A Republican state lawmaker has launched an investigation into Texas school districts over the type of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or “make students feel discomfort.”
State Rep. Matt Krause, in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, notified the Texas Education Agency that he is “initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content,” according to an Oct. 25 letter obtained by The Texas Tribune.
Krause’s letter provides a 16-page list of about 850 book titles and asks the districts if they have these books, how many copies they have and how much money they spent on the books.
I don’t think state legislators are supposed to micromanage schools’ book choices that way.
His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year’s book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”
But race is not the only thing on the committee chair’s list. Other listed books Krause wants school districts to account for are about teen pregnancy, abortion and homosexuality, including “LGBT Families” by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee, “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” edited by Sarah Moon, and Michael J. Basso’s “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”
It seems he’s doing all this under the umbrella of the No Critical Race Theory law.
Krause informs districts they must provide the committee with the number of copies they have of each book, on what part of campus those books are located and how much money schools spent on the books, as well as information on any other book that violates House Bill 3979, the so-called “critical race theory law”designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools. Critical race theory, the idea that racism is embedded in legal systems and not limited to individuals, is an academic discipline taught at the university level. But it has become a common phrase used by conservatives to include anything about race taught or discussed in public secondary schools.
Unless what’s taught is that there were a few hiccups but now everything is fabulous and anyone who says otherwise is a far-left wild-eyed anarchist demon.
State Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, who is vice chair of the committee, said she had no idea Krause was launching the investigation but believes it’s a campaign tactic. She found out about the letter after a school in her district notified her.
“His letter is reflective of the Republican Party’s attempt to dilute the voice of people of color,” she said.
Neave said she doesn’t know what Krause is trying to do but will investigate the motive and next steps.
Meanwhile schools are trying to figure out how the hell to comply when they’re already busy dealing with the effects of the pandemic. Is our children learning?
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8 responses to “The discomfort investigation”
Here in Virginia, Beloved has become a campaign issue. (Youngkin is the Republican candidate; McAuliffe the Democrat; McAuliffe already served a term as governor, but in Virginia you cannot serve consecutive terms.)
The poor kid seems to have recovered.
On the radio yesterday, I was listening to the song that has the line “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” and reflecting on how accurate it was…only that makes it sound a lot more benign.
The idea that parents should be able to prevent their children from uncomfortable ideas at school has a long history…that’s been a tactic with evolution for a long time. Parents should have input, like at teacher’s conferences and so forth, but they should not determine the curriculum. If there is something really, really wrong, they should have the right to bring it to the school for consideration, but they are not the proper people to determine what is wrong and what isn’t. I didn’t even go that obnoxious shouty route when my son was being taught incorrect things at school, in science, in my specialty. I talked to the school. I wanted to know why my son’s English teacher was talking about polonium halos to show how wrong evolution was.
But now we are in a situation where no left wing kid can be made uncomfortable by having the knowledge of two sexes, and no right wing kid can be made uncomfortable by having the knowledge of sex at all…so education dies.
Just the title of Kendall’s screed tells me I don’t need to bother reading her book. In the words of Shirley Chisholm back in 1972:
“I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being black, in the field of politics.”
Kendall’s feminism is all about the kind that isn’t about the welfare of women as a class, but about the kind of identity politics that gets used to make power plays in organizations.
The kids need to read The Confession of Nat Turners. Not only is Styron a vocabulary-building novelist, there is a scene that he describes brilliantly of Turner being in chains in a shed awaiting the trial, unable to fight of mosquitoes that are getting free reign of his back. It’s unintentional torture, but torture nonetheless. It’s also a great counterpoint to Gone WIth The Wind which gives readers the impression that slaves were just servants without a payroll. I recommend it to anyone from young adult to old adult.
Perhaps rather than requiring overworked school librarians to provide such lists, the politicians could get together and produce one of their own, along the lines of the (now defunct?) Papal Index. Or better still, the politicians and/or their staffers could visit all school libraries and go through the collections, neatly tearing out pages likely to cause offence to whoever wherever. These will be easily identified, as the books as they age will tend to fall open at those pages, which in any case are likely to have been heavily annotated by the more studious readers.
The offending pages could be then be kept by the politician concerned, both for verification that the job had been done, and to enhance his or her own collection of said offensive material. QED.
So there’s a Committee on General Investigating. I mean, there has to be, right? To do all the investigating that isn’t specific enough for some other committee. /snark
Reminds me of James Hacker, Minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs.
Change the location and party affiliation to whatever you like. This wrongthink purge used to be the specialty of conservatism, but the woke have taken to their new McCarthyism with zeal.
#4
But William Styron is a cis-het-white-man, and therefore not allowed to write about slavery.