Terrible BUT
Live free or die.
Well not free to teach about slavery OBVIOUSLY. Other free. Good free.
The Washington Post last July:
A majority of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s diversity council has quit after he signed new restrictions into law that affect educators as well as public employees.
Language in the state budget Sununu signed in late June implicitly rejects the idea of systemic racism by directly prohibiting teachers and anyone leading diversity training for public employees from saying that any group is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, even if unconsciously.
More on how this is playing out:
They’re playing the “no you’re the racist” game. It’s “I don’t see color” but meaner.
In this column, white people with huge guns. In this other column, Ruby Bridges is a racist. Your deal!
Kevin Drum had an interesting blog post on the CRT opposition recently:
Patriotism is the key to understanding the fight over critical race theory
He suggests that the fight over CRT is really a fight over “patriotism”, “loving America”, whether it’s possible to teach that America is the greatest country in the world if we acknowledge its faults, and whether we even want to teach that. He sees the two sides as “America is a great idea enacted by great people who made some mistakes along the way” versus “America is at root a racist country created and built by racist white men who also did a few good things along the way”. He suspects that compromise might be possible if we look at the issue in this way.
I can see that this NH bill is a ham-handed way of teaching perhaps “America had its faults, but we fixed them, like with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, yea us!” The Act becomes a shield, protecting the US from criticism.
Count me among those who oppose teaching that America is the greatest country in the world. I don’t think I’d agree with either side that he delineates, but I have more sympathy for the second one. I suppose I would say that the US was built by normal people who did some good things and some bad things.
Those Tweets from Judd Legum are full of misinformation.
1) He claims: “Under the bill, New Hampshire teachers who discuss the history of slavery without adding that EVERYONE WAS DOING IT, would be subject to discipline”.
He gives no quote from the bill saying that. He does quote a commentary that (a) is not the bill, and (b) does not say that.
And there’s nothing in the bill (as far as I can make out) that says one cannot teach about slavery (feel free to point me to it if I’m wrong).
2) He says: “The statement says that the laws should prohibit IDEAS that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964”, and that “we should not be in the business of banning ideas”.
But the statement he quotes says neither of those things. It instead, quite explicitly, says that teachers and students “… should NOT BE COMPELLED TO AFFIRM …” ideas contrary to the CRA. That really is rather different.
There is a vast, vast difference between (a) an idea being banned, and (2) people not being *compelled* to affirm that idea. Hint, the difference is that one can still *voluntarily* affirm that idea. So, no, it’s not a “blunt attack of freedom of expression”, indeed it’s clearly an upholding of that freedom.
The Tweets are dishonest, as can be seen from simply reading them.
He may have a point on the last bit, on the “Moms for Liberty” trying to mis-use such laws, but that: (a) is one partisan group, not the law, and (2) there’s no suggestion (unless I’ve missed it) that their complaint has been upheld.
It appears the new bill, sponsored by Rep Alicia Lekas, is HB 1255 for the upcoming session. The title is “an act relative to teachers’ loyalty”, and the description says “This bill expands the prohibition on teacher advocacy of subversive doctrines.” The text is brief:
I do think that this is alarming and inappropriate. Cannot advocate any theory promoting a negative account of the history of the US (unless you include this vague concept of “worldwide context”)? Really? And what constitutes “advocacy”? Prohibition includes “teaching that the United States was founded on racism”? Why?
Section I is also disturbing. It’s not enough to say that a teacher shall not advocate the overthrow by force of the government of the US; I think there’s a word for that, and I think it’s a crime, but perhaps I’m missing something. But it says “shall not advocate communism, socialism, or Marxism as a political doctrine”, then goes on toe specify “any other doctrine that advocates the overthrow…”, which to me is unclear. Is socialism OK if it does not advocate overthrow by force? And I think this is a handy grab bag to allow anyone advocating or even teaching about anything that resembles socialism to be accused of “socialism! you want to overthrow the government!”, even if overthrow of the government by force is nowhere near the point.
So I do think people are justified in being upset about this bill.
That’s fascinating.
So history teachers can’t teach about slavery or the dispossession of indigenous populations at all, because both of those are “negative” on their face – unless they lie about it by saying the rest of the world was doing it too.
I do think it’s not a peculiarly American thing but a human thing – I think humans who have some kind of advantage (like for instance some advanced technology, or novel germs, or both) over other humans will use the advantage to rip off or exploit those other humans. But is that the same as thinking schools shouldn’t teach the truth about the ripping off and the exploitation? Hardly.
It’s called an act relative to teachers’ loyalty, which is a strange concept. Is loyalty denying and concealing all the bad stuff? No.
Seems like some pretty blatant 1st Amendment violations…
The idea that slavery was used around the world is not a good justification for the institution of slavery in the United States, particularly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence (which is not the Constitution, I know, but it is considered the founding document and the celebration of which signing is considered Independence Day.) It has that glaring phrase “All men are created equal,” and even though the intent was to deny the moral justification for a noble class, it certainly pointed out the belief that Africans were not considered to be fully human since it did not address the idea that slaves should be thereby set free. It kind of ignored slavery.
Zinn’s probably going to be banned in New Hampshire, and so is James Loewen, who both teach that the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War were in large part to benefit the wealthy and the merchant class who had differences with the King and Parliament. The working class and the rest of society saw very little benefit, if any, from the changeover in governments. And the slaves in the South, if they were aware of it at all, found little comfort in it. In fact, if they knew about Wilberforce at all, they probably would have wished the Loyalists had won the Revolutionary War and this was still a colony.
Germany decided that it was important to educate their children about the dangers of genocide against a people based on their racial/cultural heritage in order to prevent a renewed rise of nazism/fascism. The United States in ignoring the lasting damage of slavery based on the idea that black people were chattel and not fully humans created equally has decided to follow the Turkish route and deny genocides. We are the “shining city on the hill,” you see. A beacon for freedom. People are dying trying to get in (even though we think they are disease-ridden vermin invading Texas and Arizona from the South.) We’re the good guys, and any teacher that teaches different is a socialist marxist.
Aside – the Sununus have some kind of dynasty going in New Hampshire, don’t they?