Pledge to Teach the Truth, Despite New State Bills Against It (Tennessee bans public schools from teaching critical race theory) | Zinn Education Project

Pledge to Teach the Truth, Despite New State Bills Against It | Zinn Education Project

Pledge to Teach the Truth, Despite New State Bills Against It

Tennessee bans public schools from teaching critical race theory amid national debate

The Tennessee General Assembly has banned the teaching of critical race theory, passing a law at the very end of the legislative session to withhold funding from public schools that teach about white privilege.

Republicans in the House made the legislation a last-minute priority, introducing provisions that ban schools from instructing students that one race bears responsibility for the past actions against another, that the United States is fundamentally racist or that a person is inherently privileged or oppressive due to their race.

Similar proposals surfaced in other states this year, including one in Idaho that has been signed into law by the governor. Texas Republicans are also pushing a proposal to ban CRT in schools.

Lawmakers in at least 12 states are attempting to pass legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history.

A recent bill introduced in the Missouri legislature exemplifies a rash of similar bills — in Texas, Idaho, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Arizona, and North Carolina — that aim to prohibit teachers from teaching the truth about this country: It was founded on dispossession of Native Americans, slavery, structural racism and oppression; and structural racism is a defining characteristic of our society today.

Specifically, the Missouri bill bans teaching that:

identifies people or groups of people, entities, or institutions in the United States as inherently, immutably, or systemically sexist, racist, anti-LGBT, bigoted, biased, privileged, or oppressed.

But how can one teach honestly about the nature of our society without examining how today’s racial inequality is a systemic legacy of this country’s history?

From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression. To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them. This history helps students understand the roots of inequality today and gives them the tools to shape a just future. It is not just a history of oppression, but also a history of how people have organized and created coalitions across race, class, and gender.

The Missouri bill names these leading social justice education groups as those whose curricula would be banned:

1619 Project initiative of the New York Times, the Learning for Justice Curriculum of the Southern Poverty Law Center, We Stories, programs of Educational Equity Consultants, BLM at School, Teaching for Change, Zinn Education Project, and any other similar, predecessor, or successor curricula.

The proposed legislation fails to name a single lesson that is inaccurate or that misleads CONTINUE READING: Pledge to Teach the Truth, Despite New State Bills Against It | Zinn Education Project