Yesterday I testified at the Senate Education Committee hearing on SB167. The video of my initial statement is divided between the next two tweets.
The bill has a list of 8 “divisive concepts” that educators can’t promote. Most of them are no issue AT ALL
But I was concerned with one passage, about teachers being banned from promoting certain emotional reactions from kids. My concern is that this is so broad that, in theory, a teacher could be reprimanded for encouraging students to be mortified by ideologies like white supremacy
I hoped that I was wrong, but instead my fears were confirmed.
Here is a sitting senator insisting teachers can only “provide instruction on the existence” of Nazism, but “we’ve gone too far when we take a position on” it
Is 2022 really the year that we’ll punish teachers, maybe even strip them of their license, for opposing hateful ideologies?
Democracy is not value-neutral. Teachers cannot just mindlessly provide trivia facts about Nazism but attach no moral judgement to it