In advance of a public hearing Tuesday night (Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m. at Newton South) more than 400 recent Newton North High School graduates have signed a letter in support of “our teachers and our school system in their mission to craft a curriculum that promotes critical thinking.”
The alumni wrote the letter in response to an on-going campaign by “Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), a group whose members have been targeting our school system for years and have recently begun targeting individual teachers” over discredited claims of an anti-Israel bias in Newton Public Schools.
Tuesday’s hearing is the result of a citizens petition and is expected to draw a very large crowd. Participants will be allowed to make a statement of three minutes. Additional documents can be found here. as well as on the Newton Teachers Association website. AFPT’s promotion for the hearing is here.
Here’s the North alumni letter:
To the Editor:
We, the undersigned graduates of Newton North High School (NNHS), write to support our teachers and our school system in their mission to craft a curriculum that promotes critical thinking. We affirm our opposition to Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), a group whose members have been targeting our school system for years and have recently begun targeting individual teachers.
The NNHS curriculum has not taught us what to think, but how to think critically and cross-reference with independent sources. In today’s increasingly polarized and sensationalized discourse, such skills are particularly empowering and simply necessary. We hold that we learned to analyze multiple perspectives as a result of our teachers acknowledging their own lived experiences and consciously encouraging us to find primary sources to both support and oppose their points of view.
As former students, we saw firsthand that our Newton teachers are genuinely and deeply committed to supporting their students’ academic and personal growth. Differing ideas in the classroom did not lead to isolation or arguments but to genuine discussion and a focus on supporting our views with independently-verified and peer-reviewed sources of evidence. To penalize any educator for their efforts to provide students with a comprehensive, global education would be in direct contradiction of the Newton Public Schools’ own goal as expressed in its mission statement: “[To] Ensure all students become knowledgeable, responsible, caring and contributing members of society through evidence-based social and emotional learning from preschool through high school.”
These teachers have always encouraged students’ self-expression, and we felt that our opinions voiced in their classrooms were heard and treated with the utmost dignity.
Go here to view the more than 300 Newton North alumni who have signed the letter.
I am so proud of our students, and the education they received at NNHS. Thank you for speaking out in defense of our school’s curriculum.
This is a graduate of the Class of 1956 who applauds and fully endorses this powerfully crafted statements by so many recent graduates. We had a bit of this same kind of nonsense as a residual of Joe McCarthy and other forms of wacko anti Communism and nationalism during the 50s. They can add my name if it will do even a very small bit to finally put these rascals out of business. Well done.
What a pitiful, hate-filled, backward-thinking, attention-craving little man you are, Charles Jacobs.
I’ll be there to support the teachers and students tomorrow evening. I want them to know we have their backs.
Bravo to these students for standing up to hate.
One of the teachers targeted by this campaign is one of the best teachers my son had (David Bedar, US History). He taught critical thinking, he was fair, even-handed and his teaching is remembered by my son to this day. I am proud of the students for supporting their teachers – and recognizing all that they learned. As I browsed this site, I just saw the FOX news video of a parent posted back in August (in which the astounded newscasters statements were not supported by the comments she was reading) . This is all dystopian – that those not only countenancing, but encouraging open discussion and critical thinking, are the target. The name of the organization targeting the teachers is and the schools is similarly dystopian (the group seems to be interested in the opposite of peace and tolerance).
I didn’t write the post above. Is there a second Claire?
Yes – sorry – didn’t realize it would be an issue
Mystery solved. Thanks Claire
I’m grateful for this letter and proud to see it signed by so many of the smart and thoughtful young people I know.
The thread has been updated to indicate that more than 400 have now signed the letter (yesterday it was 300)