The newest bill to regulate school curriculums and keep out what legislators see as “divisive concepts” entered the Ohio House on last Tuesday.
State Reps. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, and Mike Loychik, R-Bazetta, brought House Bill 616 to the State and Local Committee, which prohibits all Ohio schools from “teaching or providing training that promotes or endorses divisive or inherently racist concepts.”
Though the co-sponsors said they want to deputize the State Board of Education with making decisions about what those concepts would be, the bill includes “critical race theory,” a misnomer used by conservatives to refer to the teaching of race in American history, and name the “1619 Project,” a New York Times project that laid out the chronology of slavery and racism, as concepts that would be prohibited under the bill.
Education groups like Honesty for Ohio Education have criticized the bill as a “nationally coordinated educational gag order.”
This is the third “divisive concepts” bill to come through the Ohio legislature, with the last bill receiving heavy criticism after one of the co-sponsors said equal time should be given on both sides of Holocaust lessons. Neither bill has passed through the General Assembly.
(Susan Tebben. “Newest 'divisive concepts' bill enters Ohio House.” 10 WBNS. Ohio Capital Journal. June 01, 2022.)
Under the newest bill, the State Board of Education would also be required to “establish a procedure by which individuals may file complaints against a teacher, school, administrator, or school district superintendent alleging a violation of the bill’s prohibitions and to adopt rules to govern the implementation of and monitor compliance with the bill’s provisions,” according to Legislative Service Commission analysis of the bill.
Part of the bill also prohibits teaching kindergartners about topics related to gender.
“It ensures that sexual orientation and gender ideology are not taught in kindergarten through third grade,” Rep. Loychik said. “Starting in fourth grade it must be age appropriate.”
Loychik has made his feelings on gender in schools clear through posts on his Twitter, in which he said “the left thinks a 6-year-old should be able to change their gender but an 18-year-old shouldn’t be able to buy a firearm,” and asks for support not to allow “teaching transgenderism or allowing teachers to discuss their sex life with kindergarteners.”
Democratic committee members pushed back on the bill’s language, decrying it as “censorship” and questioning the vague language used, and the state board of education’s role in defining the off-limits topics in school curricula.
(Susan Tebben. “Newest 'divisive concepts' bill enters Ohio House.” 10 WBNS. Ohio Capital Journal. June 01, 2022.)
“Divisive”?
Teachers have long been committed to providing the skills and knowledge necessary for students to become socially responsible, self-directed, life-long learners. These laws are like forbidding slaves to read or leave the plantation. This an attempt to “Whitewash” history.
The bills' supporters say they keeps schools and state agencies from issuing “ideological purity tests” that students or employees must pass for grades or jobs. They say that teaching certain topics instills guilt in white students, for example, and blames them for past racism.
Beyond sexuality and gender, these bills list a few specific topics as “divisive” or “inherently racist,” including critical race theory, intersectional theory and the 1619 project, along with broader prohibitions on diversity, equity and inclusion learning outcomes.
Yet, the truth is that if students are not taught in a place that’s safe and supportive of identity, they will never know the distinction between racism, white supremacy, and cultural identity, Then, they will never be able to formally understand who they are as they’re developing.”
Free-speech advocates believe the real point of these measures is to scare off companies, schools, and government agencies from discussing systemic racism. “What these bills are designed to do is prevent conversations about how racism exists at a systemic level in that we all have implicit biases that lead to decisions that, accumulated, lead to significant racial disparities,” Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said. “The proponents ,,, want none of those discussions to happen. They want to suppress that type of speech.”
(Adam Harris. “The GOP’s ‘Critical Race Theory’ Obsession.” The Atlantic. May 07, 2021.)
Adam Harris of The Atlantic says, “For Republicans, the end goal of all these bills is initiating another battle in the culture wars and holding on to some threadbare mythology of the nation that has been challenged in recent years.
Don't Speak
Have you ever told a child “Shut up! I don't want to hear it!”?
I'll bet you dimes to dumplings if you have, you eventually had to answer the youngster, and you later likely determined your demand for silence was overly insensitive to a real problem the kid was encountering.
Could it be you just didn't want to hear anything contrary to your own opinion when you initially cut the child off and insisted he or she be quiet? I know I am guilty of that behavior. We really know that forcefully cutting off the kid's voice ranks right up there with adhering to the old idiom “Children should be seen and not heard.”
The state of cognitive dissonance occurs when someone holds two psychologically inconsistent beliefs (or attitudes or opinions) that create an unpleasant mental tension. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are averse to inconsistencies within their own minds. It offers one explanation for why people sometimes make an effort to adjust their thinking when their own thoughts, words, or behaviors seem to clash with each other.
By the way, did you know that the old expression is an old English proverb recorded in the 15th century collection of homilies written by an Augustinian clergyman called John Mirk in Mirk's Festial, circa 1450? In the original form it was specifically young women who were expected to keep quiet.
“Hyt ys old Englysch sawe: A mayde schuld be seen, but not herd.” (In Old English – a “mayde” is a “maid” or “young woman.”)
Sexist as hell, huh? Republicans take the saying a step further. They don't even want the child to be present – “seen” – during the conversation. So, I'm asking GOP lawmakers to reconsider your blanket repression of so-called “divisive concepts.”
Dear Republicans:
Isn’t it just a little ironic that you are wanting so many initiatives that seek to silence the voices of students when, in fact, schools were designed to do just the opposite.
With the way you are proposing changes, there won't be a great deal of room for the honest and authentic voices of our students. T
Here is one example of what you consider to be a divisive concept that you just don't want to hear ...
Race is an important area of inquiry for school-age youth, particularly in middle school, where identities are being formed and contested. Furthermore, race is central to discussions of normativity, access, and power.
In other words, although race is present, it is too often silenced, muted, and ignored within schools.
Although many educators insist on ignoring race, they are engulfed in a system in which race structures both how schooling operates and the subsequent outcomes of schooling.
(Boler, M., ed. Democratic Dialogue in Education: Troubling Speech, Disturbing Silence. New York: Peter Lang. 2004.)
(Pollock, M. Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press. 2004.)
The silencing of race shows how diversity and power are shaped by an overwhelming culture of Whiteness.
Within a framework of Whiteness in which the status quo is desirable and beneficial, silence truly is golden. But within a framework of equity in which social justice and fairness are sought, silence is both indifference and highly problematic.
(Angelina E. Castagno. "I Don't Want to Hear That!": Legitimating Whiteness through Silence in Schools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Vol. 39, No. 3, White Privilege and Schooling. September, 2008.)
Divisive concepts bills fuel a moral panic about how topics like race are being approached in classrooms at all levels (and in workplace trainings). What proof is there that such concepts are being used for indoctrination in Ohio classrooms? None. The GOP “cure” will result in careless reasoning … and, yes, it will dictate their own brand of repeating a belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question.
“When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.”
– Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
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