Rockwood parents/Photo courtesy of St. Louis Public Radio
White fragility was on display front and center again last week at a Rockwood School District meeting in Eureka. This time the issue was whether or not students should be taught topics of race in school.
Eureka, a city in St. Louis, Missouri County, has had its fair share of controversy over social justice matters in the last year. In 2020, Rockwood parents protested plans to take learning online for the fall semester. Shortly thereafter, parents were upset that administrators removed the pro-law enforcement flag from Eureka High School’s baseball team’s hats.
A leaked memo that instructed teachers to hide certain elements of the curriculum from parents has triggered yet another meltdown.
“This doesn’t mean throw out the lesson and find a new one. Just pull the resource off Canvas [online learning platform] so parents can’t see it,” the memo read. It also advised avoiding words like “privilege,” “activist” and “democratic;” words that have been triggering to parents.
While the district tried to offer an explanation for the memo, saying that it was merely instructing teachers to keep materials that hadn’t been approved by the district out of sight, Rockwood parents and concerned citizens, mainly the white racist ones, still got their Jim Crow feathers ruffled.
A meeting that began with a prayer for civility, quickly turned contentious when the opposition started trickling in and gave their thoughts on the matter.
Kelly O’Brien, one of the attendees, said she thought it was important that students learn diverse perspectives and experiences. As valid as that point is, when O’Brien cited a study from a local Rockwood elementary school that said Black students did not feel comfortable, the KKKlique booed her.
“What we’re concerned about is that there’s propaganda being taught, and we’re sending our kids there to be taught basic math, history, science,” said Kenneth Rosa, an organizer of the forum.
Rosa, a white man, doesn’t even have children in the Rockwood School District anymore. Another white parent said that school is supposed to be “sacred” and apolitical.
At one point, someone yelled out, “Race is not real,” demonstrating just how much Rockwood School District needed to adopt a critical race theory curriculum and mandatory reading metrics.
Though many parents believe that race and class are issues that parents should teach children, it is clear that does not go on with the thoughtfulness and thoroughness it merits.
Further, the parents who don’t mind their children being taught history in school while wishing to avoid conversations on race have forgotten that American history is largely race-based.
Nobody from the Rockwood School District was in attendance at the meeting.