No anguish allowed
Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley and Thomas Chatterton Williams in the NY Times on laws banning Critical Race Theory:
In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.
Tennessee House Bill SB 0623, for example, bans any teaching that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” In addition to this vague proscription, it restricts teaching that leads to “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people.”
In other words you can’t teach anything at all about race, sex, religion, politics, or class. Anything you did teach could lead to division or resentment of some sort, so you just can’t teach it. Good luck teaching history.
Texas House Bill 3979 goes further, forbidding teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States.” It also bars any classroom from requiring “an understanding of the 1619 Project” — The New York Times Magazine’s special issue devoted to a reframing of the nation’s founding — and hence prohibits assigning any part of it as required reading.
What exactly makes the “founding principles” the authentic, and slavery and racism the aberration?
These initiatives have been marketed as “anti-critical race theory” laws. We, the authors of this essay, have wide ideological divergences on the explicit targets of this legislation. Some of us are deeply influenced by the academic discipline of critical race theory and its critique of racist structures and admire the 1619 Project. Some of us are skeptical of structural racist explanations and racial identity itself, and disagree with the mission and methodology of the 1619 Project. We span the ideological spectrum: a progressive, a moderate, a libertarian and a conservative.
And they all think these laws are a threat to liberal education.
The laws differ in some respects but generally agree on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” because of one’s race or ancestry, as well as restricting teaching that subsequent generations have any kind of historical responsibility for actions of previous generations. They attempt various carve outs for the “impartial teaching” of the history of oppression of groups. But it’s hard to see how these attempts are at all consistent with demands to avoid discomfort. These measures would, by way of comparison, make Germany’s uncompromising and successful approach to teaching about the Holocaust illegal, as part of its goal is to infuse them with some sense of the weight of the past, and (famously) lead many German students to feel “anguish” about their ancestry.
Indeed, the very act of learning history in a free and multiethnic society is inescapably fraught. Any accurate teaching of any country’s history could make some of its citizens feel uncomfortable (or even guilty) about the past.
Humans are humans. We don’t reliably behave well in all circumstances. It’s better to try to know more about that than to hide from it. Chronic self-flattery gets you nowhere.
What’s more, these laws even make it difficult to teach U.S. history in a way that would reveal well-documented ways in which past policy decisions, like redlining, have contributed to present-day racial wealth gaps.
That’s exactly the example I cited the other day to make the same point. This stuff is real, and should not be hidden.
Let’s not mince words about these laws. They are speech codes. They seek to change public education by banning the expression of ideas.
Which is, ironically, another example of the way we don’t live up to our putative ideals. Land of the free, where public schools are subject to speech codes.
Well of course public schools are subject to speech codes! Taxpayer-funded school teachers are effectively government agents, and in that role are quite properly restricted in ideas they can promote. A citizen can freely declare that Trump was the best-ever President, that the election outcome was fraudulent, and that vaccines don’t work, but it would be quite wrong for a K-12 teacher to promote those ideas in the classroom. So, yes, legislatures can quite properly control the curricula of public schools.
Which is not to say that these laws are ok. Many of them go way too far. We have, on the one hand, CRT-infused school teachers promoting CRT-infused ideology in K-12 schools, and then we have Republicans going way too far in over-broad attempts to stop this. (The concept of a sensible middle ground is lost in today’s tribal America.)
There’s a good account on all of this here by Greg Lukianoff.
What is it with this relentless emphasis on changing what children are taught in order to protect them emotionally? I’m not saying it wasn’t an occasional concern in the past, but the last decade or so seems to have upped the ante. Did it come out of anti-bullying campaigns — or is that only a symptom? Was it derived from the blossoming of therapy and and therapy-related DIY books and programs in the 70’s and 80’s? Is it because parents started coddling their kids more and more in some bizarre game of parental one-upmanship — and here we are today? Or perhaps it’s coming down from the top, as society becomes increasingly preoccupied with identity groups and their need for emotional safety.
And is this educational dictum to “avoid psychological distress” just as strong across the political spectrum? I don’t know, but my first thought on reading this particular phrasing here was that the Right was grabbing power by turning the Left’s tactics back on them.
“Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?”
I don’t know how any form of patriotism can be honest if the truth of our country is hidden. How can a nation solve any social problems if we don’t admit that they exist? Why do the people who make fun of safe spaces want to make education a completely safe space from white guilt?
It’s just easier to say that leftists want to make kids hate themselves and their country and call it cultural Marxism.
For “avoid psychological distress” I read “don’t contradict what their parents tell them”.
Forget about teaching. How about starting with law enforcement. Policing that lived up to this standard would be wonderful, provided that alongside “psychological stress” we also include “application of lethal force.” Hard work, I know when “shoot first and ask questions later” is so much easier. Baby steps.
Simple. If you deny their existence, there are no social problems, and thus, nothing to solve. It’s worked* with climate change, why not racism?
Imagine if this approach was to be used against teaching evolution in science classes.
* “Working” meaning not having to change, or actually do, anything at all.
“I don’t know, but my first thought on reading this particular phrasing here was that the Right was grabbing power by turning the Left’s tactics back on them.”
Group identity politics is all about that. I increasingly detest the relentless, almost shrill “pride” movements of various flavors for this very reason. I know, I know…there is a difference between a neo-confederate celebrating oppression and a gay man attempting to celebrate something for which he was long oppressed. But the relentlessness is overwhelming. And the neo-confederate can easily find ways to justify his or her more toxic identities. “cause remember-it’s all about “heritage” amirite?
I guess the theatre department had better not perform any contemporary plays, like Hamilton. Of course, early 20th century plays were laden with gender stereotypes, but I’m sure this law only threw sex in as a sop; if you cite the protected classes, it looks liberal and politically correct, right? So all the comedies of early last century should be okay, right? What about those that showed black people only as nannies, wet nurses, and criminals? Why do I have the feeling that the authors of these bills would be fine with that?
And I don’t think they really mean not contradicting what their parents teach them. I think it means not contradicting what their parents teach them as long as they are white, Christian, straight, male, and conservative. If they are liberal gay atheists? Offend away. Contradict away. That is sort of implied in a hidden manner by the wording, but I think all of us here can see through the lame attempts to cover intent.
Conservatives: “Libruls want to turn universities into “safe spaces”! They want to coddle all the special snowflakes and protect them from every having their feelings hurt!”
Also Conservatives: banning any teaching that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.”
Seriously, this shit reads like their hyperbolic criticisms of what they think universities are.