Yes, a teacher at West Valley High School in Spokane Valley, Washington, lost his job Wednesday for reading To Kill A Mockingbird out loud.
Fortunately, his students seem to be smarter and wiser than the school board, and stood up to defend him at this week's meeting despite the board's decision to let him go:
According to local NBC affiliate KHQ, the board said the English department had given students the option to opt-out of the lesson so they wouldn't be triggered by bad emotions (we have to make sure to coddle students AT ALL TIMES):
Before the vote, school board members explained that the English Department had discussed how to handle the passage appropriately. They acknowledged the book's literary significance but stated that reading the word aloud was unnecessary.
Parents and students were given the option to opt out of that part of the lesson, a choice Mastronardi did not offer in his classroom.
It amazes me that the wokies think the N-word is the worst thing ever (unless it's shouted 84,000 times in a rap song) but gratuitous use of the F-bomb and other grotesque language is totally fine.
Matthew Mastrodani, a Spanish teacher, read the American classic in response to an English teacher who had told students to skip over the passage so they wouldn't have to read the Word-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. He wanted his students to understand the context of the struggle against racism and slavery so they could study literature and history and know how to critically engage with it.
In a recent episode of a Christian podcast called CROSSPOLITIC, Mastrodani said this:
I was trying to teach these kids that reading from a book doesn't make you a racist, and it's the intent behind the word ... when we skip over words, you distance yourself from what the author wanted you to feel ... we have to confront history even if it makes us feel uncomfortable.
He was fired unanimously for that kind of thinking. By these people 👇
I don't know if this school board is liberal, but knowing school boards and knowing Washington ... make your guess.
Along those lines...
Remind me again which side of the political aisle wants to ban books, rewrite history, and keep people from thinking critically?
One more quote from Mastrodani before I go:
These kids, all day, are given tasks to do. From bell to bell, they're given these tasks, and there's not a lot of thought-provoking questions that they come up with, right? So they're starving for meaning and deeper thought. They're just deprived of that all day. Here I have a situation where a student is asking a really meaningful question for a larger conversation that's really important ... they've been sort of fed this idea that like, censorship, you can't read these words, and I think it was incredibly refreshing for them to see, 'Hey, maybe I can read this and I'm not a racist,' or 'I can engage with the text honestly and I can wrestle with it, I can examine it and see what it means and why it still echos today.'
They fired one of the best teachers in the country, in my opinion!
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
