- Covering education fights, I've heard conservatives' complaints about lessons they think go too far.
- Many are fighting certain lessons on race and gender along with mask mandates.
- But two groups in Tennessee are now warning about lessons involving cannibalism. That seemed new.
Parents waiting to pick up their children at schools in a Nashville, Tennessee, suburb got a bizarro warning recently about what their kids would be learning come January.
The lime green fliers they received from strangers hanging out at at least a dozen Williamson County schools said the lessons would include these "BASIC'S:" "Bad angry white people," "anti Americanism," "suicide ideation," "implicit white guilt," and "cannibalism."
Cannibalism?
The back of the flier credits the nonprofit Parents' Choice Tennessee and the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative, fast-growing group that's been challenging mask mandates and teaching related to race and LGBTQ rights at school board meetings across the country.
Photos of the flier quickly made it to Twitter and users…well, they ate it up, poking fun at the flier's misplaced apostrophe or trotting out their best "Silence of the Lambs" movie jokes.
"Put your hand down, Hannibal. Does anyone else know the answer?" said one tweet.
Covering culture wars in education, I've heard complaints and talking points from conservatives about the teaching of race and gender that they think goes too far. Those issues have certainly come up in Tennessee, one of several Republican-led states to ban certain types of race-related instruction.
But cannibalism — that seemed new.
It was surprising to Bryan MacKenzie, as well, a father of two elementary schoolers in Williamson County who called to help me solve this mystery. He hadn't seen the fliers in person but saw a photo and tweeted it.
"Cannibalism is a serious problem in our community," he said in a deadpanning attempt before breaking into a chuckle. "If the kids don't learn it now, they're going to learn it on the streets."
—Bryan Mac (@Bry_Mac) December 17, 2021
MacKenzie had no idea why cannibalism was being cited. To the best of his knowledge, cannibalism had not come up as either a social or a home economics topic, he said, offering up yet another good one.
Then he called back 20 minutes later with an update. Maybe the discussion was eating at him. He found a reference to a History Channel video, listed under supplementary texts on the American West curriculum for second graders, about The Donner Party.
"I suppose they are teaching cannibalism these days," he said, chuckling again.
The Donners were the unfortunate pioneers in the mid-1800s who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains on their way to California and who got hungry while looking for help. So hungry that they started eating their friends and loved ones who'd died from starvation and exhaustion. In one instance, two native Americans who joined them were murdered for food.
Without knowing more about the exact lesson, MacKenzie was still unfazed by his curriculum discovery. "If they are teaching these things in an age-appropriate way, you can discuss the Donner Party without discussing the dos and don'ts of cannibalism," he said.
I don't know if the groups named on the flier are worried about the Donners, specifically. But after I spoke to MacKenzie, I zoomed in on a photo of the flier's text. It says there's cannibalism in the book, "George vs. George: The American Revolution As Seen from Both Sides."
The book is part of the county's K-5 "Wit and Wisdom" curriculum, though the county notes that they "use excerpts specified within lessons" from that text for fourth graders.
Parents' Choice Tennessee says on its website that the group is fighting to remove the curriculum because it includes "explicit content," including cannibalism, among other racy and violent topics. The group did not respond to a request for comment.
The Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, wrote on Instagram that, while the fliers weren't organized by its group, "we shared the entirety of our research with this new group of fired-up parents and grandparents." The local group is also fighting the curriculum, including books on Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges.
Robin Steenman, who chairs the chapter, told me in an email that the elementary curriculum has "multiple instances of cannibalism in it." She asked if I needed specific examples.
Yes, please!
I haven't heard back yet. Not from her, nor from the Williamson County Schools Superintendent Jason Golden.
But according to an email the school system sent to families, the unidentified distributors of the fliers did, indeed, raise fears – not about cannibalism or anti-Americanism but of strangers trespassing at elementary schools and one middle school, knocking on car windows in the car rider line, and handing out "propaganda-type fliers." The school system is trying to identify those responsible, Carol Birdsong, the communications director, wrote.
"We do not allow this type of activity from anyone, and finding someone on campus like that can, and did, cause fear, especially given that we serve small children," she wrote. "These actions appeared to be a coordinated, timed effort on behalf of an organized group."
MacKenzie, a lawyer for a healthcare IT company and a Democrat, said he's mostly concerned about the impact of education culture wars on teachers who are now being threatened with punishment for bringing up unauthorized topics. He said he believes topics involving race and social issues should be brought up in schools. "I have faith in our teachers to do so in an age-appropriate way, but some people don't have that same faith," he said.
MacKenzie added that he expects those behind the flier to move on to a different topic "the next time something interesting comes up."
"But in the meantime, I'm going to keep addressing these topics with my kids as they come up, and I don't know what else we could do," he said.