As someone who has substituted in Newburyport now over 200 times, I can say the teachers are among the finest I have ever seen. I have seen this both at the middle school and the high school.
Peter Hill’s history class is a joy to be in. If you want to learn physics, watch Ken Cole teach. Take a look at what his students write about him. Lori Solazo is right on top of her math class and Carol Stuart is always helping those students in academic need. I have subbed in nearly every classroom at the high school.
Mike Testa, the assistant principal at the high school, is on top of his game and has his students interests at heart. At the Nock Middle School, children are no less engaged and polite with a high-energy thoughtful principal Nick Markos. I would have no second thoughts about having my own children here.
The students are among the brightest, fun loving, most polite, and well mannered I have come across and and I have substituted well over 600 times up and down the Merrimack Valley.
But they are at it again. They go by innocuous names like Parents Taking Responsibility or Freedom For All or Moms For Liberty or the latest iteration, Citizens for Responsible Education. They have one goal and it isn’t about teaching students to analyze, synthesize or evaluate various points of view.
The Elks should be ashamed for renting their hall to a group such as thus which demonstrates an ignorance of what these people are up to or, worse yet, they hold similar distasteful views.
Their goal? Sow distrust of public education. Paint teachers are predators. Whitewash history. Ban books that reference slavery, antisemitism, sexual orientation.
People leading these groups from Florida to Tennessee to Oklahoma, are all states far behind the curve in health care, education and medical care, all red, and home to the to January 6 insurrectionists. Their schools have the lowest paid teachers in the country. Students from these states score lowest. Health care is lacking. Antisemitism is rising. White Christian Nationalist want our public schools embracing their brand of politics and religion. When they cannot get their way, they bully and threaten not unlike the tactics used by ignorant similar groups.
Charlatans with rock solid white Christian nationalist bona fides disrupt school board meetings and threaten elected officials. They are bringing their brand of noneducation to Newburyport.
Opposed to classical forms of education like Shakespeare, Chaucer, the study of Latin and Greek, they bluster and bully their way along.
Failing test scores are teachers’ fault.
Behavioral problems are because of indoctrination not poor parenting.
They claim to want pornography eliminated in public schools. Perhaps we should take the Bible out of schools which describes all sorts of sexual practices from incest to prostitution and is filled with violence. The same for European literature like Kafka, Mann, Russian authors like Dostoyevsky, Britist authors like Orwell.
Targeting Greek tragedies, women’s literature, books examining persecution of marginalized groups (lesbian, gay, Asian, Muslim), theirs is a degenerative aim.
Shakespearean plays describe in the most beautiful language the human condition in its most comedic and tragic forms. Few of these people have any knowledge of world history or world literature and probably could not name three non-English speaking authors. Few could name the books on an honors reading list.
Public education is one of America’s triumphs. For we try to teach everyone. It is often our failing. But it is also our success. We reach down to uplift and empower everyone. Not so with the angry, entitled driven book banners.
The history of the United States is mired in both triumph and tragedy: the removal and persecution of Native Americans in the 1820’s, anti Chinese laws in the 1880’s, the Red Scare of the 1920’s, relocation of Japanese in World War II, and current violence against Jews and Muslims resurfacing.
But we are also the country that stopped Nazism, the last book banners, the country the endured a civil war and emerged stronger, the country that made public education free, the country that passed a civil rights act, and a country that stopped violent insurrectionists on January 6 who wanted to destroy our institutions.
We have a history of bad often bullying good to get its way. The book banners have seized upon their perceived failings of teachers and education in general to forge their agenda and bully those with false claims.
Keep the book banners from banning our minds. Not in Newburyport.
Not anywhere.
Michael Veves is a retired teacher who has substituted hundreds of times in Newburyport.