It is ironic that serial Ethics Villain and NEA president Randi Weingarten writes that her tweet “speaks for itself” when it is indeed a wonderful example of res ipsa loquitur, but not in the way Weingarten would have us believe.
The teacher was not fired for reading the “Diary of Anne Frank” to her class, but for using “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” without proper authorization from the school and using it to launch a class discussion of sexual molestation. The graphic version, in the style of a comic book…
…is true to Frank’s original diary but contains the sexual and other content that was taken out of the original version published by Frank’s father. The graphic novel-syle version has been critically praised, but the previously redacted material it includes are of a nature that require sensitive instruction and certainly prior approval by parents.
Weingarten misidentified the book involved due to carelessness, devotion to her political agenda, or deliberate deception, none of which are qualities any responsible parent wants in their child’s teachers. Yet Weingarten is the teacher the teachers’ union chose to represent and lead it.
Her tweet speaks for itself indeed.
Ethics Alarms 
A perfect example of supporting this statement…
It’s all about pushing the propaganda narrative regardless of actual truth and facts.
Ditto. Don’t trust headlines that are too short or too long. Too short means they are leaving out critical information; too long means they are editorializing.
There is a series of ethical questions here, going back decades.
We can start with the publication of the book to begin with. This was a diary, after all, something never intended to be made public. Is it ethical to take the explicitly confidential words and thoughts of someone else and broadcast them to the world? Yes, there’s an upside, even an enormous one, but there’s also a betrayal of trust. And does Anne’s death make it more appropriate to publish, or does it mean simply that she’s not able to exercise literally any control over her own thoughts and words?
And if you’re going to publish the diary, is it legitimate to censor parts of it rather than release the work in its entirety? It would be interesting to understand the rationale for that decision: salability? discretion? embarrassment? prudery?
We now move forward to the graphic version. It’s perfectly reasonable that it contains a translation of the entirety of the original text. I’ve never been a fan of “graphic” versions of anything, although I did enjoy some of the Classics Illustrated comic books when I was a kid. But different strokes for different folks. Assuming everything is/was above-board in terms of copyright, I see no objection to the publication.
So now the question is whether the expanded version is appropriate for classroom use. I’d say that, handled appropriately (there’s that word again), the answer is yes. Those who say no are arguing, in effect, that the private thoughts of a 12-year-old are too “adult” in nature to be shared with students older than herself. I’m willing to bet that some, probably most, of the kids in that classroom have had not dissimilar thoughts and fantasies. Now they’re being told that those normal rites of passage are “inappropriate.” Puberty, social pressure from all sides, and puritanism don’t make for a calm environment inside an adolescent’s brainbox.
But, rightly or wrongly, the book in that form is not on the approved list—it’s unclear whether the default position is positive or negative: that teachers can assign a book unless the powers that be say no, or they can’t unless they have specific approval. Either way, I’m going to argue for what is no doubt a minority opinion here: the concerns of one or two people (in many Texas jurisdictions, they don’t have to be parents or even from the district) should not be granted censorial power just because a school board is too lazy or weak-willed to argue with them.
I note, also, that the book was included on a reading list sent to parents at the beginning of the school year. Does this matter? Sort of. It does provide some cover for the teacher, but it’s pretty unreasonable to expect parents to grok immediately that The Diary of Anne Frank isn’t the same as Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. The book is translated, after all, and English offers two ways of expressing the genitive case. The “adaptation” in question refers to the picturization process, not to the words, which are, in fact, those of Anne Frank.
The teacher probably but not necessarily knew the book was off limits. The source linked by Weingarten is the Houston Chronicle, whose coverage is a little confusing. Was the problem that the book was assigned (meaning the students were supposed to read it) or that the teacher “read aloud” from it? The latter seems to be the tipping point if not the entirety of the problem. This makes no sense to me, but a lot of things don’t.
The Chronicle story also includes this: an “investigation will determine if the teacher pivoted from the original approved curriculum or if administrators were aware of the book being part of the class.” Is the school just trying to cover its ass? I don’t know, but let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be the case.
Still, in the current environment, especially in a state like Texas, it’s naïve to tempt fate by trying to teach anything the most staunchly conservative parent might dislike. Witness, for example, the case in Florida where a film about Ruby Bridges was removed from the curriculum because one parent thought it showed that white people didn’t like black people. News flash: in that time and place, they didn’t. But according to the reactionary right, teaching the truth is problematic if it makes kids uncomfortable. And here I thought it was the liberals who were supposedly all about emotions instead of reality.
The Anne Frank episode doesn’t strike me as utterly outrageous, but the teacher did in fact cross a line. I don’t think it ought to be a firing offense, especially if the administration de facto signed off on including the book. But I don’t make the rules, and sometimes playing with fire gets oneself burned.
On to Weingarten. Her tweet (or whatever the approved term in Muskistan might be) oversimplifies, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. Did this teacher read words written by Anne Frank in her diary? Yes. So if we lose the capital letter in “Diary,” then it’s an accurate statement (note the lack of quotation marks or other indications of a book title). Misleading? Yes. Intentionally so? Probably, but possibly just a manifestation of laziness. Either way, not a good look, and hardly surprising.
But finally we come to the title of this blog entry: “How Can It Be Responsible To Trust America’s Teachers When Their Leader Posts This…?” Randi Weingarten is not the “leader” of American teachers. She’s the president of the largest, but not only, teachers union, and there are about a million US teachers unaffiliated with the NEA. Nor are teachers responsible for what she says, any more than Americans in general are responsible for the missteps of a President (choose either of the last two, at least) who is mendacious, probably corrupt, not completely in charge of his mental faculties, and credibly accused of sexual improprieties. They were/are “my president,” but neither is, or ever was, my spokesperson.
(You know, it’s unfair to keep knocking out Comments of the Day like this.)
Weingarten is the de facto voice of teachers nationwide, and if teachers allow her to fill that role, they have earned our contempt and distrust. It’s the most powerful and influential union…and yes, I see the teachers who make the “Don’t blame me, I voted for X” argument as ducking their accountability. Americans are responsible for the conduct and image of their President, which is why they have an obligation to vote the bad ones out. Without the burden, apathy rules.
ALSO—the other teachers unions stay scrupulously silent and allow Weingarten to do their dirty work for them. I never saw a teachers’ union oppose shutting down the schools, for example.
Don’t you have to concede that she is the voice of teachers if she is the only one speaking for them?
And another “also”: It’s like people protesting that Trump isn’t the leader of the GOP, because not all Republicans follow him. If none of the “real” leaders have the guts or influence to rebut or oppose him, their protests ring false to me.
Agreed on the “guts” point. Surely we can do better than Trump v. Biden II. Because of the GOP holds so many winner-take-all primaries, I don’t see anyone but Trump as the nominee unless he is literally incarcerated (and maybe not even then). There’s a better opportunity for someone to get the nomination over Biden, but no one sane (sorry, RFK Jr.) seems willing to enter the fray. .. and the damage done to a sitting president by a contested primary (see Pat Buchanan v. GHWB) is likely to cause our awful candidate to lose to the other guy’s even worse (in the Dems’ opinion) candidate.
Not having the influence is another matter. Now we’re talking about the ability to get copious free airtime (a la Trump, and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton, in ’16), to get what amounts to an hour-long commercial on national television (Bill Clinton in ’92), or the like. This has little to do with aptitude and a lot to do with what some news editor thinks will attract eyeballs.
Short of running our own doomed-to-inevitable-failure campaigns, what are the rest of us to do?
Rep. James Clyburn from South Carolina might be the DNC’s only saving grace at this point. If he says, “well, Joe, you have a good run but time to step aside for Gavin or (God forbid) Michelle)” then Biden is out. Otherwise, it’s Joltin’ Joe running for another 4 years.
jvb
Jeez, Curmie, can’t you run?
Well, she isn’t the only one speaking for teachers. Look at someone like Peter Greene, for example. She gets more publicity than others. but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
As for shutting down the schools, yes, there was no backlash. But the “experts” were all over the map about how to proceed. More importantly, the pols and pundits calling for schools to stay open did so via zoom meetings and emails. It’s easier to support a decision to keep schools open if the people making that decision are willing to appear in public meeting rooms to advocate that policy. The pols were insisting that teachers take risks that they themselves scrupulously avoided. Teachers felt used, and I think they were right to do so.
I find your rejoinder well written and articulated, as always, and it offers a needed perspective. However, I don’t agree that the parents are objecting that the Anne’s sexuality is inappropriate – hell, the whole idea of a young girl hiding in an attic from Nazis for years, only to die in the camp from illness is beyond comprehensible for most people. Think about it: we have a family of Jews terrified that, at any moment, they could be rounded up and sent to death camps simply because they are Jewish. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you/us, then society is doomed anyway.
This is probably a “one push too far” and parents retaliated issue. Parents included are tired of gay themes being shoved in their faces and down their throats. Of all the horrendous things Anne and her family endured for years, why is the musing of a teenage girl about her own sexuality even remotely front and center to the diary’s graphic adaptation? Why is that? A reasonable response might be: “Look, even though she and her family were subjected to unbearable fears of being caught for years, Anne was still a typical teenage girl with typical teenager issues bouncing around in her head. She wrote about everything including issues with her parents, her attraction and later disaffection for a boy; this is really no different and lots of teenagers are trying to figure stuff out. We have the benefit of not being persecuted, arrested and exterminated by the government. That Anne suffered daily terror but still acted like (at times) a petulant teenager adds a dimension of humanity to her experiences.”
Parents are also tired of the condescension from elites who look down on them as puritans and knuckledraggers who simply can’t get with the program. I don’t know the answer to this but was the actual diary or the graphic adaptation included in the syllabus? If the latter, then the parents might not have standing to complain; if it is the former and the teacher switched it or substituted the diary for the graphic novel, then parents have the right to complain about the bait and switch. Add that to trans storytime and elementary school teachers flying the Alphabet Soup pride flags, administrations hiding vital information from parents out of some kind of fear that parents will kill their supposed transgendered kids, and yeah, I can see the parents getting upset about this and demanding accountability from the schools and, sadly, this teacher may have been the sacrificial lamb because the parents can’t hoist the school board members on/by their own petards.
As for Weingarten, this is not an isolated incident where she has either dismissed parents or mocked them over objections to what is being taught in schools. Weingartern clearly does not understand that, at its foundation, the US culture is akin to an adolescent who, when told he/she can’t do ‘X’ will go out of his/her way to find a way to do it. Weingarten was instrumental is punishing kids for almost a full year of coronavirus lockdowns, working hand in glove with the Biden Administration and the federal government to do that, only now to state she disagreed and fought to reopen schools, treating parents as idiots who can’t remember last week, let alone two years ago. She also demanded the DOJ and FBI to investigate and/or prosecute parents who showed up at school board meetings challenging the curriculum being taught to their children, and that idiot Garland declared them to be domestic terrorists. Yet, Weingarten gallivanted off to Ukraine to help Ukraine with its education system – explain that one. I am waiting. The unintended consequence of her actions resulted in parents actually seeing what was being taught in classes. Oops.
Public schools have failed their primary objective: educating students. If high school graduates do not graduate with the requisite abilities to do math, science, reading, and thought at grade level, then maybe attention to be paid to that little problem.
jvb
If you’re looking for someone to defend Weingarten (or Biden), you’ve come to the wrong place. I certainly think your point about Anne being just a normal girl with normal impulses being thrust into a hellscape is well taken. I’m not condemning the father for not wanting to highlight certain aspects of Anne’s self-cognition… but if the book is going to be excerpts from Anne’s diary, it needs to be marketed that way. A glimpse inro the mindset of this extraordinary and yet utterly ordinary girl ought to tell the whole story.
I’m confused by your argument that parents aren’t “objecting that the Anne’s sexuality is inappropriate.” Then what are they complaining about? I don’t know that “the musing of a teenage girl about her own sexuality even remotely front and center to the diary’s graphic adaptation.” I haven’t read it. But perhaps it’s only “front and center” on a couple of pages, carefully chosen to support a perspective that isn’t really all that accurate… and if the brief passage Jack includes is the best the would-be censors have got, well, that’s pretty weak tea.
As for “gay themes being shoved in their faces and down their throats” trope: after decades of white Christian heterosexuality being the only paradigm deemed worthy of mention, we now recognize that black people exist, that gay people exist, and that sometimes they’ve suffered in ways that other people haven’t… and that’s “shoving it down the throats” of the poor defenseless supermajority. I’m calling BS on that one.
By the way, what harm is done by drag queen story hours? I recall seeing precisely zero cases of drag queens molesting kids… that’s the purview of politicians, priests, and little league baseball coaches. So what’s the problem? As a popular (in my world) meme puts it, teaching kids about frogs isn’t grooming them to be amphibians.
As a parent, I would be less annoyed (but still annoyed) to find out that heterosexually charged material was being presented to my children outside of biological instruction without my approval. It’s not the school’s place to do that.
“As for “gay themes being shoved in their faces and down their throats” trope: after decades of white Christian heterosexuality being the only paradigm deemed worthy of mention, we now recognize that black people exist, that gay people exist, and that sometimes they’ve suffered in ways that other people haven’t… and that’s “shoving it down the throats” of the poor defenseless supermajority. I’m calling BS on that one.”
What, probably 70%+ of shows now depict LGBT themes, often front-and-center. I’d say depicting such a tiny minority in such a relentless way certainly should qualify as shoving it down someone’s throat. It’s showing up in kids shows; how often in those decades did children’s shows explicitly point out the sexuality of its characters? And to pre-empt tired arguments about the existence of heterosexual relationships in art as being the equivalent, it isn’t. First of all, we’d need to agree that all lifestyles are equally beneficial to society and should enjoy the same presumption of value, and that won’t be happening anytime soon. Secondly, only a tiny minority of such shows make an agenda out of assigning sexuality to its characters. You can’t deny that Disney and other such networks are purposely including such themes for non-artistic purposes.
Of course, I think you’ve argued in the past that propaganda is art as well. I don’t really care how you categorize it, but even as a subset of art, it doesn’t hold the same value in most people’s eyes.
Lastly, your comment about drag queens is not substantive. Are you arguing that there are more molesters among that population than the other populations you mentioned? And what are you basing that opinion on? Drag queen story hours brings up the issue I addressed above–a large percentage of the population rejects the idea that all lifestyles are equally worthy of veneration.
Yes, a girl existed in horrible circumstances and still thought about sex, so we should obviously shove sex down the throats of middle schoolers despite their parents wishes and despite the wishes of the students themselves. Sexually harassing middle schoolers is obviously necessary despite social conventions because someone somewhere was desperately unhappy once and still thought of sex and that is of the utmost importance. There is nothing of value in the suffering itself unless the sexual fantasies of the preteen in question can be studied in graphic detail. Pictures of said fantasies are obviously necessary. In fact, a subscription to pornhub is necessary for every 12 year old country wide because there are sexual fantasies that haven’t been exposed to preteens that they obviously need in order to deal with ordinary teenage curiosity during periods of government persecution. You know what, forget the free subscription, let’s just project graphic depictions of every sexual fantasy on every street corner simultaneous so everyone can know what they are missing. Otherwise no one can be said to be fulfilled as a person. Sex is the entirety of human existence. There is nothing else. Just sex. Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex. Our naughty bits and how we use them are ALL that matters. Play sex on constant replay in front of infant’s faces from the moment of birth until the instant of death of old age so they don’t miss any possible sex positions or fantasies. Fucking is the entirety of human existence. No child should be left behind.
(Boy, do I have a post coming up for you…)
NP,
Nicely done..
jvb
Where is all this sex you seem to argue is not only rampant but foregrounded? Where is the evidence that there are more than a couple of parents who object? Where is the evidence that the more than a couple of students object?
What I’ve seen (I haven’t read the book) is a single moment when Anne has what could very loosely be called a homoerotic fantasy. What we see pictured is her in the real world; the fantasy is not enacted. Color me unshocked.
There has been of late some pretty stupid behavior on the part of some teachers; there have also been some absurd accusations by puritanical/racist/homophobic parents. I don’t know which this is, and none of us know what parts of the book were even mentioned in class. So far, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that students were subjected to anything particularly outrageous, which of course doesn’t mean they weren’t.
If you’ve read the book and can point to actual explicit content which is qualitatively and quantitatively significant, please do so. Otherwise, I will continue to believe that you have constructed the entire Himilayan chain from that molehill.
Your point that we do not know what was shared in class is valid, but I think NP’s point was that the graphic novel (presumably aimed at a young crowd) decided to include the homoerotic fantasy at all, and that this was the book that the teacher decided to share with (or assign to) her class.
Those pages shown above do not belong in a classroom of juveniles. Full stop. The teacher should have known better than to assign a book that included such things in it. It’s not my child’s teacher’s job to introduce sexual thoughts into my child’s brain whether through visual images, written words, or physical touches. If my child has such thoughts because of non-sexual instruction (such as in a health class), that’s different, just as a teenager being aroused by a beautiful teacher is very different from a teenager being aroused by a teacher’s flirting or grooming.
“Those who say no are arguing, in effect, that the private thoughts of a 12-year-old are too “adult” in nature to be shared with students older than herself. I’m willing to bet that some, probably most, of the kids in that classroom have had not dissimilar thoughts and fantasies. Now they’re being told that those normal rites of passage are “inappropriate.” Puberty, social pressure from all sides, and puritanism don’t make for a calm environment inside an adolescent’s brainbox.”
Acknowledged without caveats that clearly the Frank family as all Jews in this era of Europe were victims of Nazi oppression…
It sounds like Ann Frank was acting a little bit groomery-predatory lite with her exchange with the other girl. Stipulating that showing each other their boobs as a sign of friendship is coercive to gain the access…and Anne Frank admits it wasn’t even as a sign of friendship but because she wanted more from it…
Yeesh…
I don’t think that’s a normal rite of passage.
There was an issue last year with “Maus” being pulled because of concerns about it. I felt and do still feel that “Maus” is an appropriate publication for 8th graders to read. I also think that the “Diary of Anne Frank” is perfectly acceptable for 8th graders to read.
I would even argue that the graphic novel is appropriate for 8th graders.
Otto Frank removed sections from publication that were teen-angst Anne, to protect her and her mother’s memory. Anne was critical of her mother in her diary which is not unusual for adolescent girls. It is understandable that Otto wanted his now-dead wife to be remembered better than as ab antagonist in a young girl’s life. He also excised some of the more personal pubescent musings of his daughter which would have been obstacles to it being printed in many places, especially the United States.
So…I don’t know if the graphic novel being published with the additional material was the right thing to do as Mr. Frank clearly wanted a certain image of his family and of his daughter to be maintained, but there it is.
But giving 8th graders access to this particular publication should not have gotten the teacher fired. If a teacher had given the book to or had read the book to 1st or 2nd graders, I would argue otherwise.
It still is no excuse for Randi Weingarten to misrepresent what was read.