9 Comments

An impressive launch! Important subject, revealing research, well produced. I will share this and look forward to more.

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A balanced investigation into the different sides of a difficult issue. I tried hard to understand the argument against contextualizing the artwork, and I was most convinced by the argument that, especially for high school students, art is meant to make us think, learn, and process. How can erasure help anyone? This piece will stay with me for a long time. I look forward to hearing more!

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Very interesting topic!

But I do not understand the logic of the people who want to paint over the mural: They say it's traumatizing.

If Washington is depicted as heroic Founding Father and first President this is even more traumatizing because it's not telling the whole truth.

And the reality of a lot of children and teens is also more traumatizing: gun violence, drugs, poverty. They should take the money and pay social workers instead of covering up the truth.

I saw the picture of the dead Native American and it was not graphic.

What's the problem with this high Schoos: Why don't they go to the mural when they discuss history in the lessons?

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I've known about broken treaties and mistreatment of Native American Indians since elementary school. Are we regressing?

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Thanks for introducing me to art by Dewey Crumpler and the extended interview. He and I might not see eye to eye on many things, but I appreciate and resonate with much of his perspective on this issue.

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The artist champions the oppressed. That was his intention. That anyone can miss that redefines irony. Just as important though: 32 million adults in the United States can’t read above a fifth grade level, and 19% of high school graduates can’t read. (US Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy). Better keep the pictures.

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The viewpoint diversity method employed here is problematically a product of the same kind of management theory that caused this GWHS murals crisis to develop in the first place. It is especially easy to do with this subject now because most of the investigative reporting and academic analysis has already been done and many important decisions - like saving the murals - have already been made. The makers of this program just stepped in and revisited the issues all over again but so far there is no real analysis of what is happening here in terms of woke culture wars and neoliberal mismanagement. This liberal model of education presumes people are ignorant or slow. Some are but that's not the point when you have to make decisions that affect the public. Today's woke identity wars gain in importance in proportion to their irrelevance to social progress. That's thanks to an almost fully capitalized academia and media, not to mention a deadly neoliberal system of governance. There is a famous saying by Carl Sagan: "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out." Treating both sides of this issue as equal, after everything we know after two years of debate, is a test of one's patience for sure. The middling mainsteam media do this to sell newspapers. It's an entertainment model that manipulates people's thirst for drama. Luckily for them, some people are never much the wiser. That's how we got Donald Trump as US President. Neoliberal governments do it because the only thing they care about is managing money and markets - and they think of people as capital, like everything else. Why must we restart at zero at every stage of this discussion? It's like Theodor Adorno once said: "Glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so." Sadly, the underdogs here are the inept SFUSD school board members. People like Victor Arnotauff and Diego Rivera would never have stooped to this kind of pablum.

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There is not one thing depicted in that mural that is not taught about and discussed in U.S. History in North Carolina. These murals would make excellent teaching tools. They require analysis that teachers are supposed to encourage. Someone spoke about murals of Jews. If a huge pile of bodies is not depicted, such a mural could also be a teaching tool.The history of the Jews would take up every wall in the school. Graphic depictions of the Holocaust are in textbooks. I do not understand people who are afraid of the truth. To me, this shows the hypocrisy of many things that occurred in our country. George Washington has the Constitution unfurled, as he points to events in US History. People who have complaints about the origins of the United States get a chance to express them. Nevertheless, if we have frightened people in our country, cover them up. Don't runin them.

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