Welcome to today’s issue of Special Education Today. Today’s edition is what some people might characterize as a “slack” version. That’d make sense, because I’ve been coasting recently. That means that there is little serious content to this issue. Summer time!

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Status update

I am providing no update about subscriptions for the past week.

Flashes of the electrons

This week there are no acknowledgements of folks who posted comments, slapped likeson post, or disseminated content across social media. (Still, thanks to the folks who continue to do so!)

Table of contents

I only dropped one new post on SET the past week. The post is simply a pointer to a product on which I had the good fortune to work with fabulous special educators (Benita Blachman and Maria Murray as well as Peggy Weiss). If you’re interested in effective early reading instruction, please read it and disseminate it (for free!).

• TeachingLD resource about early decoding—https://www.specialeducationtoday.com/p/teachingld-resource-about-early-decoding

As usual, please be sure to check the Web site. Even if I’m in slack mode, I might post something in the next few days. Who knows? If I drop a post, maybe it’ll be interesting or even informative!

Commentary

Five years ago this past week, I had heard about a group of people who were coming to my city, ostensively to protest the city council’s decision to remove from a city park the statue of a notable Virginian. The subject of the statue was Robert E. Lee, who guided military actions in a revolt against the United States.

Although I have admired Mr. Lee for his contributions to the US before he chose to lead the rebellious forces (he was, e.g., the senior United States officer at the encounter known as “Harpers Ferry” or “John Brown’s Rebellion” before the War Between the States) and for what I understand (not a student of warfare) was his strategic and tactical brilliance as a military leader, I harbored no support for his advocacy of the rebellion of the 1860s. I do not support championing policies and practices long gone by when some of my fellow citizens were enslaved.

Also, I harbored no support for a contingent of people from elsewhere coming to C’ville in 2017 to tell my fellow residents how to live our lives. I wanted to go downtown and tell them, politely, that I disagreed with the views of the “Unite the Right.” I wanted to say, “This is our city. Please butt out.”

So, we went to a local park on 12 August 2017 and watched people carrying signs and such. We were hungry, so we walked the familiar streets to a local eatery owned by some friends and had a little breakfast.

As we went to the eatery, we passed Lee Park. Things were pretty quiet then, though there was a phalanx of men, maybe 10-20, standing on the street next to the park, each one holding very serious-looking weapons and many sporting straps of bullets across their chests.

Okay? One member of our party took these people as government guards. However, they were not affiliated with the government...they were an armed militia—was it a “well-armed militia?” Only later did the member of our group realize that the admonition provided to the men to “stay safe” had a double-meaning.

We got wonderful breakfast snacks. Things were still pretty calm. But, while we were eating, it seemed like things were getting noisier. There were more cop cars. We finished our snacks and went back outside.

Outside we saw large groups of men walking in ranks, formations of 2- or 3-abreast, carrying flags, carrying weapons, and chanting as they progressed toward “Lee Park.” Confederate flags, Nazi swastikas, and similar banners were in abundance.

Avoiding Lee Park, we walked a couple of blocks to the local Jewish Temple. As we left the breakfast venue, we were within 3 meters of a group that was marching in formation north on 4th St. Another stream seemed to be coming from the east on Market St. When we got to the temple and stood next to it, other streams of Unite the Right people marched toward Lee Park from the north.

The situation looked bad to me. Despite my compatriots’ interest in having civil discussions with people in the marching lines, that didn’t seem possible. In addition, some people near us were screaming insults at the marchers. I thought, “Sheesh, those people over there are armed and angry. Don’t give them an excuse to use their weapons!” To me, it was time to get out of Dodge City.

Things, as they say, got out of hand quickly. We had “intelligence” from a trusted person who said the “chatter” on the Internet led her to be concerned about our personal safety. Even though we were a block or two away from the center of the melee, it was apparent to me that risky-bad stuff was happening right there in the middle of our town.

After some disagreement, my core group and I retreated, following a path that avoided what we thought was the center of the problm. As we walked west, circling the melee, we came upon people who had been sprayed with teargas, pepper spray, and the like. These people were having their faces washed with fresh water in the parking lot of a neighborhood church. There were others who, lying on cots, appeared to be receiving help for bleeding wounds. I didn’t want any part of that, as a helper or a recipient.

By the time I had walked a couple of blocks back toward our car, the police had declared the gathering unlawful and demanded that the Unite the Right protestors move north to McIntire Park. Many of the UtR protestors were marching north, as you can see in this image.

Zoom in on the image. Under what flags were these people marching?

I was glad to get my small contingent back together (one of us was across the street in the photo, encouraging marchers to be safe!). We got home and then, not much later, I learned that—just two blocks from where we’d had breakfast—a man had rammed his car into a group of people, killing Heather Heyer and injuring ~20 others.

I have had an awful mixture of thoughts over the past five years.

• Of course, I want nothing to do with violence.

• I also find hatful representations of other people reprehensible.

• It’s fine to object to other’s ideas; it’s wrong to object to other people.

• Let’s have civil discussions.

• I know I’m proposing life in a Pollyannaverse. Sigh.

• If these ideas cause you, dear reader, to think, “I shouldn’t subscribe to this newsletter,” so be it. Subscribing is your decision. If you bail on SET, OK. Please, still stay safe and teach your children well.

Fo those who do not find this editorial anathema, I end here with familiar recommendations with an addition: Give a damn about each other. Wear your seatbelts (and encourage other passengers in your vehicle to wear them, too). Wash your hands frequently. Prefer gathering in well-ventilated spaces. Get vaccinated and help others to do so. And, of course, teach your children well. ‘Till next time....

JohnL

SET Editor guy
Charlottesville

SET should not be confused with a product with the same name that is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades. Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization.