The right's most recent insanity to boycott schools on the day of Obama's in-classroom speech prompted me to do a bit of research. I grew up in the South in the middle of school integration, and remember how white parents kept their kids home as a protests to newly integrated schools. I wondered whether there have been other issues that have provoked such widepspread boycotts.
I did a quick canvass of the history of school boycotts (i.e., google search) over the past 50 years. In the process I learned quite a bit more about the recent history of school boycotts.
First, an example of the type of boycott I was familiar with as a kid:
When the new school year started in late August 1969, white opposition had reached a fever pitch. ...
{M}any whites in Louisiana were convinced that political pressure was paying off, and that the Supreme Court might still upholad freedom-of-choice. The opening of schools {brought} chaos as the predicted boycott finally materialized. An estimated 27,000 children failed to return to school.
- from Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 by Adam Fairclough
Second, something I learned: School integration was sometimes facilitated by school boycott. It seems that the Chicago School Boycott was the most noteworthy of these:
On June 8, 1965, ... numerous civil rights groups in Chicago {planned a boycott to protest} segregated, overcrowded schools, the use of trailers as classrooms and other inferior facilities, and the policies of the white school superintendent. ... The school boycott marked the beginning of a sustained protest movement, the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1965-1966, that culminated in the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's arrival in Chicago to lead the struggle for equal opportunities in education and housing.
The Chicago boycott was not singular. For example, there had been school boycotts against segregated and inferior schools in Harlem and Brooklyn, New York, in the Fall of 1958, and then NYC citywide in 1964, and Seattle in 1966
But since that era, I only found boycotts concerning local issues, like a 2008 boycott in Chicago to highlight spending disparities between school districts, or a boycott in Oakland in August of this year "to demand passage of the federal DREAM Act – and for an end to 'police harrassment and violence against Oakland youth.'"
(As I said, this information is the result of a quick canvass. I welcome corrections and extensions to my survey.)
IMHO, it's a good thing that school boycotts have rarely been employed since the civil rights era. It would seem that disputes about school board policies tend to become settled through direct petitions, elections, and lawsuits when necessary. Pulling kids out of school seems to have become a last remedy in order to force policy changes.
Which brings me to 2009.
There's no need to detail the hypocrisy and false information about the reasons for the upcoming boycott. Fortunately, the media is doing a fairly good job presenting the facts. e.g.,
Barack Obama is not the first president to address school children.
Obama will "indoctrinate" school children with "socialist ideology" -- Liar, liar, pants on fire
and...
Reports of the planned speech only display what seems may be a speech encouraging children to get an education and stay in school. link
In lieu of writing my own opinion about the idiocacy of the boycott, this Athens Banner-Herald editorial says it extremely well:
While the First Amendment guarantees a right to free speech, it doesn't guarantee the speaker an audience. And if some parents want to keep their children home from school Tuesday, they're certainly within their rights as parents to do so.
...
However, there is another approach that just might provide parents and their children with a quintessential "teachable moment." Parents could take time to watch the speech, or record it to watch later with their children. They then could discuss the message with their children, talking about their perceptions, asking their children for their perceptions, and also asking their children what they did in school in conjunction with the speech.
The editorial gently touches on the underlying paranoia/craziness, and the dumbness of these parents:
It's a little over the top to suspect, as some people are apparently close to doing, that a single speech from the president is going to turn their children into mindless "Obamatons."
...
Parents who keep their children home Tuesday might do themselves a favor to wonder whether they're teaching their children to be afraid of the expression of ideas that might turn out to be problematic.
That last part I highlighted because it really touches upon the root issue--such parents are afraid, and they want their children to be afraid too.
And this brings me full circle to the school boycotts of the civil rights era:
o Those who promoted school boycotts to force change school boards to comply with a Supreme Court decision.
o Those who promoted school boycotts to fight integration were doing so out of fear.
And the fearful arise again, but this time it's the irrational fear of president's speech delivered in the classroom. Is it a coincidence that race was an issue in the 1960s, and the president who will be speaking is black?