In the third episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we take a look at a few of the recent court cases that impact teacher’s freedom of speech, like Kennedy v. Bremerton and Kluge vs. Brownsberg. Our host Justin Reich talks with Derek Black, Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, Brock Boone, senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sara O'Brien, researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Special thanks to our friends at Learning for Justice, and the Justice in Schools team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for their collaboration on this work.
In the third episode of our new series, Teacher Speech and the New Divide, we take a look at a few of the recent court cases that impact teacher’s freedom of speech, like Kennedy v. Bremerton and Kluge vs. Brownsberg.
Our host Justin Reich talks with Derek Black, Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, Brock Boone, senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sara O'Brien, researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Special thanks to our friends at Learning for Justice, and the Justice in Schools team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for their collaboration on this work.
Resources and Links
Take our course on supporting youth activism at www.youthinfront.org
Pre-Order Justin Reich’s new book Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools at www.iteratebook.com
Watch our documentary film We Have to Do Something Different
Transcript
https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/teacher-speech-e3/transcript
Credits
Host Justin Reich
Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley
Recorded and Mixed by Garrett Beazley
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Brock Boone: When it comes to the chilling of speech, it doesn't, you don't really need an enforcement action because you're, the, the injury is occurring already, right? The, the act of censoring yourself means the law is working like it was intended. So your injury is already there. So what we're seeing a lot of is that these laws are working like they're intended to work, which is that teachers are self-censoring themselves. So what that means is they still, in our opinion, have an injury, which is the, the chilling of their speech. But that's something that the courts and the attorneys are trying to argue over in brief, extensively, which is legal standing. And then also like the rights of teachers to assert their, the fact that they had been chilled in the classroom.
Justin Reich: From the MIT studios of the Teaching Systems Lab, I'm Justin Reich, and this is Teach Lab, a podcast about the art and craft of teaching.
This is the third episode in our series on teacher speech and the new divide. We're talking about divisive concept laws, book bans the legal history of teacher speech, the jurisprudence around teacher speech. We're talking with teachers who've had to change their practice, who've lost their jobs because of new culture around teacher speech, because of new divisive concept laws. If you haven't listened to our first two episodes in the series, you might wanna jump back and enjoy those first, and then we're gonna dive into another conversation today about the many of those sort of recent court cases that are affecting our understanding of teacher speech in the new divide. So to help us do that today, our first guest is Professor Derek Black. Derek is a professor of law and the Earnest f Hollings Chair in Constitutional law at the University of South Carolina School of Law.
He also directs the Law School's Constitutional Law Center, and he focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and public education, which is right where we're at today. He's the author of a leading education Law case book, education, law, equality, fairness, and Reform. And he's written two other books aimed at wider audiences, schoolhouse burning public education in the assault on American democracy, and ending zero tolerance. Derek's work has been cited by federal courts and various briefs before the US Supreme Court, and he's often an expert witness for cases related to education. So we thought he'd be a great person to speak with us about what's happening today with teacher speech and the new divide. Derek, welcome to Teach Lab.
Derek Black: Hi, thanks for having me on.
Justin Reich: You are an education law expert, and I'm excited to hear how you got interested in education law.
Derek Black: Well, that's a long story, and I, you know, we've got so much time. I'll, I'll give you the shortest version of it, which is that, you know, I grew up in a town that had been part of the early of school desegregation in Clinton, Tennessee. And in fact, that town had one of its schools bombed during desegregation. That that all preceded me. But there was history left over in that place, and I never quite fully understood that history until I got to college. But, you know, as I began to age and learn a few more things, I really began to understand how instrumental public education was in, in my life. And I think as I write in my book, it was decisions made by people hundreds of years before I, or at least a hundred years before I ever set foot on this earth. That really made the difference for me because young people in America who, who don't come from wealthy families or, or rather disadvantaged families kids from disadvantaged families in America, the only inheritance that they'll ever receive is the one they receive at the public school house.
Justin Reich: Hmm.
Derek Black: They don't have traditional backstops that other families might have. And so it really is that, and I think of it as an inheritance that, that I'm obligated to pass on to the next generation because someone passed it on to me. So that, you know, at a sort of very high level got me interested in, in public education. But then, you know, more specifically, you know, went on to do some school desegregation work, some school diversity work as an attorney, and just picked up expertise along the way, sort of learning by doing. And then I guess I was in the right place at the right time when Howard University School of Law needed someone to education law. And then I just got to double and triple down on that. So, you know you, we, we probably overuse the word expert. You know, I, I am a, a growing expert only because I, you know, acquire more information and also learn my own mistakes, you know, as I go along as well.
Justin Reich: What were the most impactful cases you litigated while you were working on the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under law? What were the school desegregation cases that were most important to you?
Derek Black: Oh, yeah. Was you said impactful, which is different than most imp You know, I say I'm very good at losing cases. You know, my friend David Osa is, is, is quite effective at, at winning them. But you know, I did a school desegregation case in Thomasville, Georgia, which was eyeopening for me as a, as a relatively recent graduate from law school. When they told me that we had a school desegregation case, I was like, what are you talking about? You know, and this is a guy who's, you know, now studies and rights about these things i's like, you know, didn't we read those cases? And that's kind of not that that's gone--
Justin Reich: 1955 round versus Board of Education. Come on, man.
Derek Black: Yeah. Yeah. 54 and 55. So and, and some other, and really important cases in the seventies, but the idea that we would be bringing a new desegregation case or a new one had been brought in 1998, and that we would be litigating it in, you know, '03 '04 '05 '06 it just, I was like, I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. But, you know, got down there, you looked at the facts and you, you sort of understood exactly what had happened, which was nothing really ever
Maybe 10% of 'em were at another. And then there were two African American schools, as I used to say, no white child had darkened the doorsteps you know, and in many years. And it was just striking and confusing for a young person. So anyway, I won't give you the ups and downs of that litigation, but that one made a big, made a big impression on me
Justin Reich: To help us understand some of the current litigation related to teacher speech. I asked Derek to give us some context around free speech for teachers.
Derek Black: Well, I think anytime you talk about free speech rights, people think that that's an all encompassing concept, right? So if I have a free speech, right, it means say and do whatever I, I I want, whether we're talking about teachers or my students. But but, you know, free speech rights always exist within context, right?
And the teachers ought to know, they know this instinctively, right? You're, their students have free speech rights. But when they, but not all of them
But maybe the misunderstanding is on the part of non-educators and politicians that somehow or another think that teachers are saying and doing all sorts of things, that they have this unfettered free speech, right? That needs to be brought under control. I mean, if, if teachers have been abusing, and I say if as a big if, but if teachers have been abusing their free speech rights in the classrooms, there's no new law that needed to be passed to address that issue, right? There was already any number of policies that would give administrators authority to step in and address that. And so, you know, it's sort of like these, these new laws are a solution in, in search of a problem, to be quite honest.
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So, one recent Supreme Court decision on education law that's gonna influence these policies for many years in the future is Kennedy versus Bremerton, the Supreme Court case about the football coach praying on the 50 yard line. I asked our colleagues, Brock Boone from Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sarah O'Brien from Harvard's Graduate School of Education to help explain this case.
So, a case which seems to sort of cut against the grain of all these is a very recent support case of Kennedy versus Bremmerton school district.
Brock Boone: Just last year, there was the Kennedy v Bremerton case, which was a high school football coach who was prey on the field right after the games in front of students and spectators. And, you know, there's the question of do students feel coerced to join the coach to, you know, whatever, get more playing time or, you know, whatever it might be.
Justin Reich: This is the football coach who offers a prayer after a football game and the district is like, Hey, man, you're a coach. Like, you know, you can't, you can't be praying with your students like this. Like,
Sara O’Brien: I'm a 50 yard line, we should say on the 50, like, it wasn't on the 50 yard line somewhere else. It was on the 50 yard line of the field after the game.
Justin Reich: Yeah. Yeah. He's not, he's not sort of like quietly crossing himself on the way back to the locker room or something like that. And you know, like you, you know, the, the government can't promote religion, so public schools can't, you know, promote one religion on top of another. And it would seem that you know, a coach interacting with, with, you know, interacting on a football field is sort of within the scope of his duties as a coach. That, like, that is the place where coaches perform their duties,
Brock Boone: The Supreme Court did rule in favor of the coach saying that, well, those are private prayers if he's sang it quietly.
Sara O’Brien: Yeah, this case is fascinating to me, and I am so curious to see how it impacts future decisions. It seems to me that this is a very public setting and that he is probably still acting within his duties. However, the Supreme Court does not agree with me. And this is a, a quote from their decision. They say that he was acting as a private citizen at that moment, not as a public employee, and quote, the timing and circumstances of Mr. Kennedy's prayers during the post-game period when coaches were free to attend briefly to personal matters, and students were engaged in other activities, confirms that Mr. Kennedy did not offer his prayers while acting within the scope of his duties as a coach. I personally, like I, I find that kind of dissonant,
Brock Boone: The Supreme Court keeps doing this thing where, well, now that seems to change something a little bit, because he's clearly, if you look at Garcetti and the whole things that happened, because you're a public employee now, that type of speech seems to be okay from this football coach. So why is that okay? Because he's clearly acting as a public government employee at that time. It's like right after the game. It's not when he goes home at night, right? Yeah. So there is like these little cracks and like so it's like, where is the Supreme Court at? Exactly. Which, when that happens, you know, as an attorney, that means the circuits in the lower courts are all over the place because they're all trying to interpret, you know, the tea leaves, basically.
Justin Reich: Yeah. Well, it seems like I, I mean, one interpretation might be that the conservative movement wants to allow teachers private religious speech, and they want to restrict teacher's speech about race and racism. And, you know, like they all ag you know, everyone agrees that we're balancing two factors, which in the abstract are reasonable. Teachers should have some free speech rights to talk about their beliefs, and governments should, school boards, states should have some capacity to control teacher Speech.
Brock Boone: Right.
Justin Reich: The Kennedy decision is already shaping district and circuit court decisions. And so we're gonna bring Sarah back here to talk about one recent case, Kluge versus Brownsburg.
Sara O’Brien: A quick little search of sort of current cases that are in the courts right now show that there are a number of cases where teachers do not want to use names or pronouns other than those that students were assigned at birth. One teacher, John Kluge, who is a music teacher from Indiana who was disciplined after he refused to use chosen first names and pronouns for transgender students, he actually referred to all of his students by their last name. That was kind of the workaround that he and the school came to. So it wasn't just transgender students, he was referring to all students by their last name, so that he didn't have to use students' chosen first names and pronouns because he, he was religiously opposed to transgender. He just, he thinks that it's wrong for religious Regi reasons.
And so he was ultimately he was disciplined and forced to resign because the school determined that his use of last names for all students and his refusal to call students by their chosen names and pronouns caused undue hardship to the students and possibly was discriminatory behavior. And so the school was, was said that they, they just couldn't have that happening anymore. But clues just this summer, following the Kennedy decision from the Supreme Court filed a supplemental brief saying that the Kennedy decision really underscored his claims that because of his religious beliefs, he should not have to used students preferred names and pronouns. And so that was really interesting to me. So I'm curious to see how the Kennedy decision plays into what, to me seems to be a, a big a big topic that's happening in the courts right now, which is this question of whether teachers can be compelled to use students' preferred names and pronouns by their schools.
Justin Reich: And you, and you could imagine a set of reasoning from districts based on Meyer versus Monroe, which is something like, look, expression is a teacher's stock and trade the commodity. She sells her employer in exchange for a salary. We have decided as a district, there's a policy that we're gonna call kids, you know, whatever they ask us to call 'em, or we're gonna call kids whatever they ask us to call 'em, that their parents agree to the cases, maybe get more complex when the kid wants one thing and the family wants another. But let's imagine a case where just everyone's aligned, you know, like, this kid wants to be called Dave. It's our policy that we call kids whatever they wanna be called, and that's what we're hiring you to call them. And John Kluge is now imagining, you know, or, or, or, or presupposing that there's a religious exemption to that hiring for, for speech, which seems to be a sort of direction that the Supreme Supreme Court is taking that peoples sincerely held religious beliefs should be given more protections than courts have ruled in previous years.
Sara O’Brien: Yep. so I am very curious to see that, although, as my talking about this with my nine year old last night, he was like, well, that doesn't seem fair to the student. Right? That's, you know, they, they should be able to be called what they wanna be called. And it's, so it is gonna be interesting to see where sort of your, your rights and anti-discrimination laws bump up against these you know, freedom of religion under the First Amendment.
Justin Reich: Yeah. That, that, you know, Debra Meyer wants to be able to tell her students, candidly, I honk for peace. John Kluge wants to be able to express to his students that his religious beliefs prevent him from acknowledging transgender student names. And you know, I mean, many of us might find moral dis equivalence in, in those things, but there is a kind of equivalence of, of teachers trying to represent themselves as they are. So, shortly after Sarah and I spoke about this case, we got an update, an update that clarified some of the facts that in fact John Kluge, according to the court, was creating an environment that was hostile for his students. That the accommodation that he came up with really wasn't working for his students and other folks in the school. So in April of 2023, the Chicago based seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Brownsburg High School did not break the law by forcing John Kluge to quit after he refused on religious grounds to use transgender students' preferred names, the names that were registered in the school's, you know student information system.
The ruling said the rights of the teacher, John Kluge, to exercise his religious beliefs were outweighed by the potential disruption that his conduct could have on the learning environment at Brownsburg High School in the Indianapolis suburbs. And really, the key evidence that the court presented was that trying to just call students by their last names wasn't working. That Brownsburg has demonstrated as a matter of law, that the requested accommodation worked in undue burden on the school's educational mission by harming transgender students and negatively impacting the learning environment for transgender students, for other students inclusion classes in the school generally, and for faculty. So even in the post Kennedy versus Bremerton era there are US Court of appeals who are looking at cases like this that are trying to balance teachers' religious beliefs and the expectations of teachers as hired speech and saying, you know, that at least in this one particular case your religious beliefs don't trump the policies that we have for what names we use to call students.
Another court case that Sarah and I discussed was the case of Eric Dodge versus the Evergreen School District in 2019, sixth grade teacher Eric Dodge arrived at We Middle School for pre-service training.
Sara O’Brien: Yeah. This is another really interesting one. So this is a teacher in Washington State who arrived before school started. So this is in teacher meetings before school started for racial bias training. And he came in with a, with a MAGA hat on, make America Great Again, red Hat. And he did not wear it during the training. He wore it into the training and then took it off and had it sort of prominently displayed with his belongings. And was told by the principal afterwards that if he wore that hat to school again he would need to come, he would need to bring a union representative to the meeting that she would have with him. And so he sued
Justin Reich: And pre, and presumably that move is to, is to not immediately directly discipline the person, but to make it difficult to, to, to acknowledge. I mean, that, that's, that's some real needle threading by the principal there. You know, it's not leave the hat at home, it's
Sara O’Brien: Yes. it's, it's not so much discipline as a threat, I guess a threat of discipline. And so, yeah. So he sued the principal. He sued another another employee in the building. I think maybe the district too, I'm not a hundred percent sure. But claiming that it, it was free speech, and he was allowed to wear that hat to school. And the, the Ninth Circuit agreed with him and said that even though some people may have been outraged or offended by the hat there was act no actual disruption to school operations. So this is something where sort of the threat of disruption is not always enough to balance out the teacher's right to speech. So in this case, people were offended, but the training happened. Right. There was no sort of visible disruption.
And so just because people didn't like the message of the hat that's not, that's not really disruption that would outweigh his First Amendment rights. However I find this interesting because this was a preschool meeting, right. With just fellow employees. So the, the decision does make it sound as though, had it, had he worn it in front of students, it might've been different. So I'm just gonna, this is a quote from the decision, which I find really interesting, where Dodge was not taking advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him, but rather was displaying a message on a personal item while attending a teacher only training. We have little trouble concluding that he was engaging expression as a private citizen, not a public employee. So I think that's important for teachers to, to think about the setting really matters
Justin Reich: On a GoFundMe that Eric Dodge created for his legal fees. He wrote, I spent 17 years teaching and coaching kids in the Evergreen School district that we were living in the land of the free and day in and day out. I told those same kids to stand up for what they believe in Dodge wrote. For that reason, I'm fighting back and practicing what I preach.
You know, I think what's also so interesting about this particular case is that the message of the hat is not explicitly something like racial bias training is bullshit.
Mm-Hmm.
Sara O’Brien: That is true that the over zoom, what is in your background is sort of considered part of your classroom that is a legal, there's a legal foundation for that. Yeah. The Black Lives Matter, I think is the is is the analogous you know, sort of message on the other side politically, right. To some people, this is utterly uncontroversial, right? Of course, black Lives Matter, of course, all lives matter. But of course, the Black Lives Matter. The Black Lives Matter flag or pin is not controversial to some, but to others it's sort of highly, highly political. And the way that the Make America Great is highly, highly political and politicized. So there definitely have been cases where teachers have many cases where teachers have been, been disciplined or forced to take down a Black Lives Matter flag or a, a rainbow pride flag for that matter.
Justin Reich: So, some of the conclusions that we can have here are that this just seems like an unusually active period which is of, of kind of legal discourse around teacher speech, which is, which is part of what creates concern be, you know, because I mean, ev every time one of these court cases happens, not only do you sort of, not only do maybe educators have to add to their mental list, like, oh, okay, this is okay if I'm a teacher, but not if I'm a principal. I guess just sort of a hard thing to keep track of. But also each one of these cases where things seem to change suggests that an a speech act that you take, which may seem like it should be protected, might because of some piece of context around it actually not be protected. I does that, like what's your interpretation of that sort of landscape?
Sara O’Brien: Yeah, it's definitely I think that because all of these questions are on people's mind, right? We have, there's a lot about what teachers can and can't say in the public discourse, in the legislatures. Parents are really emboldened and interested in having a very active hand in their children's education in a way that I think is has not been the case in, in previous years. And so it is important for teachers to think about that. I think it's also important for teachers, though, we've talked a lot in this discussion about teachers being at odds with their district. And we've seen that teachers do the districts do have a lot of right to regulate teacher speech. That's just legally, that is true. But schools also have a lot of legal rights to set curriculum. So I think that a lot of the teachers that I am talking to are not just worried about what happens if I say something in my district doesn't like it, but sometimes there's even more fear of what happens if I say something and, and parents don't like it. So I think that just districts and schools have a lot of legal rights to set curriculum. And so for teachers who really want to protect themselves, again, in terms of what you can plan for, sometimes you know, kids bring things up or moments happen and you can't plan for it. But just knowing that when parents challenge what schools present to students the, the courts often side with schools and districts, and so there is a fair amount of protection.
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I followed up with Brock Boone to hear about some cases that are currently being considered.
Brock Boone: There is a case in Oklahoma that's well underway. That one in particular is it, it's an unconstitutional restriction on discussions about race and gender in K 12 schools.
Justin Reich: Can you, can you, can you tell us a little bit about the Oklahoma case? Sure. who, what's the, what's the co what are the facts and, and what's the defense looking like?
Brock Boone: Well, I think, I don't know if how much defense I need or explanation go into the facts other than just to say like this is that, that students and teachers are experiencing censorship because of the, the bill that, you know, implements censorship in the classroom. So any discussions about race and gender are being at the, at the, the best case scenario being like tiptoed around by teachers. And so those are your class of plaintiffs. The current state of the litigation is the Oklahoma Attorney's General's office is trying different tactics of obstructionism to, to slow the litigation at this point. So it will be interesting to see what happens there. But the Oklahoma bill is very similar to other bills. A lot of these bills have been sent around by the same like organizations who send around these bills to different legislators that they think are gonna like just prop up the bill in those particular state legislatures.
So Oklahoma is just another one of those bills. There's a ongoing case in New Hampshire. There was a pretty good decision by the federal judge there that has allowed the case to continue because the federal judge says that the law, the law is so vague that there's a possibility that teachers can be banned from teaching just by doing their jobs, basically. And there are two cases out of Florida, which recently have had good decisions from judges where basically parts of the stop woke act is, is what it's called. And Florida parts of those laws have now been blocked, basically by federal judges. But the two parts of the laws that have been blocked so far are regarding higher education. So college professors, et cetera, and private companies that do diversity, equity, and inclusion type trainings. They seem to be protected now.
Justin Reich: So in New Hampshire, as I understand it it is the, the case that you're talking about is not one where a teacher was being was being disciplined by a school, and that teacher is then defending themself but rather the A C L U, the American Federation of Teachers in New Hampshire, the National Education Association, are proactively suing the state making the claim that the, that a, the law violates the constitution, and b, that it violates the vagueness doctrine. What's your sense of the timing by which we might hear some of the first decisions from these kinds of cases where stakeholders are not waiting for teachers to be in trouble, but sort of proactively suing the state over these laws?
Brock Boone: I'm not sure on the timing on these cases. Like with litigation, I can never tell. And I've, and I, and I've been doing this, I guess since I got outta law school. Sometimes I like anticipate, I tell people like, oh, we won't see anything for a year, and it drops in like two weeks. And then other times I'm like, we're gonna get something any minute now, and it can be a year or three years. I have, I've worked on cases that are from the 1990s and from the 1960s. So like it's like, it's, I hate to tell people that answer, like, I don't know. Exactly. as for your question about the timing on filing, so generally there is this, and I think even justice, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts has said this multiple times, and Scalia has said it as well, who are both, obviously conservative justices have said that when it comes to the chilling of speech, it doesn't, you don't really need an enforcement action because you're, the, the injury is occurring already, right?
The, the act of censoring yourself means the law's working like it was intended, so your injury is already there. So I think that might help explain some of the timings, because we are seeing that some of the, what we're seeing a lot of is that these laws are working like they're intended to work, which is that teachers are self-censoring themselves. So what that means is they still, in our opinion, have an injury, which is the, the chilling of their speech. But that's something that the courts and the attorneys are trying to argue over in brief extensively, which is legal standing, and then also like the rights of teachers to assert their, the fact that they had been chilled in the classroom.
Justin Reich: Well, I, I think one thing that maybe teachers can take comfort in or have some optimism around is that there is vagueness now, but there have been at least a few places where people in the federal judiciary have said, there does seem to be the possibility of unconstitutional vagueness in this, in these laws. And that there are good folks that are out there that are challenging these laws that are, that are forcing the judiciary to reevaluate them. And it may, it, it could be a long time, but it won't be an infinite amount of time before we get some more clarity from different parts of the federal judiciary about whether or not teachers can both do their jobs and honor these laws. And so, you know, I think part of our jobs as educators is to both support those efforts and the, and the organizations that are putting those efforts forth and to pay attention to them and to recognize, you know, that this isn't gonna, it's not gonna go on forever. We are gonna have some more clarity out of the judicial system, you know, whether that's this year or next year or, or, but hopefully soon.
Brock Boone: Yes, absolutely. I think that is the case. I don't, I don't think all of the federal courts in together could keep kicking the, you know, rock down the road and stopping like some type of opinion. I do wonder sometimes though, if federal judges are waiting to see what other judges are gonna do, because there isn't a lot of guidance in this particular area from the Supreme Court. So you do have, depending on where you are in the country, you could have very different types of, like, levels of academic freedom and free speech rights, basically. So that's why it is difficult to kind of give an explanation to a national audience about like what type of rights you have in the classroom, because the Supreme Court has not been clear on this.
Justin Reich: For Derek, one of the most important cases coming up that could impact teachers relates to the status of charter schools and whether they are public or private institutions. I asked him to tell us about it and how these current cases make him think about our nation's history.
Derek Black: But there's a case on petition to the United States Supreme Court right now dealing with a charter school out of North Carolina. And the issue, the, the, the underlying complaint in that case dealt with with gender discrimination against girls there dress codes. That that's not what's really important about that case. What's important is the question of whether they are state actors or not. If they're state actors, then charter schools have to comply with the United States Constitution and a lot of other stuff, right? Simple. If they're private actors, they're not subject to free speech restrictions. They're not subject to 14th Amendment on and on and on.
They can do whatever they want to. And that also means that charter schools would effectively have the same amount of quote unquote freedom as private voucher schools, right? That means that they could discriminate based upon rate, well, not necessarily race, but, but, but gender, religion, they could teach whatever they want to regardless of its effects on children. And you know what, I've been given the number of, of charter schools we have, and given the number of additional religious institutions that would love to have their own charter school at the expense of the state, this is potential, what I have called the, the MO would be the most consequential decision rendered by the Supreme Court since Freeman versus Pitts, a case probably none of the readers have heard of, but a case that basically brought the end of school desegregation in this country. It would be the most consequential since then, because the amount of money that would flow out of the public coffers into private religious schools that would engage, I think in a, potentially a good deal of discrimination, would be enormous.
So this is, I just think for the future of public education itself, this this case has gotta be on folks' radar. The name of that case is Pell T Supreme Court hasn't granted or denied cert yet. It's waiting on some final briefs from the, from the Biden administration. So, so that, that's a big one. The one that I'll close with, which is most directly to the topic we've been discussing. I'm, I'm writing a book right now called Dangerous Learning. It's, it's the, the title might sound kind of modern, but it's about, you know, the criminalization of, of black literacy from 1820 through the Civil War, then the creation of the public education system in the 1860s, and then this sort of reversion of that public education system into a segregated and, and even more unequal one. And throughout that time, I'll just summarize it and say that there was this paranoia about black educational empowerment and northern ideas that could erode the southern way of life.
And as I looked as I was doing the research on that, on that book, I always just thought, oh, it's a historical book. But as I got into the 1830s and 1840s, like literally so many of these arguments sounded exactly, exactly like the arguments we've been hearing over the last two years about white people's feelings. And, you know, our heroes. There were no sheroes back then, but it's just, you know, it's just, it's sort of a level of paranoia. Now. The punchline isn't that we're gonna have a civil war sometime in the next 10 years. I hope that's not the punchline, but I do think there is, is sort of thinking about the modern moment as a continuation of this sort of primarily southern paranoia about racial equity and, and, and, and black literacy and black empowerment. It's unfortunately quite striking. It's different now than it was then, but there's just so many strings connecting. And so anyway, I haven't reached my conclusions in that, that book yet, but it's just sort of fascinating.
Justin Reich: Well, we'll be very excited to read it. And it sounds like it sort of comes full circle that the that the, the desegregation or the segregation cases of Clinton, Tennessee that got you inspired to pursue this led you, you know, back into that kind of history, to to continue to see resonance from the past. And today,
I'm Justin Reich, thanks for listening to Teach Lab. Special thanks to our three guests, great lawyers, researchers, historians, Derek Black Rock Boone, and Sarah O'Brien. Next week in our next episode in our series on teacher speech and the new divide, we're gonna move past these court cases and we're gonna talk about how the current climate is impacting teacher retention. We've got a great conversation with veteran educator David Graff from Woodland Park, Colorado, which has been in the news recently, that district for its adoption of the birthright standards, a set of conservative influenced history and social studies materials. In the meantime, we got some great resources out and forthcoming for Educators Everywhere. I've got a new book coming out in September, iterate The Secret to Innovation in Schools. You can learn more@iteratebook.com, and if you pre-order the book and you send along your order number and a little bit more information, you can send it, submit it all@iteratebook.com.
I will send you a signed book plate that you can put in your book, and you can register for free online course in October about innovation in schools. We've got another course that's running right now with our partners at Learning for Justice Youth in front about supporting student activism. And you can visit youth in front.org to learn more and check that out. And then you can check out our documentary film. We have to do something different teachers on the journey towards more equitable schools at something different. Film.Com. You can find links to all these and more in our show notes. And if you like what you hear on Teach Lab, be sure to leave us a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcasts. This episode was produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. The sound was mixed by Garrett Beazley. Stay safe until next time.