In Montgomery County students are able to nominate topics for new elective courses, which the school board then votes on to determine whether or not those topics get developed into courses.

Here are two of the new courses the board approved for development: 

• Shakespeare, Race and Gender

• Environmental Justice

And then here are courses already in development, which the board voted to continue developing:

• Race, Gender and STEM

• Introduction to Social Justice

• Ethnic Studies

• LGBTQ+ Studies

All the while, violent assaults in the school system are way up. Through the first 10 weeks of school, police have responded to 48 different assaults, which is more than was registered in the entirety of the last normal school year.

The school system is investing time and energy in decadent intellectual pursuits like Shakespeare, Race and Gender while being simultaneously less able to guarantee student safety. Were Maslow still around, he might call this inconsistent with his hierarchy of needs.

Police Officers used to have a physical presence in many of the schools, as School Resource Officers, but legislation was put forward to remove them because they were disproportionately arresting black and hispanic students relative to white students. 

And then you have to wonder to what extent masking all the kids is contributing to the increase in violence. People express their humanity first through facial expressions. A face half covered can easily make for a person only half realized. And we know from the history of human atrocity, that inflicting violence on people becomes easier when you see them as less human.