White Republican legislators have introduced more than 400 voting-suppression laws since their failed Jan. 6 coup, ostensibly because they want to protect “the integrity [or sanctity — choose your poison] of elections.”
The Democratic Party’s response, as usual, has been cowardly, spineless and ineffective. (Hey: You’ve got a brand, guess you gotta stick with it.)
Now Republicans are introducing, and already have enacted, state laws to prohibit teaching U.S. history in public schools, if that history that might include — touch upon — mention — umm, how can I say this? Reality.
These Republican proposals amount to institutionalized child abuse. Not just: Let’s prohibit our children from thinking, but: Let’s prohibit our children from knowing.
Hey, it works in China and Russia, doesn’t it? For now?
As a veteran of nine years teaching in public high schools, I propose a law to protect the integrity (or sanctity) of our children. Here it is:
H.R. 28*: “No elected member of our state or national legislatures shall be permitted to introduce a law involving public education, if he or she represents a state whose schoolchildren perform below the national average, this average to be determined by the states’ school districts’ performance based on the following criteria.”
H.R. 28 would prohibit senators and congress(wo)men from introducing legislation on public education if they represent any of our 25 worst-performing states, ranked, in this order, from worst to mediocre: Nevada, New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, Utah, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas and Hawaii.
Of these 25 worst-performing states, Republicans control both statehouses in 20 of them.
Admittedly, no grading system for the schools of a state or nation will be perfect. For example, West Virginia ranked third nationwide in high school graduation rate, Texas fifth, and Alabama 16th.
By comparison, the top-ranked state nationwide, Massachusetts, ranked 13th in high school graduation rate; third-ranked Vermont ranked 11th in high school graduation rate; and fifth-ranked Connecticut ranked 15th in high school graduation grade.
This surely indicates not that high schools in Texas, Alabama and West Virginia are better than those up north, but that their standards are lower.
State and federal lawmakers’ latest attacks on public education consist of White-hot blasts at so-called Critical Race Theory, which states nothing more than that racism against Black people and Native Americans was built into the history of our country, in virtually all institutions, public and private.
Any honest student of history will acknowledge this.
Yet, so thin-skinned are our White people and their elected officials today that legislators in 26 states have introduced, and in many cases already passed, laws that would prohibit — with severe penalties — teaching this self-evident truth in public schools.
In which 26 states are Republican legislators directing these attacks? You can see them in this link. Turns out that 17 of the 26 states trying to limit classroom speech about U.S. history appear in the list of the Worst 25 States’ public-school systems.
This is Soviet-style governance, Chinese Communist Party governance: Don’t study history; obliterate it. Don’t try to learn from history; punish people for studying it. Do not encourage honest inquiry and education about important social problems: Prohibit it.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, voters, fellow countrymen, friends: Why should we let the worst among us dictate to the best? Why should we let mediocre people do it?
Republicans’ ginned-up attacks on the dispassionate study of history are nothing but raw racism in pursuit of campaign contributions from White folks.
Republicans have become clones of the Soviet enemy they once claimed to despise.
Among the many revolting things the Republican Party — now a cult — has done, corrupting public education may be the worst. But, hey: Look at all the other things they’re doing — while that’s still allowed.
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. (Matthew 7:5)
(* I have named my proposed legislation H.R. 28 in memory of my favorite baseball player, Vada Pinson (1938-1995), who made an amazing, diving catch on a line drive to centerfield in 1961, in the only game I attended at Crosley Field. He batted .343 that year. Why he never made it into the Hall of Fame is beyond me. I have no theories about it.)
from Courthouse News
