Wake, woke, woken, awaken
Some days I feel ancient; as if I have been channeling Rip Van Winkle and do not know the current word usage, idioms or slang terms. Such is the case with the term woke. Somehow the term which I used to think merely referred to the state of being awake or awaken by someone - My friend woke me. - has come to take on the august political responsibility of representing teachings about racial and social justice. Those terms have morphed into “social issues” which are somehow the opposite of education. It seems some think that one can convince students to learn skills such as reading, math, and writing which are good to know in and of themselves regardless of the purpose for which they work their magic. Education thus becomes the mechanical teaching of skills which are divorced from the practice of critical thinking about how to apply those skills. It is as if education can ignore that we have learned and used certain skills without sufficient regard for how the use of those can adversely affect the health of the planet and the health of all its’s inhabitants - humans, other living creatures, plants, minerals and the very air we attempt to breathe. If skills are divorced from how their use affects its inhabitants, then one is free to amass an unfair share of resources, build structures whose purpose is to kill its inhabitants over time, farm in a way which eliminates the possibility of crops in the future, and burn fuels which result in global warming.
In this approach to education social justice, the teaching of history and ethical/moral issues become the equivalent of curse words, the use of which will result in eternal damnation in the mythical fires of hell.
In this approach to education, the goal becomes to ensure the emotional and mental comfort of a segment of the population; to assume that discomfort is the equivalent of shame; that discomfort interferes with learning when in fact any educator will confirm that stretching our brains is intrinsically uncomfortable.
Senator Lankford of Oklahoma and some of this colleagues have introduced legislation at the federal level which would “end NEA’s federal charger for pushing ‘woke ideology’ “ (article by Ashley Ellis KTUL staff, Wednesday, September 21st 202). She quotes Senator Lankford,
“As the son of a teacher and someone who really appreciated the teachers in my life and my children’s lives, I get incredibly frustrated when our schools get distracted by social issues and become political proving grounds. Oklahoma parents are tired of the woke ideology being pushed on their kids and the progressive values being forced into our schools by a giant teacher’s union, The National Educational Association.”
Obviously, Senator Lankford is well intentioned; is committed to silencing what he experiences as a threat to his beliefs - his way of thinking. Apparently, despite this professed Christian beliefs he believes he has used the skills he learned to achieve what he has in this life journey; he believes that the God of his understanding has rewarded he and his family for adhering to what he understands is salvation through a profession of faith which acknowledges his sinful nature as a human without having to be accountable for specific sins such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. I would guess that he is fearful that progressive thoughts are, in fact, not progressive but the work of the devil dressed in the costume of the saints.
I have no doubt that his fear is genuine; that he deserves our love and compassion for wanting what he believes is best for his family. It is, thus, the responsibility of those of us who conceptualize education as a means of creating a world which is inclusively just and equal - to make manifest “all men are created equal…” ; to entice students to learn reading, writing and arithmetic because they can use those skills to create the world implied in the words of our forefathers without the limits of the social constructs/beliefs and practices of those same forefathers.
Let’s use woke to awaken. Let us not use woke to feed fear. Let us not use woke to demonize those who are fearful of woke.
Let’s awaken to a common goal of creating a just, inclusive world.
Written September 22, 2022
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
RSS Feed