A parent complained on an Internet blog about a school textbook that includes a chapter on Obama called ‘‘Dreams from My Father.’’
The school district said in a statement that it has received no complaints about the book, which it first used last school year. Even so, the 21,000-student district said it was reviewing its policies regarding the book’s use in a literature class.
B. K. Eakman in her book “The Cloning Of The American Mind” insists that the part I put in bold is the response that government school teachers are explicitly taught to give to parents who complain about something going on in their child’s class, even when (especially when) they aren’t the only complainers isn’t true. That’s right … the government school teachers are taught to tell bald faced lies.
Eakman insists that the reason for such counsel is that,
1.) It makes the parent complaining feel isolated as if out of a class, which has the children of multiple parents in it, they are the only ones who have a problem. It makes the complaining parents think they are being unduly and unreasonably critical.
2.) It serves to keep parents with the same shared concern from knowing of one anothers existence thus making it easier for the teacher (or in this case the school) to dismiss the complaining parents. If parents knew that there were other parents with their concern it would make the issue and the parents more difficult to control for the teacher.
Several years ago when contending with the local school over their sex education curriculum I had this exact same line — “that you are the first one to complain about this” — pulled on me.
