North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has a book coming out in a few weeks. Two of his most adversarial newsrooms in Raleigh got advance copies, and highlighted a passage:
“In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies,” he writes. “We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and justice.”
Outrage ensued. The NC Democratic Party highlighted an editorial from the McClatchy newspaper chain that mocked Robinson’s idea as “wacky.”
Robinson’s chief of staff, Brian LiVecchi, responded on Twitter:
“…because if kids can’t read, teaching them chemistry and economics might be a tad ambitious. NC public schools are failing to meet even the basic and fundamental requirement of teaching our kids to read. Get that right first.”
“For kids who aren’t reading at grade level, promoting them to higher grades with more rigorous and complex subject matter that requires independent reading for success is not helping them. Those kids must be able to read before we throw biology at them, or we set them up to fail.”
“Essentially, passing kids who can’t read up through the system does them a disservice, and until they can master reading, there’s not much value to them in moving to harder things – there has to be a way to keep helping the kids who need it, instead of making it harder for them.”
After an education forum in Durham, Robinson told a TV outlet:
“We’re not talking about not teaching science to elementary school children,” he said. “What we’re talking about is putting reading, writing and arithmetic – making them paramount in elementary school,” he said. In grades one through five, the concentration should always be on those essential elements.”
Robinson is expected to run for Governor of North Carolina in 2024.
