For those of you who are new to Restore Ottawa, you may not have known that one of the contributing factors for creating this Substack was to get out the word regarding the number of age-inappropriate books available to young eyes in our school libraries. It was from a meeting with Mary Jane Evink, the GHAPS Curriculum Director, and a couple of GHAPS librarians that we really learned the depth to which any topic is considered fair game to any child of any age. Citing the expertise of credentialed experts, Mary Jane and her cohorts were unshakeable in their collective belief that the book Queer: A Graphic History was a valuable asset to the school library. In opposition to the district’s staunch view that this book “was incredibly academic”, we requested that GHAPS implement a book rating system. Efforts on that front have fizzled out, but not without an extinction burst flurry of collectivized action to silence our common sense request in a public forum. However, being slapped to the side as know-nothing, irritating parents has inspired the writers of this Substack to learn more about a wide range of afflictions wearing down public education, including for example such matters as the origins of queer theory or the common hypocrisy of school boards when questioned about uncomfortable topics.
As we learned more about the authors and themes of these unsavory books, we learned about the neo-Marxist and postmodernist underpinnings they contain. To give you the gist of these underpinnings, neo-Marxism is the latest iteration of Karl Marx’s original communist project, but it chases utopia through seizure of cultural means (religion, family, education, media and law) rather than economically, while applied postmodernism can be thought of as the reason objective truth is in question these days, resulting in some people being unable to define what a woman is. Both lines of thought seek to undermine Western Civilization, yearning for a classless, stateless society in which private property is abolished. Associate Professor of Education at Connecticut College, Isaac Gottesman, published a book in 2016 titled The Critical Turn in Education which openly tells the story of how Marxist thought has permeated educational institutions in our country, really gaining ground at the teaching colleges in the mid-1990s. According to Gottesman, who is fond of this Critical Turn:
“To the question: ‘Where did all the sixties radicals go?’, the most accurate answer,” noted Paul Buhle (1991) in his classic Marxism in the United States, “would be: neither to religious cults nor yuppiedom, but to the classroom” (p. 263). After the fall of the New Left arose a new left, an Academic Left. For many of these young scholars, Marxist thought, and particularly what some refer to as Western Marxism or neo-Marxism, and what I will refer to as the critical Marxist tradition, was an intellectual anchor. 1 As participants in the radical politics of the sixties entered graduate school and moved into faculty positions and started publishing, the critical turn began to change scholarship throughout the humanities and social sciences. The field of education was no exception.
We know these influences have staked ground within GHAPS, as we have seen teachers get behind Black Lives Matter (BLM) despite the unambiguous fact that BLM is a Marxist organization. Watch BLM founder Patrice Cullors talk about being a trained Marxist and practitioner of Critical Theory:
So, with this scourge of Marxist thought still around today (sorry, those who thought it died when the Berlin Wall fell) and our mainstream media so unwilling to call it out, it really is no surprise that the American Library Association recently appointed a self-described lesbian Marxist to be its president. After her appointment, Emily Drabinski tweeted the following:
Drabinski has been open about her intentions for the transformation of libraries for a long time. According to this Yahoo! News article:
In a 2008 article titled "Queering Library Space: Notes Toward a New Geography of the Library," Drabinski said that the aim is to make libraries "a space based on an ideology that centered notions of queerness and difference rather than of democracy and citizenship."
Having attained the prestigious position of president of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinski has elevated herself to top-tier standing in the hierarchy of credentialed experts. Based on our experience with GHAPS regarding Queer: A Graphic History, we’re guessing that Drabinski’s ascendency will only fortify our school district’s stance that books such as this will remain available to students of all ages, free of any guardrails commensurate with a student’s level of maturity. Although states such as Texas and Montana have pressed the ALA on their choice of organizational president, don’t expect Michigan to be concerned.
Hopefully we don’t have another Call Me Max incident waiting around the corner.