TX Public School Leader: Books on the Holocaust Should Be Balanced with 'Opposing' Views
It’s another day ending in “Y,” so there’s more upside-down, crazy stuff from the left.
As in — let’s all be Holocaust deniers.
That’s what Gina Peddy last week told Texas teachers in a school district near Fort Worth.
Peddy, an executive director of curriculum for Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, was training teachers on how to stock their classroom libraries in light of new legislation requiring schools to present varied viewpoints on controversial subjects, according to the Southlake podcast of NBC News Digital.
The details are contained in Texas Senate Bill 3, set to go into effect in December, and in House Bill 3979, which went into effect last month. The laws require the teaching of essentially traditional civics in Texas schools. They allow teachers to opt out of addressing controversial subjects, but if they choose controversy, they must present a balanced viewpoint.
That’s where Peddy decided that, somehow, the Holocaust is controversial. Peddy, in effect, said there’s more than one viewpoint to genocide.
“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said, as she was secretly recorded, with the recording given to NBC. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing … that has other perspectives.”
Right.
Does Peddy really believe there’s more than one viewpoint on whether or not the Holocaust was justified? Or was she just using a juvenile way to object to the new Texas legislation, which tempers indoctrination in topics like critical race theory? Education professionals are supposed to teach the children, not act like them.
Actually, there’s a backstory to Peddy’s nonsense. At the macro level, it’s about what’s going on nationwide in public schools — parents are realizing the indoctrination that is taking place and are objecting.
And the priests and priestesses of Big Education are responding by telling parents to butt out.
At a local level, in Southlake and elsewhere, some parents have been concerned about the school district’s elevation of diversity and inclusion teaching.
Texas law prohibits teaching that could make individuals feel “guilt or anguish,” regarding their race, according to NBC.
There has been concern about the teaching of CRT, and some Southlake teachers are incensed that the school board voted to reprimand a fourth-grade teacher who had in her classroom a book on “anti-racism.”
(For those having trouble keeping up, you can consider the term anti-racism to be as against racist attitudes as Antifa is against fascism).
Not surprisingly, Peddy’s Holocaust comment has brought reaction.
Karen Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for the school district, said the district is trying to aid teachers in compliance with the new legislation, not only in teaching but in books they provide students, according to NBC.
“Our district recognizes that all Texas teachers are in a precarious position with the latest legal requirements,” she said. “Our purpose is to support our teachers in ensuring they have all of the professional development, resources and materials needed. Our district has not and will not mandate books be removed nor will we mandate that classroom libraries be unavailable.”
Union spokesman Clay Robinson of the Texas State Teachers Association said the new legislation doesn’t cover classroom libraries. And he criticized what Peddy had said.
“We find it reprehensible for an educator to require a Holocaust denier to get equal treatment with the facts of history,” Robison told NBC. “That’s absurd. It’s worse than absurd. And this law does not require it.”
Republican State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who wrote Senate Bill 3, concurred. Schools don’t have to present both sides of “good and evil,” and there’s no requirement to ban books with only one perspective of the Holocaust.
“That’s not what the bill says,” according to Hughes.
Following publicity surrounding Peddy’s teacher training, Carroll school superintendent Lane Ledbetter posted on Facebook: “We recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust,” and said the district would work to clarify expectations for teachers.
Some teachers have expressed concern over what they have in their classroom libraries. One anonymous interview conducted with two teachers by NBC addressed the statement that the district is not pressuring teachers to purge their bookshelves. “That’s a lie,” one responded. “It is a flat-out lie … How could you even make that statement?”
Asked by NBC what was at stake, the anonymous teacher said: “In books, children see what the world can be. And to have that taken away because we’re afraid of a few parents getting upset about a word or two or an idea that they have imagined is in a book is unthinkable.”
And true to form for ongoing militancy among those in the education establishment, one teacher’s classroom library has been covered with yellow caution tape, similar to what is seen at police or construction sites.
Ever think that maybe what we call public schools are really private schools, as in what Big Education thinks is its own private domain?
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