Seth CotlarCheck out this 1980 leaflet from the "Pro-Family Forum" claiming that secular teachers were "indoctrinating" young people in public schools. They depicted standard approaches to teaching social studies as a form of "molestation."
Oregon far right activist Walter Huss received this pamphlet from Walter Crotty, who was getting in touch because he'd recently received literature from the combination Christian political organization and Multi-Level Marketing scam called "Help America" that Huss started after he was deposed as OR GOP chair.
That Crotty letter is really something else. "I am doing in-depth research, and am going to take polls and surveys, and am constantly getting books, courses, etc...The Communists have made a study of people and how to manipulate and bedevil them with warped, Red psychology...But with God's help I am (or have the potential) of being smarter than all of them put together (God and one is a majority)"
Crotty was just one of scores of "Christian Patriots" who responded positively to Huss's efforts to organize them to "save America."
"Emboldened by what they see as a conservative mood in the country, parents' groups across the nation are demanding that teachers & admins cleanse their local schools of materials & teaching methods they consider antifamily, anti-American & anti-God." https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/17/us/parents-groups-purging-schools-of-humanist-books-and-classes.html?unlocked_article_code=2LG1nh9lIqiUtEvtZcD182pivKhNOOQ96sTiW-Wx31DHbwKX7mhMqXx6uuL00YFrhMgUdFzMDQ1q7DAON0ApWMFJ-P3Etkrxs16MGUddf0li2HDHg0QFq64_AyYiC_6SGY6wDk4nVDybYU-9wk4q1ySug-0xmcAN6ULDV9NMHTLZvMWMFiZvIOnO_JkMkkrbrZSLbO4SBGMlTJboPSsMqRQgGOHdyDiuHQ9pgAXtulfc85otrDASvgEbtv9m8yvuhALvLox4jB0tvZ5ncm9rTjkGb1uCMX2QPxJObY78BDNTpOM150SiCXruer1UwbDidLaF088_7R-PgXuHYfqgQDM6hwmXYW5Rp9KfsJJfUPasIi4wffztWTKTXHNkXclsTg&smid=url-share
In 1981, just as today, these far right efforts to ban books and shape curriculum to fit their minoritarian view of the world was an authentically local initiative that was also tied in to a coordinated, national movement.
"Secular humanism" was to the far right activists of the early 1980s what "wokeism" is to their descendants today, a "meaningless catch-all term used by these groups to describe all the nation's ills."
That anti-secular humanism pamphlet was in the papers of Walter Huss, a far right political activist who served as chair of the OR GOP from 1978 to 79. He was an anti-LGBTQ activist his entire life. Here are some more doozies from his files. They might ring some bells.
Here we learn that the people being censored in 1989 are the good Christian Patriots like Walter Huss who were trying to get books removed from public school libraries and curricula.
A reminder that the goal of these far right anti-education activists is to have a chilling effect on what teachers do and say in the classroom. These intimidation tactics are deployed, of course, by people who think they are on the side of "freedom." Screenshot is from 1981 NYT.
CarlRJ@sethcotlar yep, same thing every time. It’s reactionary. It’s “if we could only go back to (when I was a kid) everything would be simple and comfortable (and we’d be in charge)”. And they want to make sure their kids do not, under any circumstances, learn how life really is.
“Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it” - we take this as a warning, they take it as a contract they’re eager to accept.