Facts Are The Cornerstone
We are in one of those peculiar times in America where lie is truth and truth is banned.
Yet facts are facts, so if you are teaching math, 2+2 must always equal 4. There is no alternate mathematics that would ever make it 5. If you’re reading Shakespeare in class, the story line is the story line. The same would be said for teaching the Battle of Bunker Hill…the facts are the facts.
The problems with our educational system and political meddling in how to interpret what happened is at the heart of the disputes when it comes to CRT and the idiocy of what the Florida legislature wants to pass regarding not teaching anything that makes people uncomfortable.
It was only several short years ago when the Trump White House began with making the size of his inaugural crowds be exaggerated on Day One so that the president could claim larger ones than Obama. In defending the lie, Kellyanne Conway used the term alternate facts to explain the untruth.
Facts are facts and sometimes they are unpleasant to face. But they must be told unvarnished so that we can understand our pasts to have a better future. Schools are the cradle of how we move forward.
As students become older, they can take the facts learned and then begin interpreting them. But facts are neither liberal nor conservative, Democrat or Republican. They are just truths.
Schools and libraries are where those truths should be taught and available for access by all of us. There will be interpretation of those facts in books, and by reading them, they will help each form our own interpretations.
We cannot make believe that the institution of slavery has had no effect on the problems our country still has. Slavery is America’s original sin. It is intertwined with every aspect of our nation. To not study the history is idiotic.
How do you expel racism or antisemitism without understanding it? 160 years after emancipation and 80 years after the holocaust, there are still segments of our society and throughout the world that are both racist and antisemites. Only through exposure can we outgrow these atrocities.
We should not be afraid of different ideas. There is no book that should be censored nor fact that should be shunned. Let our generation be the last to think that crushing ideas will result in anything more than a fact of history.
