THOMPSON’S STATION, Tennessee — Several hundred people gathered Tuesday night to complain that a particular curriculum dubbed, “Wit and Wisdom,” is dark and divisive and, overall, robs Williamson County elementary students of their innocence.
WCS Board Member Dan Cash presided over Tuesday’s meeting, which he held at Thompson’s Station Church.
Parents complained school administrators require their elementary-school children to read books that contain themes of racism, segregation, infidelity, suicide, rape, scalping, and the murder of naked women and children in the middle of the street.
“Everything is so dark. Everything is looking to the negative. This negativity in the curriculum has got to wear on these children,” Cash told the audience.
“The next thing you know they [students] are negative about their country. They are negative about other children. We need for people to come together and go forward. That is where I am at.”
Cash cited a book about Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to desegregate a school in New Orleans in 1960. The book contains illustrations depicting that real-life event. Second-grade WCS students read the book.
“Students are told to look at all the pictures, and then they have conversations about the book,” Cash said.
“A lot of kids are seeing evil and mean faces, and they are coming away with a different point of view in some cases.”
Fourth-graders, WCS parents said, read books that contain violent content inappropriate for that age group, including a book titled Hatchet and another titled George vs. George.
Cash said such books are more appropriate for middle school students.
One woman, who did not identify herself, told Cash that elementary school students need not learn about “day-by-day stuff that is going on in our world and what adults deal with.”
“Just teach them grammar, punctuation, reading and writing. That … comes when children are older and their brains are big enough to comprehend it,” the woman said.
The same woman later said teachers introduce other inappropriate topics into their classrooms.
“When a child comes home from school and tells me that they know which way their teacher stands politically then there is a problem,” the woman said.
“How about we just do reading, writing, and arithmetic, and you leave your politics at home? You are here to teach our child how to live in this life, to be able to read, to be able to do math and to learn about the world. Nothing more than that.”
Two other women in the audience — who said they teach professionally — defended the WCS curriculum. One said Ruby Bridges was six-years-old when she desegregated the New Orleans’ school. Second-grade students can therefore relate to her, the woman said. Another teacher said the curriculum prompted her and her young daughter to have “a wonderful discussion about the variety of different people in the United States and how things are better and how things need to improve.”
Cash, meanwhile, said he plans to broach these topics with his school board colleagues at the next work session, scheduled for May 13.
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Just like in Hamilton county the teacher union dumps dollars into the campaigns of liberal elites. Get your kids out!
wtf is going on in WilCo?
is it all the california transplants influencing what the school system teaches?
reading. writing. math.
Mikey,
Here’s what’s going on in WilCo and elsewhere in the country. The ideologues in the Departments of Ed. are writing and approving teaching materials and receiving their marching orders from Fed. Ed. Then, the chamber of commies (in WilCo) is only funding campaigns for leftist ideologues, ensuring that the school board is populated with fellow leftists who will goose-step accordingly. If any of these educrats steps out of line, or shows any common sense, they are called “racist,” etc., and demeaned to the point of quitting or defeat. When parents stand against them, they deny, deny, deny, and continue with their demented and harmful inaction which destroys children and their future. So, the short answer is, leftists love money more than they care about and love their children and America!
Actually this is what happens when a bunch of liberal money forms a group to back a bunch of liberal candidates for the school board. Many parents are blind to the fact the liberals are indoctrinating elementary kids with this garbage and believe that they are getting educated not indoctrinated. But, of course, test results in reading, writing and arithmetic prove conclusively that teachers are not teaching these skills. And now O’Biden wants to take the 3 and 4 year old kids and force them to learn this stuff before they can think for themselves at all. And some people are so greedy to get “free” child care that they will be all for it. This stuff is down right scary.
It could be
House rich Kali libs
They are a scourge ….not all are libs to be fair but most of the forced transfers are
Some are refugees from the kraziness but just give the rest time
Our southern heritage will be on their menu soon enough trust me
They will pay one million for a 2500 square foot prairie style pre war bungalow near downtown Franklin but are too daft to realize our history here is what defines us
Leftist cultural marxists like #williamsonstrong live to infect school boards and since few have real jobs they have plenty of time to spread their disease and they love to do it to school systems even in a 70% GOPe county like ours….our school board does not represent us