For whatever reason, this week-old tweet is getting a lot of attention today. I think more and more people are starting to appreciate how dangerous these bills are and how sloppily they’re written. The threat is very, very real.
It was passed by the House on Thursday. On Friday, by the Senate. Late yesterday evening, the Governor signed it into law. The entire process, from conception to enrollment, was eight days. The purpose of the special session was COVID relief, by the way.
Said one state Rep: "If we can do something to reassure parents that in public schools we are not having a political agenda, then I think that we should do that. The fear and the outrage are very real, even if I may believe that fear and outrage was manufactured."
One must admire her candor, I suppose.
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Late last Friday, after about one week of debate, North Dakota became the 56,618,877th state to pass an anti-CRT law covering K-12 schools. I want to talk about it real quick.
The ND law is unique in that it specifically targets (what it takes to be) instruction related to Critical Race Theory. Most of the other anti-CRT bills are both grander in scope and more jumbled (e.g. by targeting a laundry list of "divisive concepts").
Why this approach? According to Janne Myrdal, who sponsored the bill in the senate, CRT is "a political ideology…It is an ideology that if we can indoctrinate it into our children young it would have a political consequence on our children later.”
As promised to @Noahpinion, I'm going to run through some of the recent work (2019-present) on the claim that university makes students more liberal and/or that faculty are responsible. I'm focusing on post-2018 because I cover the older research here. medium.com/arc-digital/no…
@Noahpinion For those uninterested in reading it, the gist of the above piece is: a) student ideological ID changes very little; b) attitudes change a bit; and c) what change does occur is due to peers, not profs.
With few exceptions, subsequent research bears that out. Here's a round-up.
@Noahpinion Rauf 2021: Network effects rule everything around me. Students rarely change their political ideology in college, but when they do, it is driven by their peer network's diversity (e.g. is it all lib? con?) and density (e.g. how tight knit is it?).
StandWithUs continues its assault on academic freedom with a new Title VI lawsuit. This time, it is against Hunter College, with SWU claims has violated the civil rights of its Jewish students by allowing for the creation of an anti-Semitic atmosphere.
At issue is a May 2021 end-of-year class meeting on Zoom. During that class, a number of students changed their background pictures to the Palestinian flag and their Zoom names to "Free Palestine - Decolonize." You can read about it in SWU's complaint.
Some of the students then began to read a manifesto, which the professors on the call did nothing to prevent. Some students also made controversial comments in the chat, like about how Israel is a "white supremacist" state.
Among other things, this gets at a very important distinction in GOP attitudes toward racism and education. While most are comfortable teaching kids about historical racism, support falls off a cliff when it comes to teaching about present day racism.
You can see what I mean here. It’s reflected in many of the anti-CRT bills as well. For instance, Tennessee carved out an exception for discussions of *historical* oppression, but not contemporary oppression. Texas has something similar.
A lot of bills have drawn this type of distinction. Some also forbid teachers from “taking a side” on current events but permit it for past events, e.g. Arizona’s original draft (can’t recall if they kept that language in enrolled version).
A Virginia school board has ordered schools to begin removing "sexually explicit" books from high school libraries. Two board members have urged the district to burn them as well.
The vote was prompted by a complaint from a parent who had been scouring the high school library's app for LGBTQ+ literature. In the process, she found this book, which the publisher recommends for ages 15+.
One board member complained that by not pulling this and other books immediately, the school was basically saying that it "would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ."