A disgusting thought

I was working a 5th grade class today and had a stack of Scholastic readers for early finisher work. My initial response to the cover story was shocking and very disturbing.

The edition was about the Tuskegee Airmen. My initial response to myself "Can we still teach about them?"

It's sickening when society has declined so quickly that such absurd thoughts even come to mind. My second response after being floored by that automatic response? "F' em. I'm teaching it whether the "powers" like it or not." And by the "powers" I'm not referring to school admin.

*Edit Is it soo hard to see that this is a rant? Does the flair not give that away? For those still working on reading comprehension, the overarching message is the influence of extended periods of social discourse on automatic thought patterns, involuntary thought patterns and responses. This is something we all need to remain very cognizant of. We're all at risk of developing bias, of being impacted by social situations that bother us. The response "are we even allowed to teach this" is a response to overwhelming negative light given to the topic of race and history.

If one looks at the last paragraph "F'em I'm teaching it... " Does that infer censorship on anyone's part, except the attempts to censor history by certain political leaders? Sounds more like a middle finger to those that what to erase history.

Geeze, is that so hard to understand? I hope not because I shared this with a couple of my 5th graders, students I trusted could discuss the topic maturely (they do exist at most ages) and they understood it without explanation. They even went so far as to ask deeper questions about it.