Here it is, the end of August.  Labor Day is just a week away.  All of the local schools started back up over the past week or two.  Pete Seeger singing “What Did You Learn in School Today”  seems a good choice for the Song of the Week.

It is also pretty easy to write about.  The lyrics are satirical, but not very subtle.  Pete Seeger’s story is well known.

As a quick recap, Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, at 94 years of age, was an American treasure.  His ancestors came here on the Mayflower.  He grew up in a liberal and musical household – so liberal and musical that his father, a professor of music, had to leave his teaching job because he was too radical for the University of California at Berkeley (during World War I, anyway).  He was a musician, singer and songwriter; a folklorist, entertainer and labor organizer; an environmentalist, peace activist and humanitarian.

In 1940, Pete and Woody Guthrie helped form the Almanac Singers, which included, from time to time, such folk music luminaries as Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Josh White, Burl Ives, Cisco Houston and Lee Hayes.  Eight years later, he formed another influential folk group, the Weavers.

The Weavers were initially quite successful, with hit songs like “Good Night, Irene”; but they ran into political and contractual problems because Pete and some of the other pacifist members had belonged to the American Communist Party during World War II.  He was “blacklisted” by the entertainment industry in the early 1950s, after which his music received very little airplay and he was not permitted to appear on television until 1968, when he was a very special guest on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.¹

Pete Seeger was a prolific songwriter, authoring or co-authoring songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Bells of Rhymney” and many more.  His was a gentle but fiercely idealistic spirit that has influenced nearly every English language – and many musicians speaking other languages – musician for the past eight decades.

Even though, Pete was blacklisted for many years, his contributions to America and its music earned him the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Grammy Awards, membership in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and a Kennedy Center Honor.

To balance things out, he also received the Eugene V. Debs Award and the Felix Varela Medal, which is Cuba’s highest artistic recognition.

“What Did You Learn in School Today” is a song that has been associated with Pete Seeger for many years.  It was actually written, though, by Tom Paxton in 1964.  Paxton is another very interesting person, but I will put off writing about him to another day.

I could quit here.  I probably should.  However, I want to say a few words about the Board of Education here in Jefferson County, Colorado.

The Board of Education has five members.  Three of those seats were up for election in 2013, and each of the incumbents was ineligible to run because of term limits.  School board elections are, by law, nonpartisan.  In the weeks before the election, three of the candidates – Ken Witt, John Newkirk and Julie Williams – sent out a barrage of joint campaign material, essentially asking voters to vote for them as a group or a block (as opposed to a party).

If parties could have been mentioned, these candidates would have probably said they were in the Tea Party, or conservative Republican.

It was an off year election, with a mail-in ballot, and about 43% of the eligible voters actually voted.  Something like 55% of them voted for Witt, Newkirk and Williams, so each was elected on the mandate of less than one-quarter of the voters

Trouble began almost immediately.  The long-time superintendent of schools realized she could not work with the new Board majority and resigned.  The new members were not happy with the Board’s attorney, so they hired an additional attorney, at public expense, to represent the three of them.  A large number of teachers and staff expressed their disapproval of the new Board.

Matters became even worse near the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.  The national AP U. S. History curriculum had been changed and the Board majority seemed to think it too subversive for Jefferson County high school students.  A proposed committee was to look into the new curriculum because, according to Ms. Williams, “materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”  Rather, a curriculum like that which Pete Seeger sings about here is apparently the ideal.

The response to that perceived censorship was overwhelming – giving students a real lesson in civil disobedience.  Many teachers participated in a “sick out.”  Hundreds of students walked out of class several days in a row to protest.  The Board was deluged with angry emails and negative comments at Board meetings.

The Board majority backed off and did not censor anything, but not before enough of the community was so upset that talk of a recall election began.  Petitions were circulated and thousands of signatures obtained.  The petitions were submitted to the County Clerk in mid-August, they have been certified as sufficient and any protests must be filed by the first week in September.

Thus, it appears that the District is rapidly moving toward a recall election.  A group called Jeffco United for Action has recruited three candidates to run in that election, and if you go to its website you will be able to purchase t-shirts, coffee cups, bumper stickers and other campaign materials.  All those materials are nonpartisan, of course.

To quote another of Pete Seeger’s songs (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”):  “When will they ever learn?”

What Did You Learn In School Today?
By Tom Paxton

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1.  Pete Seeger did host 39 episodes of a folk music program called Rainbow Quest which was broadcast by a New York City UHF channel in 1965 and 1966.