This bill, filed in the Indiana Senate last Thursday, includes the expected language, banning schools from teaching that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation” is inherently superior, inferior, racist, sexist, or oppressive.
So, like most of these bills, this one has an explicit list. The list quoted below (the same list gets repeated a few times in different contexts within the bill) and the bit that follows it every time.
- That any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation is inherently superior or inferior to another sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That an individual, by virtue of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
- That an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That members of any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation should not attempt to treat others without respect to sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That an individual's moral character is necessarily determined by the individual's sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That an individual, by virtue of the individual's sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
- That meritocracy or traits such as hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation to oppress members of another sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
Nothing in this chapter may be construed so as to exclude the teaching of historical injustices committed against any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation.
In addition, schools cannot teach students that they should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, responsibility or any other form of psychological distress” based on those same criteria. As I said, so far, your standard "You can't teach that racism is a thing, or that we should feel bad about it." But then you dig a little deeper...
To be clear, you're saying that it is impossible to teach about racism without teaching people that they
should feel bad for being members of a certain race? Or without telling students to adopt the view that certain races are inherently superior to others?
You see, another part of the Senate bill, schools would have to create a curriculum review committee composed of parents, teachers, and others. This committee would then post all materials, lesson plans, and educational activities outside of tests on a web portal for everyone to see. This would allow parents to review the material and opt out of certain items if they wished.
That, to me, is much more troubling. It's basically saying that parents should have ultimate control over what their students learn in school, and if the parents don't want them to learn something, then they won't let them. At that point...it's basically free homeschooling. Well, free for the parents, not the taxpayers. It's one thing to keep parents informed of what their kids are learning, but to let them decide in advance what they will and will not learn is how you get people convinced they are right to only focus on half the picture because someone kept covering up the other half, so to them, it doesn't exist.
Not quite what the bill says. It does call for a curriculum review committee composed of at least 40% faculty and at least 40% parents who are required to make all materials and lesson plans available (aside from tests, answer keys and the like). They can also recommend new curricular materials. Also "(b) Except as otherwise provided by law, the committee may recommend to the governing body that parents of students enrolled in the school corporation may be allowed to opt out of or opt in to curricular materials and educational activities identified by the committee." So the committee can recommend that parents be allowed to opt-out their kids from a given lesson, but that recommendation doesn't have any power behind it other than that the governing body has to review it before making a decision. Recommendations of the curricula review committee are not binding, at all. It's basically giving a group of teachers and parents a suggestion box that the school board has to read, but not necessarily follow.
"2+2=5 and if you disagree or try to tell me that is the wrong answer then I will feel such discomfort and stress that I can only assume you are deliberately trying to tell me that I am inherently inferior because of my deeply held beliefs."
I don't think it works like that, but if you're the right sort of Biblical literalist you might be able to get away with pi = 3.
Also, I've been told repeatedly on Twitter that believing 2+2=4 is racist, so we don't even need to go for the religious or political affiliation angle. Bad math is really just anti-racism.
But I thought republicans cared about freedom of speech? Not allowing a teacher to teach race related issues is going against their free speech!
I gave the list from the bill above, which ones would you need to violate and why? Are you saying you can't teach about race without supporting melanin theory, supporting white supremacy, or advocating that students feel racial guilt?
Here’s the thing though. CRT isn’t even taught in most or all public schools. It’s mostly taught in universities/college campuses. And as you pointed out these anti CRT bills are contradictory and the people writing these bills have no idea what CRT is actually about. Which is teaching how racist the system can be for non whites.
Anti-CRT bills typically list a handful of tenets that they are explicitly about, rather than "critical race theory." In fact, this bill makes no reference to "critical race theory" at all in the bill text. But that's not atypical for "anti-CRT" bills - the people pushing for and the people writing these bills know exactly what they'r trying to oppose, and are simply attaching the wrong name to the notion. It doesn't help that I could grab a dozen people who have taken courses that covered CRT or even are involved with the topic in academia and get at least a dozen definitions of what it is outside the very broadest strokes.