OH: New Education Czar Does Not Impress

One of the more baldfaced power grabs of 2023 was the Ohio GOP's decision to strip power from the department of education and cut the elected state board or education off at the knees, shoving all the power into the new Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and its governor-appointed director, who is already showing less-than-stellar abilities.

Look, sometimes democracy is a pain because people won't just fall in line. But there are ways around it, and this power grab was one example. In this approach, you just keep taking power away from any part of the government that might not do as you wish. In Ohio's case, that has meant commandeering the Department of Education and putting it directly under the governor's control. The old state board of education included 11 elected members (the governor got to appoint 8), and that's just too much democracy for Governor DeWine.

To run this new fiefdom, DeWine tapped Steve Dackin. What a choice.

Dackin has been a district-level school administrator. In 2015 he was put on the board of KnowledgeWorks, a big Gates-funded reformy monstrosity ("I had the opportunity of working with EDWorks and KnowledgeWorks at a local level, and am looking forward to sharing those experiences as a member of the board of directors.") He's not there now.

But his most infamous activity comes from his time on the state board of education. He was vice-president and in charge of developing a job search for the next state superintendent. After he had determined what the best candidate should look like, he resigned from the board and applied for the job. Then he got the job. Then a large number of Ohioans raised their eyebrows so hard that Lake Erie's water level rose ten inches. So after about eleven days on the job, Dackin resigned, citing that "concerns have been raised" and he didn't want questions about "revolving doors" to distract "from the important work ahead for schools, educators, and especially children." Setting aside the prediction of children having important work ahead, the resignation seemed pretty clear cut.

Now Dackin is head of the new department, and "state superintendent" is a guy who answers to him. See, the trick is in applying for a job where just one guy does the hiring. Revolving door, indeed.

The new department has been up and running for three months. Dackin just talked to Karen Kasler at Statehouse News Bureau about how things are going, and the results are uninspiring.

The write-up is brief, but Dackin packs it with one howler after another.

Department of Education and Workforce director Steve Dackin said he likes the priorities of the new cabinet-level agency, which "happened to be the priorities of the governor. And so that's a good match and that's a good alignment. And that's one of the reasons I chose to pursue this opportunity."

Yes, it's some sort of serendipitous fluke that the group created and staffed by the governor reflects the governor's priorities. It's almost as if the governor forced the bodies dealing with education policy to come under his control so that he could force them to implement his chosen ideas. Maybe Dackin is trying to pretend that that's not what happened and that Ohio's GOP didn't turn state-level education control into a political patronage job. But he knows why he's there, who hired him, and what that person expects. This is like walking into a bar, sitting down and observing, "Man, lucky for me I walked into a place that serves beer!"

Here's an even better one

"It is critical for us to have protocols in place where we get the kind of feedback that we need to hear directly from parents and other constituents. So we we're required by law to have a public meeting at least once every two months," Dackin said. 

You know a good way to get feedback from parents and other constituents? Hold elections. What use is feedback to a department that is there to implement the governor's policy choices?

It is barely noticeable that Dackin does not include actual teachers and school staff on the list of people he wants feedback from. No surprise there. 

It fits in with his big priority, which is the "implementation of the Science of Reading program." First, there's no such thing as a particular singular Science of Reading program. And while we could get side tracked on the many reasons to greet SOR with distrust and disbelief, I'm going to skip that, because there is no instructional or pedagogical program that I believe in so much that I would like to see a state mandate it.

State mandates for particular instruction are doomed. First, politicians do not get their information from experts in education, but from experts in lobbying and advocacy. Second, the face of education is constantly changing and the program that you are so certain of today will inevitably become the washed-up thing that needs to be jettisoned a few years from now. Reading in particular is an area marked by only one instructional piece of advice that is always being given-- whatever you're doing now, you should do less of that and more of that other thing.

SoR advocacy is more tied up with politics and culture then some of the earlier pendulum swings, but one thing remains the same-- the best teaching for this complicated and complex human activity will always be a teacher who has a vast array of tools in her instructional toolbox. 

You know who probably won't be required to implement Science of Reading? The many private schools collecting taxpayer-funded vouchers. Public schools in Ohio still haven't seen fair funding goals met, but expanding Ohio's vouchers toward the universal, so now wealthy families that already have their kids in private schools can get a sweet rebate from other taxpayers via the state, while public schools watch mountains of money head out the door. 

Dackin thinks that's just swell. 

"The expansion of scholarship programs and availability of educational options to parents is something that I embrace and something that the agency will continue to embrace and build on," Dackin said.

So low-income taxpayers get the chance to fund private school for the wealthy while their own schools lose resources. 

If you're in Ohio and you are not impressed by the sorts of things Dackin wants to embrace and build on you can--well, not much, actually. He works for the governor, not you. 

ICYMI: Getting Up To Speed Edition (1/7)

Picking up after the holidays, the twelfth day of Christmas, and Benedict Arnold Day, all in one week. Plus that cough that everyone has? The Board of Directors and CMO are both fighting it all week. But the weather has been nice and getting back to school has been largely enjoyed by everyone at the Institute who gets to go back. 

This is as good a time as any to mention that you can find me on Bluesky and Threads, if you are emigrating from the dead bird app. Also, Curmudgucation has its own Facebook page. (I'm also on Instagram, but after all these years I still can't really get a handle on what to do with it.)

At any rate, it's not a big list this week, but still some worthwhile reads here. 

Hoover Institute 2023 "A Nation at Risk" Address

Thomas Ultican looks back at the end of the 40th anniversary of that miserable hit job on public education.

Tired of Being Tired

Jose Luis Vilson's site was down last week when I was putting the weekly list together, but it's back and if you're behind reading there, I suggest starting with this list of ideas for how teachers can revitalize and revive in the new year. 

Welcome to the New SC Legislative Session

If you're not in South Carolina, let this be a reminder that your legislature is getting powered up for the new year, complete with lousy ideas for laws. If you are in South Carolina, this post from Steve Nuzum will let you know what some of the lousy ideas in your state are.

Legislative Session Starts Next Week in Florida 

Meanwhile, if you're in Florida, here's what's on tap for your legislature, courtesy Sue Kingery Woltanski.

Will Far-Right Money and Influence Decide Whether States Can Have Explicitly Religious Charter Schools?

Jan Resseger looks at some of the forces mustering money and power to push through the public religious charter school in Oklahoma.

Moms for Liberty members say parental rights have limits with reading rule

Sue Kingery Woltanski picked this story up, and now the Tampa Bay Times is running with it (and talking to her about it). Turns out M4L only wants parental rights some of the time...

Two of my favorite writers have looked at Tim Alberta's new book about American evangelicals-- The Power and the Glory. So read what Nancy Flanagan (who lived through much of it) has to say, and catch the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has to say as well. The book is on my stack, and it should be on yours, too. 

The Right Is Winning Its War on Schools

Melissa Gira Grant at the New Republic has a not-very-uplifting look at the work of Heritage Foundation, among others.

Disgraced Ousted Moms 4 Liberty PA School Board 'Hosed Down' Superintendent Crony With $700,000 Cash

Always interesting when someone outside the education bubble notices education shenanigans, and Moms for Liberty has generated a lot of that attention. Here's Doktor Zoom at Wonkette on the latest Bucks County M4L scandal.

Saving Public Schools: 23 Issues (At Least) to Ponder for 2024

Nancy Bailey has the list of Important Stuff for 2024. 

Librarians, who lost jobs for not banning books, are fighting back

Piece, with transcript, from NPR reporter Matt Bloom.

Why Parents Struggle So Much In The World's Richest Country

Stephanie Murray at The Atlantic with a thoughtful look at how, for all our talk, our country doesn't really isn't that helpful in raising kids.

The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit

I haven't spent much time on this flap, but I also never pass up a Tressie McMillam Cotton piece, and her take at the New York Times is just excellent.

Texas board rejects many science textbooks over climate change messaging

Oh, Texas. The Texas Tribune has the coverage (again), including the part where one member of the board wants to know why more creationism isn't included.

This week I also dropped a piece at the Bucks County Beacon about how the First Amendment is being rewritten to eliminate the wall between church and state (and why that's a bad idea). 

You can sign up at Substack to get my regular stuff regularly delivered to your regular e-mail address. It's free. 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Merit

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, at their worst, are one more brand of human resource corporate bullshit, cut from the same cloth as all those corporate trainings that taught managers they could get better work out of their subordinates if they pretended to treat those meat widgets like human beings. "Pretend to listen to them," they were taught, "so they'll buy into your initiative."

In short, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can be part of that grand tradition of programs designed to get corporate leadership to pretend to act like decent human beings even if they aren't so inclined. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs can, at their worst, focus strictly on externals, emphasizing that Folks In Charge should try to look like they care about these things in the same way that HR taught your bad boss to signal interest in you by putting your name at the beginning of every sentence addressed to you.

The current attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are based on the notion that gender and race preferences have replaced consideration of merit. It's the same argument that was leveled against affirmative action-- a bunch of really deserving white guys aren't getting the prizes they're supposed to because some undeserving woman or minority was given the prize despite their lack of merit.

Part of our problem here is that word "merit." We can't define it, can't quantify it, can't agree what we're talking about in any meaningful way. But it's still at the center of this debate. There's lots more to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion than questions of merit, but for today, let's just deal with the arguments about merit.

Unfortunately, I have to blame the education system for a lot of that. With our over-simplified rat race version of evaluating students, we early on drive home the idea that all students are "competing" on the same scale with the same measure. The best students, the most chock-full of merit, are the ones with the highest grades. Easy peasy--at the end of the race, the Valedictorian is the one with the highest GPA and therefor the best, the most merit-packed student to emerge from the school. 

Everybody kind of understands that this model is bunk. The Valedictorian might be a horrible person. The most-beloved member of the class may be a low achiever (a term that reinforces the rat race model). The most beautiful person in the world may be a person you wouldn't want to marry for a gazillion dollars, and a person who appears to have won by amassing the world's largest pile of money may also be an obnoxious dope. 

"Merit" also incorporates the idea of being deserving, and again, we have arguments. Is someone deserving because they work hard? Is the hard worker more or less deserving than the person with innate talent? Or are both less important than whatever end result a person gets? Does the merit of good end results still hold regardless of what methods were used to get them? 

Merit depends on context. Mostly it depends on the context of what is required. If I need something from the top shelf in the store, it's the tall person or the person with access to a ladder that has the most merit. If I need someone to fit into a tiny space, then it's the short skinny person who has the most merit. 

We measure merit according to the specific criteria of the moment. Michael Jordan was the king of merit as a basketball player, and far down the meritocratic ladder for baseball. We get fuzzy on this one--we are forever deciding that since someone has merit as a singer, they probably also have merit as a legal expert. 

We also measure merit backwards. I have gotten this reward, so clearly I must deserve it. Mix all this together and you get some rich guy who decides "I have all this money, so I must have merit in the field in which I earned it, which means I must also have a meritocratic ability to redesign, say, the world's education systems."

And we operate within certain biases about where merit can be found. Back in the day, we assumed that the merit required to cast a vote or own property could only be found in white males, and it hasn't been that long since we still assumed that only men merited that ability to have a credit card or work full time. That job barrier was maintained two ways--by assuming that only men had the merit to deserve the job, and by assuming that the definition of merit included things like "will never need to take time off because they're pregnant." 

Note that that definition of merit doesn't even have to mention the word "woman," so at a quick glance it doesn't seem explicitly sexist. We do that with meritocracy a lot. For instance, folks don't argue that a Black person couldn't fill a particular role-- it's just that part of the definition of merit is to be comfortable in and familiar with a certain cultural background, the kind of background you have if you grow up in a middle class white neighborhood.

So here's the thing. The complaint against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (and affirmative action) programs is that they throw out considerations of merit and replace them with considerations of race and gender. 

But why not open up and examine our definitions of merit? First of all, what is really needed for this particular role in this particular place and time? Second of all, are we making assumptions about merit that we don't have to make that tie it to class, race, or gender? 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs have many functions. But when it comes to the question of merit, a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program is not about saying, "Let's stop looking for merit." It's about saying "Let's check our definition of merit, and let's look for it in places we haven't always looked before." 

Getting it right is a challenge. It's not simply making a minority hire so you can check it off the list. It's also not the technique that too many school districts have used, the ones where they say, "Well, we've been singling one group of students out for honors classes, so rather than try to identify and correct for our biased merit measures, we'll just stop having the program." To give up trying to recognize any merit at all is not the way.

To put it another way, the goal here is not to eliminate the use of merit as a yardstick, but to improve the definition of merit and widen the search for it. 

It's a challenging task. Will there be schools, businesses and organizations that fumble and botch it? Absolutely, just as even the best-handled programs will piss off some mediocre white guys who are sure they've been robbed. 

We should keep trying anyway. We should keep trying because it will help us become a more just society. Why have avoided the usual initials DEI in this piece? Because they make it too easy for people to reject the whole thing. If you are opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion, then don't hide behind an acronym. I've seen people bitch about "forced DEI," and I don't even know what that is--you're being put in a situation where you have to deal with diversity and you don't want to? I don't know how you take a stance against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion any more than I know how you take a stance against justice.

And if the appeal to justice doesn't move you, consider that it will help us function better as a society. We are increasingly pluralistic, and the sheer effort involved in a futile attempt to enforce a monoculture is just so wasteful and destructive. It's also wasteful to miss out on so many folks loaded with merit just because we are using a narrow definition of merit and applying it through narrow search criteria. Diversity has always been part of our strength as a country, and our history is marked by a long, stumbling hike toward equity and inclusion, and the further we get, the stronger we become. 

Voucher Bankruptcy's Feature Future

It is no longer news that school voucher programs lead to increasing costs, costs that swiftly balloon to suck up extraordinary piles of taxpayer dollars in state after state, threatening to bust the budget. 

Public education advocates have been pointing this out in state after state, arguing that vouchers are way more costly than any of the advocates promise.

It's a legitimate point, a solid reason for states to think twice before jumping on the voucher money wagon. 

Unfortunately, I can easily imagine a future in which this same argument (and perhaps the critique that voucher programs yield unspectacular results) comes back from an entirely different source. Right now we're at this early voucher policy stage:

Let's give vouchers to everyone and make choice freely available far and wide!

But further down the road, once the voucher system is firmly entrenched and the traditional public school system has been largely gutted, we may find ourselves turning a corner, and suddenly a bunch of folks will be disturbed and alarmed by the high cost of a voucher program. 

Boy, we are spending so much on school vouchers in this state (and not even getting great results). Surely we can cut the amount we're spending per pupil on this private school entitlement.

Maybe there will be special carve-outs for specific students, so that it's not so obvious that poorer families are being cut loose or driven into sub-prime private schools. But once the voucher system has captured a critical number of students and cut its public competition off at the knees, it could safely be squeezed. 

A portion of the education choice and reform crowd has always been folks who don't want to pay to educate Those Peoples' Children. For those folks, vouchers, including the ballooning costs and the lousy results, are another way to get to that world in which everyone has to pay their own way. 

Vouchers get us to the place of considering education a privately-purchased commodity instead of a public good, a service provided to and for all citizens. Once we've established that it's a privately-purchased commodity, then vouchers are just one more bit of welfare, another entitlement to be cut so that the Poors aren't a drag on the folks with resources. 

So for some folks, the huge cost of voucher programs is a feature, not a bug. It's just a feature that won't be activated until the time is right. 

IA: How Federal Judge Gets It Right, Blocks Don't Say Gay

At last, someone with authority gets it right.

Iowa has its own version of a Don't Say Gay law (complete with civics instruction and reading restrictions), and Senate File 496 has the same problem as others--so broad as to be meaningless and unenforceable.  And a federal judge just called them on it, and blocked portions of the law. 

Injunctions against the law had been filed by the GLBT Youth In Iowa Task Force and by Penguin Random House Books. The ruling came from U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher. Locher was made a U.S. magistrate judge in December of 2020, then recommended for the district court post by GOP Senators Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst in the beginning on 2022.

Locher blocked two provisions of the law. 

One adds to the definition of "age-appropriate:

“Age-appropriate” does not include any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act as defined in section 702.17

That led to some great news headlines such as "What is a sex act in Iowa?" Turns out that 702.17 gives a fairly specific list. The bill does give special exemptions for human growth and development materials, and the Bible. 

As other states have seen, this definition is so very broad that everything from John Steinbeck to John Milton gets swept up. From Locher's ruling:

The law is incredibly broad and has resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault. The sweeping restrictions in Senate File 496 are unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny and thus may not be enforced while the case is pending. Indeed, the Court has been unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.

Locher also notes that the writers of the law had another option-- they could have chosen an "obscenity light" standard and simply used the already-existing law which criminalizes the dissemination and exhibition of “obscene material” to minors. For all the noise about protecting children from actual porn, the folks supporting this law wanted to cast a much broader net. In other words, the broad vagueness is a feature, not a bug, a vagueness born of intention, not error.

But even broader and worse were the Don't Say Gay portions of the law because, as many of us have noted repeatedly, they are written so broadly that they really mean Don't Say Anything About Any Gender Or Orientation At All Ever. From the law

A school district shall not provide any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or  instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through grade six.

Say it with me one more time: heterosexuality is a sexual identity, and traditional straightness is a gender identity (and Iowa law agrees) 

Locher points out that the law is written in neutral language that also makes no distinction between "cisgender or transgender identity or gay or straight relationships." So...

Meaning: on its face, the law forbids any programs, promotion, or instruction recognizing that anyone is male or female or in a relationship of any sort (gay or straight). The statute is therefore content-neutral but so wildly overbroad that every school district and elementary school teacher in the State has likely been violating it since the day the school year started.

Right. If you taught your first graders to use the boys or girls bathroom, you delivered instruction about gender identity. If you read any books that contained couples of any kind, you delivered instruction on sexual orientation. It is, as Locher says elsewhere in the injunction, "staggeringly broad."

Based on the neutral definitions of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” Senate File 496 unambiguously prohibits instruction relating to any gender identity (cisgender or transgender) and any sexual orientation (gay or straight)...

It follows that any teacher in grade six or below who incorporates gender identity or sexual orientation into the curriculum in any way has violated section 279.80. This would include, for example, teachers or other licensed professionals like the Educator Plaintiffs who make books available to students that refer to any character’s gender or sexual orientation; which is to say, virtually every book ever written. Similarly, a math teacher will have violated the law by requiring students to take an exam stating that Sally bought eight apples and ate three and asking how many “she” has left. This is a forbidden “test . . . relating to gender identity.”

Exactly. While some on either side of these suits say his examples are "absurd," Locher repeatedly points out that the language says what it says and can't be interpreted "according to stray comments by individual legislators." 

Locher notes that the state's defense doesn't address this issue, but "their briefing and argument leave the unmistakable impression that they believe the law only forbids programs, promotion, and instruction relating to transgender people and non-heteronormative relationships." Locher gets into this in depth, but really, his wry heading for the section says it all:

The State Defendants’ Promise to Only Enforce the Law in a Discriminatory Fashion Does Not Solve the Constitutional Problem.

Locher also notes, when discussing standing, that one elementary student who was part of the suit would be forbidden to join a student organization formed to support LGBTQ students, which would interfere with that student's First Amendment right to free speech in the form of freedom of expressive association.

All of this should be equal reason to strike down a host of similar bills in other states. 

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds is sad, and also clueless. “Instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation has no place in kindergarten through sixth-grade classrooms,” Reynolds said, using the exact same language that got the law in trouble with Locher in the first place. "The real debate should be about why society is so intent on over-sexualizing our young children. It’s wrong, and I will continue to do my part to protect their innocence.”

Attorney General Brenna Bird had more of the same. "Sexually explicit books do not belong in our elementary-school libraries or classrooms. Not only is it common sense, it’s the law. As attorney general, I will keep on fighting to protect families, enforce the law and keep inappropriate books out of the hands of children in school.”

Whether it's a rhetorical trick or just sloppiness, both demonstrate the way that reading restrictionists insist on conflating a variety of issues and treating a wide variety of books as if they are all the same thing. Courts should have been calling out these laws in all states where they've cropped up, but at least Iowa has slowed them down a bit. It's not a perfect judgement; Locher left Iowa's mandatory outing law in place. 

But this was a heck of a step in the right direction, a win in Iowa for the First Amendment.

Will the tide shift in Iowa? Who knows. But Iowa is one more state in which the Moms for Liberty electioneering bus seems to have lost some steam and their legislative priorities are just a shade less anti-First Amendment than they used to be. DEI is still on the M4L chopping block, but not Naughty Books and-- wait! what? Eliminate Common Core? 

Expect the legislature to attempt to retool the law so that it can clear judicial hurdles. People who have decided they want to render books and LGBTQ persons invisible do not give up quickly or easily. At least in Iowa they'll have to go back to the drawing board. 

Rufo, Horse Racing, and Bullying

Christopher Rufo is on the dead bird app bragging that he took down the president of Harvard and announcing that he's going to start "plagiarism hunting," which sounds so much better than "going after liberal Black academics."

It is just the most recent demonstration of the Rufo technique, which is to announce the bad faith argument he's about to launch and how he plans to use it to pwn his chosen liberal target. And then various main stream media and other well-intentioned folks proceed to amplify and engage with that bad faith argument. Even now, social media features a bunch of folks arguing about the plagiarism piece of the Harvard take down ("Well, you know the president of Rufo's New College won't get caught plagiarizing because he's never published anything! Ha! Gotcha!!") as if the plagiarism is actually the point. And media outlets keep publishing their "Harvard president taken down by plagiarism" takes as if that's the real story here.

I do not particularly care what happens at Harvard, a school that is emblematic of very little of the vast bulk of higher education. But I am interested in how Ryfo pulls off this trick again and again, and I've come across a take that does a good job of explaining.

On his substack, Jamison Foser just put up "Christopoher Rufo & Elise Stefanik understand the New York Times" in which he offers a useful analysis of How Rufo Does It, quoting himself from earlier pieces, because Foser has been onto the game for a while.

From July:

The most perverse thing about all of this is that describing himself as a propagandist and announcing his intent to deceive didn’t hurt Christopher Rufo at all — to the contrary, news companies like The New York Times take him more seriously because of it. Describing himself as untrustworthy was a marketing ploy, and it worked on his intended audience: The nation’s leading journalists and editors. If Rufo was just some run-of-the-mill right-winger, the Times (probably) wouldn’t have published him. But because Rufo announced a grand strategy behind his lies, the Times views him as an important voice and hands him the world’s most valuable op-ed space.

In response to the amazement expressed by many (including me) that Rufo just tweets out his intent 

Those tweets are marketing tweets. They don’t endanger his success; they are central to it. Rufo uses them to brand himself a master strategist; the news media uses that brand to justify taking Rufo seriously and behaving the way he wants them to.

Foser attributes the NYT (and others) complicity to a desire to amplify right-wing talking points.

They want to inflate academic jaywalking by Harvard’s president into a massive scandal worthy of weeks of wall-to-wall coverage. But it obviously isn’t, and so they need an excuse, both for their readers and for themselves. Rufo and Stefanik provide that excuse: Influential conservatives are talking about this, so we have to cover it. And that’s where Rufo’s public announcements of his dishonest propaganda campaigns helps.

Maybe-- I'm not sure how far I go along with Foser on this. But what I believe may apply is that, by announcing his latest propaganda idea as an explicit strategy, Rufo is able to activate the press's horse race coverage mode,

We know this mode. A candidate or politician announces a particular idea, and rather than examine the idea's accuracy or merit, the media focuses on the question of whether or not that idea is helping the team win. Don't ask if it's a good idea; ask if it's a winning idea. What Rufo understands is that part of winning is getting the media to talk about it. 

So when Rufo announces that X is his new strategy, he's just cutting to the chase, signaling the media to gather around and watch to see how this lands (rather than, say, checking to see if Rufo is actually full of shit). "Remember that time I made got everyone to freak out over critical race theory? Come watch me do the same thing over DEI!"

Rufo has adapted classic bullying tactics, a simple process. 

First, pick a target. Second, pick a thing to bully them about. Yes, that's the order. Kids in school are rarely targeted because of the subject of their bullying. The bully picks a target for any number of reasons, and then they look for a point of vulnerability and go after it. You don't get the bully to leave you alone by getting contacts so that he won't call you "Four Eyes" any more; he will simply switch to some other point of attack. Nor do you get him to stop by mounting a considered rational explanation of why glasses are reasonable and by the way, doesn't his best friend wear glasses, too?

The bully has targeted you for reasons of his own, maybe as simple as feeling that he can raise his own standing and acquire more power and attention if he knocks you down. And when he announces on the playground, "Watch me make this kid lick the swings," the crowd that he draws to watch are not there because they have strong feelings or thoughts about swing-licking, but because they want to see how this attempt to overpower someone else works out. 

Because bullying also involves the principle of the First Follower. The idea of the First Follower is that leaders don't really become leaders until the first person falls in behind them, encouraging the rest of the crowd to join in. 

Bullies need an audience. "Watch this," is a critical part of bullying language; imagine your bully announces "I'm going to go make him lick the swing" and everyone on the playground shrugs and ignores him. He would be done.

Chris Rufo says, "Hey, watch this. I am going to use charges of plagiarism to make Harvard lick the swing," and everyone comes running because they've allowed themselves to become convinced that if Rufo can pull this off, that's an Important Story, a horse race worthy of attention. Worse, now that they've fallen for his "Hey, watch this" for crt and transparency and DEI et al, they have to believe this is an important horse race because they've covered all his other horse races. 

Rufo's no genius, but he is patient. If his plagiarism hunt doesn't draw a crowd, he'll just throw something else at the wall, because sooner or later the press will show up again. I wish his confidence were misplaced.

FL: New Puritanism vs. An Old Puritan

The Orlando Sentinel took on the arduous task of rooting through the list of Naughty Books that Orange County Schools pulled from both libraries and classroom collections, in order to comply with new Florida laws HB 1069 and 1467) that seek to eradicate all books with "sexual conduct" and the list of 673 works is something else. 

The law requires media specialists to check every book and holds them responsible for every naughty book that gets past them. The state did offer some training, in which they reminded these specialists that they could face criminal penalties and loss of license if they approve an "inappropriate book."

As Florida has well-established, vague law + severe penalties = super-chilling effect. It is unsurprising that media specialists went hard against books that depict sexual conduct in any way shape and form. It has been the pattern across the state, like the district that yanked "In The Night Kitchen" because it has a picture of a little boy's bare butt (great book, in which Maurice Sendak pays homage to Winsor McKay's classic Little Nemo comic strip). Or the district that didn't even wait for books to be challenged, but just pulled them if they'd heard other districts had pulled them.

One of Orange County's board members is Alicia Farrant, who ran for office as an advocate for "medical choice, parental rights and restoring morality & standards." She's also a Moms For Liberty and Florida Freedom Keepers member, and she was on stage with Ron DeSantis when he signed HB 1467. On that occasion she spoke out fiercely against "pornographic and sexually explicit" books.

The problem, of course, is that Florida (and other states) have gone way beyond "pornographic and sexually explicit." Not only have they gone way beyond that, but they've done it in broad and vague terms then thrown in large penalties to encourage schools to pull a huge number of questionable choices.

Farrant herself criticized a school district's choice to yank "No, David!" by David Shannon.

“We can’t be living in a state of fear and removing every single book,” Farrant said. “I don’t like the book,” she said of “No, David!,” by David Shannon, “but a book like that shouldn’t be removed because a kid is running down the street with his butt showing.”

But that's pretty much what the law demands a school do. What does the law actually say? In 2023-105 we find that it's a school board's duty to provide every "parent or resident" the opportunity to "proffer evidence" that a work violates one of several strictures, including that it 

Depicts or describes sexual conduct as defined in s. 847.001(19),

 And 847.001(19) defines sexual conduct:

“Sexual conduct” means actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, or sadomasochistic abuse; actual or simulated lewd exhibition of the genitals; actual physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if such person is a female, breast with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of either party; or any act or conduct which constitutes sexual battery or simulates that sexual battery is being or will be committed. 

You'd think that would rule out "No, David," but would you be willing to bet your career that no parent or resident will come after you over the book? 

The rule aims right at Gender Queer, the book conservatives want to get rid of with fire. And it aims at popular fiction like John Green and Stephen King books. But it also takes us into a dicey grey area. Yes, East of Eden by John Steinbeck and The World According to Garp by John Irving both definitely have some sex in them, but it exists in service of the characters and the story. Yes, Toni Morrison books include sex, but none of it is titillating and all of it serves the work of literature. 

Slaughterhouse Five keeps turning up on these lists, though all it includes is a crude drawing of breasts and some reference to sex without depiction. And then these lists just get nuts. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Jude the Obscure? Brave New World? Ayn Rand's decidedly unappealing opaque depictions of hate sex? All on the list.

The fear-fueled vagaries of Florida law have taken us from "pornography" to "any depiction of sexual conduct" to "any book that depicts a world in which we are somehow led to believe that sex sometimes occurs."

But no book on this list better captures just how far off the deep end they've gone than John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton was born at the beginning of the 17th century (just as Shakespeare was shuffling off this mortal coil), which put him in the right place and time to be part of the great revolution, that moment in which conservative Protestants overthrew the monarchy and replaced it, eventually, with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector. Milton was a big fan, and his religious writings were aimed at the newly purified protectorate.

Short form: John Milton was an actual Puritan. The modern fans of puritanical suppression have suppressed an actual Puritan.

Is there sexual conduct in Paradise Lost? Well, yes. Here are some hot Adam and Eve samples. First, before The Fall:

Handed they went; and eased the putting off
Those troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused

Then, after The Fall:

Carnal desire enflaming; he on Eve

Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him

As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn

Till Adam thus ‘gan Eve to dalliance move

Pretty hot stuff. There's some other stuff as well. Satan has sex with himself, giving birth to Sin, who is raped by her son, Death. All in prose nearly impenetrable to the average high school student and all with the intent of explaining the ways of God to humankind. And all contributing to a minor message in the work, which is that sex without God is Bad Stuff. 

We could argue the various merits of these works all day and then spend the night questioning the goals of these sorts of laws. But these growing lists, with their increasingly absurd reach, are a reminder of one important factor.

It's never enough.

There will never be a point where these modern puritans will say, "Yes, that's good enough. We can stop trying to root out Naughty Books because I think we've done enough." They will never stop on their own, never be satisfied, never stop searching for the next Most Dirty Book that might be out there. To expect that they will simply subside is a pipe dream. As long as nobody is standing up to them or stopping them, they will simply keep whittling away (or creating situations in which someone else is motivated to whittle for them) until there is nothing left.