We Need to Talk About This
In this episode I talk about political and corporate influences that we need to talk about as a field.
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Discourse over the past couple of years
in the United States reminds me of a
quote from Martin niemuller that I'd
like to reword for what I see going on
in the education system first that came
for black lives matter activists and I
did not speak out because I was not
black then they came from pedagogies
that was informed by critical race
Theory and I did not speak out because I
had not read critical race Theory then
they came for the trans and queer
communities and I did not speak out
because I was not trans or queer then
they came for me and there was no one
left to speak for me to be clear I don't
think we're approaching the atrocities
that occurred during the Holocaust that
led to the original quote that I'm
rewording so I don't want to downplay
any historical atrocities but I do fear
that people who are remaining silent
about policies discourse and hegemonic
influence over Computer Science
Education will one day get to a point
where they realize they should have
spoken up sooner Educators in recent
years have been punished for their
identities or ways of being such as
being gay or trans as well as for
teaching about historical injustices
that have occurred and continue to occur
as a result of systemic barriers and now
for advocating for diversity Equity or
inclusion here's a quote from Recently
signed legislation that will have a
profound impact on education in Florida
quote a Florida college system
institution State University Florida
college system institution direct
support organization or State University
direct support organization may not
expend any state or federal funds to
promote support or maintain any programs
or campus activities that a violate
s.1000.05 or B advocate for diversity
equity and inclusion or promote or
engage in political or social activism
as defined by rules of the State Board
of Education and regulations of the
Board of Governors end quote as lines
this in the show notes at
jarrodolary.com now this proposed
legislation is for higher education but
my guess is that K-12 is next there's a
link in the show notes at jaredolary.com
with a curated list of more than 30
anti-deeia bills that are being proposed
or have been passed in different states
across the United States regardless of
where this kind of legislation would
occur how do you teach ethics or
algorithmic bias in Computing without
advocating for Equity how do you talk
about accessible Computing practices
without advocating for inclusion you
just avoid certain words when talking
about these topics for example some CS
educators are using the word different
instead of the word diverse but what
about pedagogies am I able to use
culturally relevant pedagogies if I just
call it something else is all of this
just a new form of censorship if so they
might be able to censor the language
without censoring the work but that
doesn't mean it won't have a profoundly
negative impact on Educators who are
already marginalized and have enough
forms of Oppression to try and manage
how to solve this trickle down and
impact the students that we work with so
for example I'd mentioned on this
podcast the story of a middle school
student who came up to me and was like
hey is it okay if I create a scratch
story about two people who are in love I
was like yeah that sounds great nothing
wrong with that student was like yeah
but what if it's like two boys that are
in love with each other and it's like
yeah that's like not a problem and like
yeah but what about administrators like
are they gonna get mad at me because at
the time there's a law in Arizona that
said that teachers could not promote the
quote homosexual lifestyle and so this
student was afraid that they're going to
have some backlash because of the
trickle-down of policies like that even
though I told the student like hey my
wife and I are both in the queer
Community I support you 100 through this
if anything comes of this I will back
you up the student decided not to do
that project because they are afraid of
the backlash this has an impact of
minimizing who people are and that's a
problem this kind of legislation and
censorship is also having an impact on
computer science professional
development and curriculum providers so
some PD providers are not changing what
they're doing so they give a caveat that
if a teacher needs to leave they can so
that way the teacher doesn't get in
trouble for attending some professional
development that has prohibited content
in it other PD providers are simply
removing deia content from their PD in
states with anti-deeia laws if they
aren't removing the content entirely
they are leaving it up to the PD
facilitator to determine whether or not
they want to leave the content in the PD
this to me reads as an example of a very
large organization with immense
political power washing their hands of
this problem and saying it's up to you
as a lone individual to determine
whether you want to risk teaching this
kind of content and because this very
large organization is making it
abundantly clear that they're trying to
comply with local laws and that they
don't want to get in trouble if the
individual chooses to provide PD on
content that is now labeled as optional
it means that lone individuals are
having to stand up for what they might
consider to be right without the backing
of a very large organization the
rationale that has been communicated by
this organization and by some teachers
is that they'd rather have CS that
doesn't focus on deia than no CS at all
while I agree that something is better
than nothing the sentiment should not
end with a period but with a comma that
says no deia and CS education is better
than no CS at all comma but we're going
to continue to fight for what's right
and change these policies imagine if
civil rights activists had said
segregation in schools is better than no
education at all the idea that something
is better than nothing doesn't mean we
should fight for what's right and to get
personal here it's not a far cry to
think that someone might try to ban the
curricular content I previously created
that has been used by hundreds of
thousands of students around the world
because I'm public about being
non-binary and therefore instructional
videos created by someone in the trans
Community should be banned because they
don't want to confuse kids to be
abundantly clear the only thing I'm
confused about is why people can't
accept that other people's lived
experiences realities or ontologies are
different than their own why should
someone like myself be silenced because
you're uncomfortable with my existence
how can Educators organizations Etc
rally together to say this is
unacceptable it's a shame that
organizations have felt the need to bend
to this kind of pressure but we are
stronger when we unite as a field or
even partner with other education
associations and organizations to say
we're tired of politicians who have
never taught a day in their life
dictating what is best for teaching and
learning unfortunately it's not just
policy makers who are having a negative
impact on teaching and learning but
large funders of non-profit
organizations I mentioned this in
episode 192 which is titled how to get
started in computer science education
but I know of several organizations who
have privately shared with me that a
corporate funder gave their organization
money that originally had no strings
attached to it but were later asked to
make changes that altered the quality of
the PD or curricula so the funder could
say they impacted more students and
teachers or because the funder did not
want to fund Equity related content I
know it's easy for me to say don't
accept this kind of funding because I no
longer work for an organization that's
dependent on that funding but it's the
same stance that I had when I was
working at one as one person that I know
said I'd rather say no to 10 million
dollars from a single funder who wants
to change the scope or quality of our
mission and instead find 10 donors who
each provide a million dollars without
asking us to change the quality or scope
of our mission this episode was way more
political than I've gotten before on
this podcast and was much more scripted
than usual because I've created enough
unscripted content to know that people
can wildly misinterpret what I'm trying
to communicate if you didn't enjoy this
particular episode there are nearly 200
more podcast episodes that don't focus
on politics but I genuinely feel that
this is an important topic that we need
to discuss as a field because if the PD
and curriculum providers are scared how
do you think individual Educators feel
right now if you do enjoy this podcast
or any of the free content that I create
like the scratch videos on my YouTube
channel the only thing that I ask is
that you share it with somebody else who
might enjoy that content I also create a
bunch of drumming and gaming stuff it's
all at jaredolary.com if you're
interested in any of that thank you so
much for listening to this episode stay
tuned for an episode next week until
then I hope you're all staying safe and
are having a wonderful week
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
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In this episode I unpack Coppola’s (2021) publication titled “What if Freire had Facebook? A critical interrogation of social media woke culture among privileged voices in music education discourse,” which summarizes Paulo Freire’s works and hypothesizes how Freire may have responded to some forms of woke culture.
Read the proposed legislation in Florida (lines 309-318 are what I quoted)
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