Who would have thought that education would be a threat to our existence? Certainly not me. Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s former Secretary of State, thinks that the most dangerous person in the World is the head of the of the Teacher’s Union. Mike Pompeo speaking at the Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership meeting on Nov. 18^th stated that that the most dangerous person in the world is the President of the American Federation of Teachers, President Randi Weingarten. Personally, I think that is a very surprising and dangerous statement. With all the violence and school shootings he puts a bull’s eye right on the backs of our Teachers. He attacks the teachers stating that they are teaching our children filth and not teaching them to read and write. Well Mike, let me set the record straight. Teachers do not write the text books or pick the curriculum that teachers have to follow in the classroom. Teachers do not establish the standards that they are busting their butts to try and reach. Those things are provided by Schools Boards and Administrations and in the case of standards the State and Federal Governments. The thing that I find interesting is here is a man that is speaking at a Jewish Leadership Convention and he is a member of the political party where some believe that there is two sides to the Holocaust and that schools should teach both sides. Talking about wanting to teach filth.

This anti-woke stuff is just getting ridiculous and at times dangerous. I had never heard of being “woke” until people began protesting the Civil War statutes that honored the so called “Heroes of the Confederacy”.  I grew up with that line of thinking. The thinking that the Confederacy was fighting for a noble cause and that the Confederacy was fighting for their way of life and economic survival. I had watched the movies like Gone with the Wind. It wasn’t until people began protesting the statutes of Robert E. Lee and the other so called Heroes of the South that I actually did a little of my own research. There was nothing noble about the Southern cause. It was fought to preserve a way of life that relied on slavery. It was fought to preserve an economic system built upon slavery. There was no noble cause so after discovering that you can call me “woke”. I spend a lot of time reading and researching what I write and the process can be eye opening. Yes, I like being “woke”. Being woke is not an insult to me. I will admit that some have carried it too far. My last blog a person called me out for calling the Puritans that landed at Plymouth Rock as Pilgrims. Was it that important to correct me when it really was not the emphasis of the posting? Calling them Puritans or Pilgrims would not have change the point that I was trying to make. People have to keep their arguments rational and not petty.

To me anti-woke means anti-truth. That is correct, a group that would rather believe in fairy tales than the truth that actual historians research and discover. Me, I would rather discover the truth. Does the truth change the great deeds that some men of committed? Yes it can but in many cases it can show that some of these men were not great at all like most of our so called Confederate Heroes. Sometimes it shows that great deeds are performed by flawed men. Just because the deed was performed by a flawed man does not make the deed any less great. When I learned as a child that there was no Santa did that end Christmas for me? When I learned the Easter Bunny was not real did I just bag this whole Easter thing? I think not. Learning the truth is not a bad thing.

People don’t want teachers to teach what today’s historians are writing. They claim that teachers are trying to rewrite history. They claim people with their woke agenda are trying to rewrite history. Is history getting rewritten? I sure as hell hope so. I hope the search for the truth is always rewriting history. I hope that children will learn how to research things so they can always find the truth. Maybe the real problem is the adults that stop searching for the truth. As far as teaching tolerance and diversity they really don’t have a lot of time to deal with that. They are mostly trying to just keep peace in the classrooms. Children see the prejudice of the World around them and they bring those attitudes to the classroom. Sometimes they are just questions and sometimes they are in the form of bullying. Someone one tell me how a teacher should deal with these problem differently. Demanding tolerance in the classroom is the only solution.

Pompeo like most politicians don’t want to deal with the real problem with education. The real problem is the deterioration  of the American home and that is as much of an economic issue as it is an educational issue and the deterioration of the middle class. Education has to start at home. That old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. The same is true in education. Just because you build the schools doesn’t mean the children are going to learn. Education has to start at home and without out that the job of education is just that much harder. Then you have politicians demonizing teachers and our whole educational system makes the job of a teacher that much harder. Tearing apart our educational system so you can get votes feeding people’s racism and bigotry is never going to be a successful way of educating children.