Education

Weingarten: “So the bottom line became, how do I explain it enough? And how do I make the argument enough that people can arrive at their own conclusions about this? But in the last two or three years, the behavior of some is very, very, very dangerous. The erasure of the civil rights movement and of equal opportunity, the making words ‘diversity and inclusion’ toxic when there was just a civil rights survey that said 88 percent of people in America believe in diversity, the attempt to balkanize, to undermine pluralism, and the attempt to stop teachers from — in schools all across America, not just pre-K-12, but in higher education, from teaching critical thinking and problem solving. To me, all of that gets you on the road to fascism. But, or and, the degradation that gets to dehumanization, that’s really dangerous. And so I wanted to say what that in this new moment, not 10 years ago, not 20 years ago, but in this new moment, you see that. And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene just made my point in the last few days when she apologized. I mean, she — I was at a hearing with her, where she looked at me. And she said, you are not a mother. And my wife is — is literally sitting right behind me. And I say, I am a mother by marriage. And she looks at me in this hearing, and says, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, about education, because you are not a biological mother. That level of dehumanization, that level of what does that next go to? That’s the point I’m trying to make.”