.”
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a Movement for Black Lives activist and co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, said it was unthinkable to think that black history would not be a compulsory part of every curriculum, and yet the move of the school is not for her ‘ shocking ‘and reflects the white supremacy.
“We know that the real practice of white supremacy is to separate us from the legacy of radical resistance,” Henderson said. ‘It’s to remove us from the fact that we are fulfilling knowing that people have been fighting for us for generations and doing so successfully.
“The white power movement or the attempt to operationalize anti-black racism through curricula or through legislation is alive,” she added. ‘It does not mean that their movements win. What this means is that we may build movements for black liberation, but also that white supremacist patriarchal violence is at stake by people holding on to the last remnants of those systems. ”
More than two centuries of slavery, ending in December 1865, gave way to legitimate Jim Crow laws that lasted from 1865 to 1965, leaving a legacy of current racial discrimination.
Yet, despite these policies, black people still contributed to the country’s achievements. In addition to a black man holding the highest office in the country as president, black Americans have been behind a number of important inventions over the past two centuries, ranging from an improved telegraph system to the lawn mower.
Yet over the years a number of attempts have been made to marginalize the achievements and re-imagine American history. In 1894, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded 30 years after the Civil War, formed a southern white women’s group “legacy” with the aim of turning the war’s military defeat for the South into a political and cultural triumph. The group published books that spoke with love about the Ku Klux Klan, and the women traveled all over the country to influence the education of white American children by surrounding them with Confederate images in schools.
“They had a multiple approach to doing this,” historian Karen Cox said in a 2018 interview with Salon. “It involved going to schools and putting up battle flags and portraits of generals. This meant that schools had to be renamed for famous confederates. ”
As early as August 2018, the group’s website contained a line that read: ‘Slaves were mostly faithful and devoted. Most slaves were usually ready and willing to serve their masters. ”
The organization also strongly influenced textbooks in the South from the post-Civil War era to the mid-20th century by drawing up curricula for public schools to teach history based on the Lost Cause, which is a ‘false version of the “American history was developed in response to Reconstruction, which minimized the central role of slavery in the civil war,” according to Facing South magazine.
Today, the reimagining of history still takes place. During President Trump’s last days in office, he released the “1776 Commission,” a 40-page document that sought to “restore understanding of the greatness of the American foundation.” The report was compiled by a commission of 18 people made up of mostly white conservative male educators who did not include any historians. The document sought to defend the American role in slavery by saying that it was not a ‘unique American evil’.
“The unfortunate fact is that the institution of slavery throughout human history was more the rule than the exception,” the report reads.
On his first day in office, President Biden recalled the 1776 Commission and filed the report while his second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris, the first black woman to hold the vice presidency, stood beside him.
Karen A. Johnson, an associate professor of education at the University of Utah, said the Trump commission is an example of a “historical problem” in discounting black contributions to America.
“The aim of the 1619 project is to bring the margins to the center, [which includes] the story of slavery in this country by centering the contributions of black Americans, ”Johnson told Yahoo News. “The purpose of the 1776 commission is to center the history of black people and slavery and to center white supremacy at its core.
‘The Maria Montessori Academy is just a reflection of the fact that there is a segment of white [people] in this country that wants to hold on to the idea of white privilege, white nationalism and white supremacy, ”she added. “I argue that the desire of the parents at Maria Montessori to exclude black history classes is a desire to hold on to white supremacy.”
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr acknowledged in response to school news that his own training was “whitewashed” and said he blamed it for “why racism persists in America.”
“Reconciling our original sin and teaching our children the violent truth of racism in America is the only way we can continue to become a stronger, more just, and compassionate society.” Kerr tweeted Sunday. “I was never taught about atrocities like Black Wall St, Rosewood or Opelousas, etc. For white Americans, it is shamefully difficult to face the past, but ignoring our past embodies shamelessness.”
It remains unclear whether Maria Montessori Academy has the legal status to allow students to use a core curriculum. Under Utah law, public school students can be exempted from teaching that violates their religious beliefs, or ‘the right of conscience,’ but students cannot be exempted from their social sciences curriculum.
Henderson, of the Highlander Center, believes it’s time for white people who believe in black humanity to put their words into practice.
“This is an opportunity for white people who believe that black lives are important to rise up in defense of black lives and solidarity with people like ‘enough is enough,'” she said. ‘Say’ it’s not OK. You have no American history without black people. ‘”
Cover Thumbnail Illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Ben Dorger / Standard Examiner via AP, Central Press / Getty Images, Paul Schutzer / The Life Picture Collection via Getty Images, Santi Visalli / Archive Photos / Getty Images
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