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Since the late 2010s, a wave of state laws has reshaped how schools can teach about race and racism in U.S. history. This legislative push has been coupled with a surge in book bans on a range of controversial topics, including books about race and racism or featuring Black characters. According to a recent RAND survey, two-thirds of U.S. teachers have chosen to limit their instruction about political and social issues of all kinds in the classroom.

But people like Kaya Henderson are finding creative workarounds. Henderson, a FutureEd senior fellow, is the CEO of Reconstruction, a curriculum and technology company that offers supplemental materials inAfrican American history and culture.She began her career teaching middle school Spanish with Teach for America, where she rose to the position of executive director for TFAs Washington, D.C. program. During her tenure as chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, the system saw the greatest growth of any urban district on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) over multiple years.

FutureEd Editorial Director Maureen Kelleher recently spoke with Henderson about the origins of Reconstruction and how current political dynamics are affecting the response to curriculum focused on Black history and culture. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you launch the company?

We launched Reconstruction for a few reasons. First of all, it came directly out of my work at DC Public Schools, where we instituted a district-wide curriculum.One of the key priorities for us was to make sure that our students saw themselves and their community in the things that they were learning. That was new. What we saw as a result was kids deeply engaging in the content of their academic work. We saw academic progress soaring. We saw confidence soaring, leadership soaring, agency, all of these things. Quite frankly, I could not put enough culturally-relevant content into the curriculum because we only have seven and a half hours and 180 days.

I had thought for a long time about the fact that I grew up in a pretty diverse community where my Jewish friends went to Hebrew school. My Chinese friends went to Chinese school. My Sikh friends went to Sikh camp. And these other cultures that didnt wait for school to teach their kids their history and their culture, but actually took it upon themselves to do it, reminded me of our African-American traditions around citizenship schools right after the Civil War, freedom schools in the 60s, and Sunday school and how our churches often teach Black history and Black culture.

I thought, What would it look like to take this offline, out of school, stop trying to fit it into the school box, and think about what it might look like to create supplemental classes that kids could take?We ended up starting this in the middle of the pandemic, and there was a real hunger for academics online when schools were closed.

So we developed a number of hardcore classes, you know, reading, writing, arithmetic, science and social studies classes, but also cultural classes like Cooking for the Soul, where kids learn the history of five soul food dishes and then learn to cook those dishes with a chef from New Orleans.Or games of the culture like spades and dominoes, or the history of step, which is a dance that originates with South African gumboot dancing and draws a thread all the way through to historically Black colleges and universities.

Oftentimes, when we think about African-American history, we think about enslavement, civil rights, and Obama. It was really important for us to help our young people understand that there was a super-incredible period of history called Reconstruction, which is the least-taught period in American history.

In the 12 years immediately after the Emancipation, the African-American community thrived in the United States. We owned more than 20 percent of the farmlandowned, not sharecropped or rented. We created our own businesses, banks, and insurance companies in communities all over the country. We founded 37 historically black colleges and universities. We founded over 5,000 community schools. Yet and still, were told that were a culture that doesnt value education.

You know, more than 500,000 black men voted in the presidential election which elected Ulysses S. Grant president, and he only won with 300,000 votes. People tell us that our vote doesnt count; it always has counted. We wanted our young people to have a touchpoint where they understand that weve experienced success, not just in Africa, but weve experienced success here.

We wanted to anchor the teaching of historyReconstruction, and beyondin Black excellence, in Black joy. Not in Black trauma, not in a deficit-based perspective, but to really pull through the values that make us proud as a people and have made us successful, frankly, against the odds. And we wanted to teach that to our young people. So thats why we founded Reconstruction.

As you mentioned, you launched during the pandemic, when there was tremendous demand for quality educational content online. Im curious how your customer base, your target audience, has developed since your launch. Who are you reaching and how do you get to them?

Its interesting. We thought when we started that our customers would be parents and families; that like Hebrew school, families would elect to take Reconstruction classes.

It ended up, straight out the gate, being schools. I think part of that is because I went to a number of my superintendent friends, having formerly been a superintendent, and said, How do I get this opportunity out to parents in your districts? And they said, Well pay for our kids to get on Reconstruction. Because, one, they were looking for academic content online because many of their teachers werent able to provide it straight away.

But they were also looking for enrichment and things to engage young people. If you remember, young people were deeply dissatisfied with online learning. When we started, we werent even sure that kids would be willing to take classes online. And when we were teaching spades or dominoes or Black Shakespeare or whatever, kids really just glommed onto this. We watched kids get into these Zoom rooms that look just like their regular classrooms, right, but engage at a completely different level because we create a space of belonging, because the content is different, because we try to make it feel not like school, and we saw kids really be into it.

I think over time, a couple of things have happened. One is people just are tired of being online, and we are back outside. So we have tremendous, tremendous pressure from our clients to teach our classes in person.

We are experimenting. Were a super-small shop, right? So the thought of going to a bunch of different places and running programs is a lot for us. But part of the way that we have dealt with that is to begin to license our curriculum for teachers to teach in districts.

Because were supplemental, people use us in their summer school programs. They use us in their after-school programs. They use us for electives and enrichment. And so it is fairly easy for us to share our lesson plans, our unit plans, and to train other people how to teach lessons the way we do.

We run programs year-round in Jackson, Mississippi, in person. Weve learned a lot from that, and thats been really incredible to be able to see and touch kids and teachers in a way that we dont usually. So one change is more demand for in-person engagement. The second thing that has changed since we started is the culture wars.

Right. What are you seeing, and how is it affecting your business?

We see hostility towards the teaching of accurate history and culture. We see states banning conversations about race and diversity. We see legislation that forbids teachersunder penalty of losing their jobs and their licensesfrom teaching complex and complicated pieces of our history and culture.

On the one hand, it means that we cant operate in some schools, right? We cant operate in schools in Florida without endangering peoples jobs and livelihoods. And thats not what we want to do at all.

But because we have a flexible format, it also means that in churches, Boys and Girls Clubs, or Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or community-based organizations, we actually can operate. So we see demand coming from community-based organizations in places where you cant teach our curriculum in schools. Now its just very clear that it is important for us to teach our own history, our own culture. So theyre finding other ways to do that.

I think on the other hand, there are lots of places where there is still deep commitment to teaching accurate history, to exposing kids to the kind of content that we have. And so Im not fighting to be in places that dont want me. I just go with the coalition of the willing. There are lots of areas around the country that still want to engage in this type of learning. So we find those people.

I think the other piece that has insulated us a little bit is we are in the supplemental space. Im not fighting with school board members about what should be in the core, right?

When we first started Reconstruction, before the culture wars started, my business partner said to me, Oh, my God, this content is so good. It has to be taught during the school day.

And I said, No way. There will always be a school board member who thinks that this is not important, this is not what kids should be learning. I dont want to fight those fights.Nobody really cares about what happens in after-school or summer school as long as kids are engaged and learning. So lets stay in the supplemental space.

People ask me, Are people attacking you? Do you get death threats? Nobody is paying attention to Reconstruction because were positioned in a way that doesnt force anybody to learn this.

If you dont want to learn this, go do your thing. Thats great. But many people do, and not just African American families. Yes, we serve schools and school districts with heavy populations of African Americans. But we serve all kinds of folks who have said to us, This has helped us open up a conversation about our Mexican heritage, or This has helped me be able to tell kids our stories about our Lebanese heritage.

While the culture wars have been heating up and playing out in school boards, a lot of the same school districts now have ESAs and ways that parents have direct control over money that they want to spend on their childrens education. Has any of that come back to Reconstruction? Are folks coming to get it?

Not yet, but I think it will. Were looking into the ESA markets. They arent places where weve usually worked before. Were beginning to market in those places. But I would expect that parents will use their ESA dollars to leverage opportunities like Reconstruction.

Lets talk a little bit more about what makes Reconstructions curriculum and learning experience different. For example, tell me about your Black Shakespeare class.

Black Shakespeare is an awesome class. We created that curriculum in partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library here in Washington, D.C. It actually won the American Shakespeare Associations Public Award. Were super-proud of that.

One of the super-cool things about Reconstruction is we can dream up anything that we want. I have a former colleague who runs the education program at the Folger, and I called her up and said, We should have a Black Shakespeare class.

She said, What is that?

And I said, I dont know. But it seems to me that if we can get African-American kids to understand that Shakespeare is relevant for us, if we can give them a positive black encounter with Shakespeare before they get to school, maybe he wont be some crusty old white dude who doesnt speak the language that kids speak. Maybe they will be able to engage in a different way.

So they took that on with us as a partner, and we co-created these five classes which look at Othello and the Merchant of Venice and Titus Andronicus and a couple more. For example, in Othello, one of the threads explored is: who are the people who have played Othello? Othello is a Moor, he is an African. And when we look at the history of actors who have played Othello, it is everything from white actors to Black actors. And what does that mean? And you know what does blackface mean and all of these kinds of things?

You cant do that in school, right? We dont have the time. But academicians at colleges and universities who studied Shakespeare and race collaborated with my curriculum team and together, they came up with these five classes that are our Black Shakespeare series.

Reconstruction offers supplemental classes. Theyre not formally graded. What are you hoping that students take away from the classes?

Theres not a formal evaluation, but the students going to walk out differently at the end than they were in the beginning. We want kids to feel like they learned something and had a good time.And our student satisfaction scores are like a 4.7 out of 5. And we see kids asking to take more Reconstruction classes.So that feels very good, right? We want kids to really enjoy and to learn.

We also want kids to have a different perspective about themselves and about African American culture. We want young people to think critically and to question when you know they hear things that dont make sense to them based on stuff that theyve learned. We hope that it incites intellectualism and continued pursuit of learning. We want our young people to also feel a sense of agency and responsibility. We want them to feel like, Oh, yeah, it is up to us to be the ones to make the changes in our community. Because historically, thats what has happened.

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Q&A: Kaya Henderson on Teaching Black History During the Culture Wars - Future-Ed

Wanted: Highly trained educator willing to be used as cannon fodder in the culture wars.

That presumably wont be how the Wentzville School District advertises to replace its second lost superintendent in two years but its a reasonable prediction for what awaits the eventual successor to Superintendent Danielle Tormala.

Tormalas surprise resignation announcement last week is the latest example of the damage the political right is doing to education in its zeal to make school board meetings and classrooms into platforms for their ideological extremism.

This time, the cost is literal: Tormalas eye-popping $1 million contract buyout indicates the district fears she would have a potentially more expensive legal cause of action for having been essentially hounded out of her job by the toxic politics swirling around the school board.

The Wentzville district, one of Missouris largest, has been buffeted in the past few years by the populist movement that swept the nations school board meetings and elections when schools resumed in-person classroom instruction after the pandemic.

As districts tried to navigate the subsequent COVID resurgences with medically reasonable mask and vaccination policies, right-wing activists dug in with opposition to such precautions. From meeting audiences and, increasingly, from seats on the boards themselves, they also ramped up efforts to ban books and scrub classroom curriculum dealing with race or gender.

For school district leaders, it created a whole new set of necessary skills. Former Wentzville Superintendent Curtis Cain was so unflappable even when people are screaming and yelling, one high school principal in the district told the National Conference on Education in 2022, the year Cain was named National Superintendent of the Year.

That was Cains last year with the Wentzville district. Not long before he left to become superintendent at the Rockwood School District, he had watched the Wentzville School Board refuse his recommendation to require masks in any schools that hit a 3% COVID positivity rate a rational recommendation based in part on the districts problems keeping classrooms staffed due to infections.

The school board during Cains tenure also embarked on a book-banning binge that included the literary classic The Bluest Eye, which is about the societal effects of racism. That book was returned to school library shelves only after a lawsuit by students.

The culture-war friction has continued during Tormalas tenure, which began later in 2022.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has sued the district for allegedly violating the state Sunshine Law by discussing transgender bathroom policies in a closed meeting. While open meetings are important, Baileys inordinate focus on that one was, as usual, less about doing his job than preening for the right-wing base.

As the Post-Dispatchs Blythe Bernhard has reported, Tormalas tenure has seen police being called to a high school to investigate books and the resignations of three of the districts four librarians. A petition drive called for her ouster, based on the ironic allegation that she had created a hostile environment for conservative board members and parents.

Its clear her infraction was saying things at board meetings like, The terms diversity, equity and inclusion cannot be dirty words in this district. Former state Sen. Bob Onder, now a Republican congressional candidate, took to social media to lambast Tormala as wokester apparently the ultimate insult in his world.

While Tormalas official explanation last week for taking an immediate sabbatical and then leaving at the end of the school year was appropriately diplomatic and vague, its not hard to read between the lines.

As the St. Charles County NAACP put in a statement, her efforts to work with community leaders and stakeholders who advocate for a safe and equitable education for all students and fair treatment of staff was met with vitriol and harassment from a very vocal minority of patrons in the district for the last two years.

This is a pattern, the group wrote, that began with the previous superintendent of this district and there doesnt appear to be an end in sight.

Thankfully, thats not entirely true.

As we noted earlier this month, the sweeping defeats of right-wing school board candidates throughout the St. Louis region (including in Wentzville) in the April 2 elections was an encouraging sign.

It could be that parents and the public are finally tired of school board meetings that feel like MAGA rallies that theyre ready to get back to the business of educating kids instead of using them as political props. The question is, how many more good educators will be driven out in the meantime.

Tamara King-Krolik addresses the Wentzville school board on Oct. 19 about racist incidents in school and systemic racism in the district. Superintendent Danielle Tormala responds with an apology and review of ongoing work to address issues. Video edited by Beth O'Malley

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Editorial: Wentzville superintendent is the latest to exit the culture-war battlefield - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 10 months since Crazy Plane Lady Tiffany Gomas burst onto the internet and into America's heart:

... and possibly into the Barstool family; I still have no idea:

And while it pains me to say it, in spite of the addition of Tiffany to our popular culture, it's been a very rough time in America. A vast Culture War that was already raging has only grown worse. The divide has only gotten wider. With civil unrest everywhere. Public squares and campuses alike have been plunged into turmoil. Seeds of distrust sewn in the body politic have taken root and sprouted. There seemingly is nothing so benign that we cannot go fight over it. Every aspect of our lives is a battleground. Music. Movies. Stand up comedy. Holidays. Sports. Even beer.

Which brings me back, almost an entire paragraph later, to Tiffany Gomas. Thank goodness. That was too long to be away. It appears that she is unwilling to simply sit on the sidelines and leave the fighting to others in these conflicts. She is suiting up, coming off the bench, and wants the ball in her hands. And whether you agree with her stances or not, I hope you'll see this as a good thing. As I will explain in a moment:

NY Post - Texas crazy plane lady has now refashioned herself as a flesh-bearing right wing influencer.

Tiffany Gomas, a real estate developer who went viral after a public meltdown on an American Airlines flight last posted a revealing photo on X of herself in a shrimpy bikini holding a can of the aptly named Ultra Right Beer.

The brand describes itself as 100% woke-free American beer.

Wonder how many people Im gonna piss off with this post she warned in the post which has now been viewed by nearly 8 million people. So is now an appropriate time to tell yall men dont belong in womens sports?!

The post suggests Gomas is looking to mine additional relevancy by tapping into American culture wars.

Now please bear with me, because I truly believe that what I'm about to say is important to the future of our republic. What's important here is not what you think of the beer Gomas is drinking or her opinion about women's sports. For all I know, that stuff she's drinking tastes like it was brewed with hops, barley, and soiled diapers. And who gets to compete in women's sports is obviously one of the most divisive issues of our times. What truly matters here is not what the Crazy Plane Lady says. It's that she's the one saying it.

I'm a big believer in the Aristotle quote, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." I'm also a big believer in the Great Man (or Woman) theory of history, which states most of history can be explained by the influence of leadership figures. Ones who often appear to rise to power out of nowhere and lead their people to success.

That, my friends, is Tiffany Gomas.

What other figure is so capable of bridging the great divide in our country and bringing us together? To prove that you can have a disagreement about major issues like whether your beer is Alt Right or Far Left, without being disagreeable? That we're all capable of respecting one another's opinions, even when we don't share them?

There is no one who doesn't appreciate and admire Tiffany Gomas. She may be the one person about which we all share a consensus opinion. And in a land where we're all so prone to "othering" those we disagree with, she can teach us by her example that the other side are not simply monsters we can never see eye-to-eye with. (That is, except for the motherfuckers in the rear of our airliners who are not real. We'll never be able to get along with them.) As the bumper stickers on all the Subaru Outbacks remind us, we all need to COEXIST. And as long as it's Tiffany in a patriotic-themed bathing suit delivering the message, it's one we can all get behind.

So while I'll be toasting you with a local New England IPA, I'm raising a glass to you nevertheless, Tiffany. Cheers.

Original post:
'Crazy Plane Lady' Tiffany Gomas Has Begun Weighing in on America's Culture War and We'll Be Better for It - Barstool Sports

The UK Labour Party has set out its plan for the film and TV industries, drawing a dividing line between itself and the ruling Conservatives as it slams the government for getting themselves all tied up in culture wars of their own making and failing to support a pipeline of talent.

Delivering her first major set-piece at the Creative Cities Convention, Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire said she will not be fighting culture wars but instead will focus on arts and culture being central to Labours Phase One plan if it gets into office. Her boss, Labour leader Keir Starmer, is plotting a decade of national renewal in Britain. The election is expected later this year and Labour is currently sitting around 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.

Debbonaire set out Labours position in thorny areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), the BBC and the ailing freelance workforce.

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I Will Not Be Fighting Culture Wars: UK Shadow Culture Secretary Seeks To Draw Dividing Line Between Labour & ... - imdb

Democracy in America is in crisis. So begins James Davison Hunters new book Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of Americas Political Crisis. Few readers would disagree with his assertion.

Amid the crisis, American Christians have rediscovered political theology. From Catholic integralism to post-liberalism to Christian nationalism, were awash in proposals for a new political future. But Hunter first wants us to reassess our present problem. In his telling, our primary challenges are cultural, not political.

Contrary to the voices on both left and right who assert our troubled democracy can be repaired through political will and smart public policy, Hunter argues the problem is deeper: We no longer have the cultural resources to work through what divides us (18). If his reasoning is correct, our societal illness is more advanced and our moment more urgent than we realize.

Is there a future for liberal democracy? Perhaps not. But if there is, it lies along the path of repairing and rebuilding our cultures deep structures.

Yale University Press. 504 pp.

James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of culture wars thirty years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force.

Yale University Press. 504 pp.

As his books title suggests, Hunter frames the problem of modern democracy in terms of solidarity. We tend to think of solidarity as the willingness to come together with other people. But Hunter argues that solidarity . . . is about the cultural preconditions and the normative sources that make coming together possible in the first place (xii). Hes not arguing Americans dont want to come together. Hes arguing weve lost the cultural resources that make coming together possible.

Hes not arguing Americans dont want to come together. Hes arguing weve lost the cultural resources that make coming together possible.

Hunter is one of Americas most eminent sociologists. Since 1983, hes held a teaching post at the University of Virginia, and in 1995, he founded the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the same institution. Like his mentor Peter Berger, hes taken a keen interest in the problem of moral order. His 1991 book Culture Wars catapulted that term into our national consciousness, and his 2010 work To Change the World was the most provocative analysis of Christian cultural engagement since Niebuhrs Christ and Culture. Democracy and Solidarity applies his trademark emphasis on the deep structures of culture to our failing political ecosystem.

Americas motto is e pluribus unum, out of many, one. How much pluribus is allowed within the unum? And how do the boundaries of the unum work against the pluribus? These questions have been repeatedly confronted during our national history, and our ability to work through them has made American democracy resilient. But the cultural framework that has underwritten our ability to cooperate is beginning to unravel. Hunter writes,

For quite some time, the culture that has underwritten liberal democracy in America (and in Europe too) has been unraveling. The cultural sources that made it possible in the first place have, in the most elemental ways, dissolved, and all of the efforts to reconfigure and revivify those cultural sources over the decades . . . have [failed]. (49)

American Christians have a bad habit of fixating on culture-war issues at a surface level. Hunters analysis takes us deeper, inviting us to see the erosion of our frameworks for meaning. Once, we shared a background consensus about issues of knowledge, purpose, and ethics. The loss of those shared ideals is the real story underneath our political polarization.

We can summarize Hunters story about the decay of American democracy in five basic movements.

This is Hunters term for the unique recipe of ideas that birthed American democracy. The British and Scottish Enlightenment, the classical natural-law tradition, Greek and Roman republicanism, Protestant Calvinism, and Puritan millennialism all melded together in a lively and evolving syncretism. These are the ideals weve been fighting over ever since, and theyre the basis for our cultural solidarity.

Hunter deploys the concept of working through (borrowed from the field of psychiatry) to describe the dynamics by which cultures work through their contradictions historically and sociologically (28). For example, America was founded on the premise that all people are created equal. In practice, weve never lived up to that vision. Our national history is the story of how weve tried to work through that contradiction to achieve solidarity.

In our disagreements about social and political issues, Americans have always shared a cultural logic that allowed us to make sense of our differences and argue meaningfully about them. But the cultural logic of liberal democracy, rooted in hybrid-Enlightenment ideals, has gradually been supplanted by the cultural logic of nihilism:

Critique and blame are totalizing. Nuance and complexity are minimized. . . . Every group defines itself against some other group, the net effect of which is the destruction of common life. (335)

The surface-level dysfunction in our society is merely a symptom. The real problem is a fracture in the deep structures of our culture: our assumptions about metaphysics (what is real), epistemology (how we know), anthropology (what is a human), ethics (how humans should act), and teleology (what it all means). Hunter writes, American public life is divided . . . not only in its vocabulary, but in its premises about what is real and true and how we know these things, about what is right and just, and about what the nation is and what it should be (324).

Late-stage democracy has suffered a great unraveling; were facing societal exhaustion. The hybrid-Enlightenment ideals that once united us have lost their force. Our cultural resources for working through differences have been depleted. Both left and right have abandoned the pursuit of solidarity through persuasion or compromise. This unraveling didnt happen overnight; theres a history here, and Hunter spends the bulk of his book walking the reader through it. But the result is a weakening of liberal democracys cultural infrastructure (292).

For Hunter, the key to the issue isnt the past; its the present. His discussion of current conditions will most benefit the patient reader. Hunter sees the same things you see: political polarization, identity politics, authoritarian impulses on the right and left, a media environment that rewards outrage, a public culture of anger and victimhood. As youd expect from much of Hunters earlier work, it doesnt lend itself to direct practical application. But if youve followed his argument thus far, he hopes youll begin to see these realities in a different light.

Both left and right have abandoned the pursuit of solidarity through persuasion or compromise.

And that, it seems, is Hunters project. He wants us to attend to the cultural roots of Americas political crisis (as the books subtitle states). Without minimizing the important role of law and public policy, Hunter wants to elevate our attentiveness to the health (or unhealth) of our public culture.

Instead of being co-opted into the culture wars, thoughtful Christians have an opportunity to rehabilitate the deep structures of American culture. But well only give ourselves to that work if we reject the logic of nihilism and embrace the possibility of a common good.

Hunters hopestated briefly in a coda that follows the last chapteris for a paradigm shift within liberal democracy itself that would lead to a reinvigorated liberalism. Im more inclined to surmise liberalism has run its course and that our future lies in a more post-liberal direction. But even where I disagree with his solutions, Im provoked by Hunters analysis of the problem.

Democracy and Solidarity offers a trenchant examination of our cultural rupture thats alarming, informative, and interesting. Its a book well be arguing about for years to come.

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Review: 'Democracy and Solidarity' by James Davison Hunter - The Gospel Coalition