Thread by @AkivaMCohen

So let's talk about this Idaho law, because this is not at all a fair description of it. Not even in the stretchiest sense.

In fact, the law is ... not terrible. It won't actually do what it's intended to do (bar schools from exploring & teaching critical race theory). Read it

https://twitter.com/Dschnoeb/status/1387146017355796481

Here's the full text, it's really short

Note: Nothing in there, AT ALL, about "no teaching that past racism or sexism is responsible for anything"

Let's take it section by section

1) Bars schools from "directing or otherwise compelling students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to" an array of ideas that (frankly) would be pretty clearly awful (a sex/race/ethnicity is superior or inferior, individuals should be adversely treated based on race, etc)

Note, btw, this doesn't bar schools from *teaching* any of those things, if they want to. They just can't impose adverse consequences on a student who doesn't "affirm, adopt, or adhere to them"

This, btw, is why I say it won't even have its intended consequence of prohibiting the teaching of CRT. Schools can still teach it, both because it doesn't advocate any of those things, substantively, and because "teaching" and "directing students to affirm ..." are different

This bit is a bit more problematic, in that classification of students can sometimes be reasonable, depending on the uses to which it's put. But that's not what the freakout about this bill is about

And the last bit declaring an emergency is pretty funny. But all in all - a waste of a bill, but not the four-alarm fire it's being presented as. cc @esp1371