In 1897 the Indiana State Legislature tried to pass a bill that would legally make the value of Pi, a mathematical constant that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, 3.2 when in fact it is an ever growing decimal approximately 3.14159 (so they couldn't even round correctly). Thankfully a professor from Purdue University was able to help stop the nonsense. And nonsense it was. While the idea of solving the unsolvable problem of trying to square the circle, the was a clear thought that math can be changed for the sake of discomfort. So it is no surprise that the wise leaders of this state are at it again, with how to teach history.
There is an epidemic of state Republicans who are trying to make laws to limit how and what teachers can teach. A response to the ginned up fear of Critical Race Theory (CRT), state elected officials are passing laws to prevent anything they think might connect itself to this legal and social theory in the public schools. Most can't seem to understand what CRT is but they think it is bad for children. This has led to laws both proposed and passed that would limit among other things, certain books being part of curriculum, certain words being banned from the classroom and in Indiana allowing a few as one parent to object to something in the curriculum for it to be removed. This led one State Senator to say even European Fascism of the mid-twentieth century should be taught objectively. Apparently there is a good size to Nazism for some Republicans.
Republicans across the country have been trying to use the power of the State House to define what teachers can and cannot say using CRT as the reason they must step in. They have expanded this to include any attempts by schools to move forward any social justice discussions. This could include LGBTQ+ rights and in some cases acknowledgment and for some religious freedom. Much like Indiana in 1897 they are swayed by nonsense that has led some to trying to outlaw words or concepts including “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness". Others are looking to literally burn some books they don't like. Funny how they love the Constitution until they don't.
They also have created a list of things they are calling patriotic education. In some cases it smacks of jingoism training. But what is funny is just how ignorant some of the elected officials are of their country's history while trying to disappear so many stories of people. In Virginia a new bill lists a series of things that should be taught in school. It included, in the text of the bill, that one thing to be taught is the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Fredric Douglas. Except Lincoln never debated that Douglas. It was Stephen Douglas and my guess is that the moron who proposed it never read any of the debates they had. This new crazy move by Republicans in a growing number of states feels like an attempt to make any education on the growing pains our country continues to have illegal. This is not American and nor is it better for us.
Let's be clear, CRT is not taught in our schools. It is a complex academic concept that suggests that racism is not merely a product of individual hate but deeply imbedded in our societal structures. It also sees race as a social construct and we know this to be true because several ethnic or national groups were once considered non-white but not today. At times the racist ideology is clearly the product of intentional discrimination and other times one can promote racism without intention because our bias is unnoticed. Recent discussion of race and anti-racism have caused a large number of conservatives to react and try to lump all of any social justice movements in CRT and also tried to link CRT to the Critical Theory of the Frankfort School. (Can you say Marxism). Thus the ever popular RED SCARE is back in fashion, only around race and social justice. When confronted with the fact the CRT is not a Marxist ideology (though to be far some academics who work in the area are Marxists) the sputtering sounds like my old lawnmower without adequate gasoline.
CRT does have an influence on education as it broadens the stories of our history and brings in narratives lost due to willful bias or unconscious neglect. Take the role of people of African descent in the Revolutionary War. People will easily remember Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed race (African and Native American) who was killed at the Boston Massacre by British soldiers. By many accounts the first to die and thus the first to die for the Americans in the war. Celebrated since he has been seen as an icon during abolish, a hero to many especially African Americans, referenced in poetry and rap songs and is well known to most middle school students. Worthy of praise there is some discussion to be had when it comes to who else might we remember. Four times as many people of African descent fought on the side of the British than for the colonists and among them Harry Washington. Washington was a slave to future President George Washington and was one of many who declared loyalty to the King and when the war was over was a free man who made it back to Africa. Attucks died for a new country that kept black people enslaved for another century almost, while Washington lived out his life no longer a slave. My guess many people never hear of the black loyalists and the various lives they lived after the war. It expands the discussion and looks more deeply at something a scholar once asked at a conference: Who's History is Black History?
Who's indeed? And that is final argument of these conservative carnival barkers who have attacked anything that even attempts to discuss racial justice as anti-American. They couch it in the idea that parents should have the right to control what their kids are taught. To the point that if it makes them feel uncomfortable it needs to be banished. But it isn't all parents they want to extend the power to, that has become clear. For decades ethnic and racial minorities have been made to feel less than in many classrooms and there was no attempt to give them the power to choose textbooks or curriculum. Only when the status-quo of today is challenged does the ugly head of censorship rise from the conservative caucuses around the country. So when you see your school board trying to ban books, words and ideas, stand up. Say something. Truth and reality are important to us all. Be it that Pi is not 3.2, that Abraham didn't debate Fredric and that when you add a new narrative to the story of America you don't have to edit out the others, just make sure that when we see them together we can see a bigger, clearer and brighter picture.
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