‘Teacher Loyalty’ bill would restrict how U.S. history, especially racism, can be discussed in school
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
‘Teacher Loyalty’ bill would restrict how U.S. history, especially racism, can be discussed in school
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FILE - This June 27, 2017, file photo, shows a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the middle of a traffic circle on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. Vestiges of the Civil War and Jim Crow segregation are coming down across the Old Confederacy as part of a national reckoning on race and white supremacy. A diversifying Democratic Party hopes the changes in symbols are part of a more fundamental shift in a region that dominated by Republicans for a generation – and white conservative Democrats a century before that. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File) Steve Helber
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FILE - In this Feb. 13, 1925 file photo, Ku Klux Klan members hold a ceremonial meeting near Los Angeles. Congress effectively outlawed the Klan in 1871, but it was resurrected in World War I. It grew as waves of immigrants arrived aboard ships from Europe and elsewhere, and grew more as the NAACP challenged Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1920s. (AP Photo/File)
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Just one year after New Hampshire legislators first introduced a bill that banned the teaching or discussion of “divisive concepts” like systemic racism, another bill will be debated this legislative session that would take those restrictions further.
The proposed bill, HB 1255 , is titled “An Act Relative to Teachers’ Loyalty,’ and seeks to ban public school teachers from promoting any theory that depicts U.S. history or its founding in a negative light, including the idea that the country was founded on racism. The bill updates a piece of Cold War-era law that bans educators from advocating for communism in schools, and adds additional bans on advocating for socialism and Marxism.
“No teacher shall advocate any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America in New Hampshire public schools which does not include the worldwide context of now outdated and discouraged practices,” the text of the proposed bill reads. “Such prohibition includes but is not limited to teaching that the United States was founded on racism.”
The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Alicia Lekas (R-Hudson), said in a phone interview Friday that she wants to bring the bill to the 2022 legislative session because she disagrees with the way history is being taught in public schools today.
“Too often I’m running into too many students who don’t know anything about real history and stuff like that, because teachers spend too much time indoctrinating students about political things, which I don’t think teachers should be doing,” Lekas said.
Lekas believes that although slavery was a negative chapter in U.S. history, the historical context of the time isn’t given enough weight when it’s taught to students.
“Slavery was a terrible thing, but a lot of people don’t know slavery happened all over the world; that’s the setting you need to be teaching,” Lekas said. “If you’re going to teach about the founding of the country, you need to teach it in its proper setting so you know what was happening in the rest of the world, so you have a better idea of why people did the way they did.”
The bill was co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Keith Ammon (New Boston), who introduced last year’s divisive concepts bill, and fellow GOP Reps. Glenn Cordelli (Tuftonboro), Erica Layon (Derry) and Tony Lekas (Hudson).
Last year’s divisive concepts bill was modified and ultimately passed through a rider bill to the state budget, signed by Gov. Chris Sununu, which also included the state’s first abortion ban. The Department of Education has now set up a web page where parents can report a teacher who might indicate that any group of people is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Megan Tuttle, president of the National Education Association New Hampshire, the largest teacher’s union in the state, spoke against the proposed bill in a statement Friday, calling it “anti-freedom.”
“New Hampshire educators want to provide every child an accurate and quality education that imparts honesty about who we are and integrity in how we treat others,” Tuttle said. “Certain politicians want to censor the truth of our history and pass laws to ban learning from the mistakes of our past and erase leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who stood up to racism and changed our country for the better.”
Deb Howes, president of American Federation of Teachers New Hampshire, said in a phone interview Friday that she is concerned about the impact the bill will have on a teacher’s ability to facilitate classroom conversations about historical topics.
“It’s a further attempt to intimidate teachers, to bully them into being silent,” Howes said.
“It is clear that some of our legislators don’t want public school teachers to go anywhere near honest discussions about race in schools, which is a disservice to all of our students. Race exists, racism exists, and if we ignore the fact that it has been a part of our history and still exists now, we are not doing our job as educators.”
Empowered by the new divisive concepts law, officially called the “Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education Law,” Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut created a web page last month that links to a form where parents and students can report teachers for alleged discrimination under the new law.
NEA-NH and AFT-NH came out strongly against the move, and Howes called on Edelblut to resign, saying he had declared a “war on teachers.”
Devon Chaffee, executive director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, also criticized the bill Friday, calling the legislation “Orwellian.”
“We are better as a state and community when we can have hard conversations and learn from them — which is why it’s so important that our students get a full picture of America’s history that includes both the good and the bad,” Chaffee said in a statement. “This bill would unconstitutionally restrict New Hampshire teachers from covering America’s legacy of racism and slavery, building on the disturbing trend we’ve seen this year of putting teachers at risk of professional discipline and lawsuits for teaching about these difficult topics.”
State Rep. Alicia Lekas said the additional ban on advocating for socialism and Marxism, on top of the pre-existing ban on promoting communism, came from a desire for specificity.
“We are not a socialist country, and socialism does so many harms,” Lekas said. “You look at all the socialist countries in the world and all the harms that come to them. … I hate to see our country fail, and I hate to see us moving in directions that history tells us fails.”
When asked if she thinks the bill could have a chilling effect on teaching about parts of early American history, Lekas said she doesn’t believe it will, as long as educators are teaching a “proper history.”
“It doesn’t keep a teacher from teaching history, it just says if you are going to teach it, you gotta do a good job of it,” Lekas said. “You can’t teach one-sided history.”
The proposed bill will be heard in the House Education Committee in January.
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This Republican state rep misstated the 3/5 compromise and slavery, and later had to apologize for her mistakes.
These "loyalty" laws would whitewash US history.
And just how much time has she spent actually studying real history?
I know right? What is “real” history exactly? Why do I feel like it is all sunshine and rainbows? Very very white, Christian rainbows.
These people complain about so called indoctrination, when that is what they actually want.
I wouldn't trust this woman to teach what happened yesterday.
I guess we're not supposed to know what goes on in their thumper madrasas...
The argument that the woman in the video , who was a co-sponsor of the bill, is making is that slavery was on its way out when the 3/5 compromise was instituted. This is not true.
We have been hearing for a year and a half that "parents" object to their kids being indoctrinated by race obsessed teachers. But what we are really learning as time goes by is that these conservatives do not want racism mentioned at all in the nations schools.
They will discuss slavery, but only in the context of it being on its way out at the time of the Founding fathers. They will only discuss slavery not in terms of racism in the United States, but only if it is also explained to the students that slavery happened all over the world. In other words if it is disassociated from white behavior in America.
Hehe it can be glossed over with a healthy healing of “yeah but” and whataboutism.
"he Department of Education has now set up a web page where parents can report a teacher who might indicate that any group of people is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Who believes teachers should be teaching this?
Who would believe some of these parents after listening to their unhinged rants at school board meetings.
I wouldn't trust a parent that is not in the classroom.
So far I've not heard of any teachers actually teaching that. Many have rightly taught that white conservative Christians fought to keep owning humans like cattle, but that doesn't mean that 'white conservative Christians' are "inherently" racist. Just like if we mention how there have been thousands of sexual abuse victims of Catholic Priests, that doesn't mean Catholic Priests are inherently pedophiles. It might make some Catholics uncomfortable when that is mentioned, but it is a factual statement.
The problem with laws that ban supposed teaching that any group of people is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously" is that the teachers then have to defend even teaching that, yes, white people did own slaves and fought to defend what they saw as their right to own humans as livestock because some parent may believe that's teaching that white s are "inherently racist", likely because that parent doesn't know what "inherently" actually means.
Pretty sure you will have an extremely hard time finding any teachers that are teaching that. Teaching that America was founded with racism and sexism deeply ingrained into its laws and institutions isn’t teaching that anyone is inherently racist or sexist or whatever, it is just teaching one factual aspect of our nation’s history.
Of course I also dont think these subject should really be closely examined until kids are a bit older and able to understand that what people did in the past doesn’t make you guilty, but that to understand the present you have to understand how we got here. Unfortunately listening to a bunch of supposed adults around the country, I just don’t think a large portion of the people in this country are mentally capable of making the distinction.
Talk about a bunch of snowflakes on the right.
The dumbing down of the school system continues...
You could even say, the "white washing" of the school system.
They want uneducated masses so they can be easily manipulated. They have been advocating for this for years. Stupid people follow - educated people go their own way & make up their own minds. Then they will have just what they want - a working class that works & pays taxes & that is it.
That isn’t teaching, that is indoctrinating. requiring children, or anyone really, to only learn one interpretation of historical events and prohibit the teaching or discussion of others is indoctrination.
Classic authoritarianism.