Academic and literary groups blast Republican-led efforts to curtail race education
Academic heavy hitters are blasting Republican-led efforts across the country to restrict education on racism.
The Association of American Colleges & Universities, the American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, and PEN America clapped back in a strongly worded statement of “firm opposition” to legislation and policies that target “discussions of racism and related issues in American history in schools, colleges and universities,” the groups said Wednesday.
Another 75 organizations have signed on as well, in a statement calling the moves “deeply troubling,” composed as they are of “a litany of vague and indefinite buzzwords and phrases including, for example, ‘that any individual should feel or be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological or emotional distress on account of that individual’s race or sex,’ " the statement said. “These legislative efforts are deeply troubling.”
So far similar legislation has been proposed in 22 states and signed into law in five of them — Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee.
Preventing teachers from teaching subject matter that reflects accurate history just to avoid making “some students” uncomfortable will not make the underlying history go away, the educators pointed out. Informed citizenry depends on an educated public, and educators can only provide that if they can impart an accurate view of the past.
Moreover, the bills and new laws rob students of opportunities to discuss and foster solutions to social division and injustice, and in so doing “diminish educators’ ability to help students address facts in an honest and open environment capable of nourishing intellectual exploration,” the statement read. “Educators owe students a clear-eyed, nuanced, and frank delivery of history so that they can learn, grow, and confront the issues of the day, not hew to some state-ordered ideology.”
Moreover, passing laws on what can and cannot be taught is tantamount to substituting political mandates “for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students’ ability to learn and engage in critical thinking across differences and disagreements.”
This “inappropriate attempt to transfer responsibility for the evaluation of a curriculum and subject matter from educators to elected officials” undermines the very purpose of education.
“Educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning,” the statement said. “A whitewashed view of history cannot change what happened in the past. A free and open society depends on the unrestricted pursuit and dissemination of knowledge.”
It’s not just critical race theory being targeted, experts said.
“Any anti-racist effort is being labeled as critical race theory,” Jonathan Chism, assistant professor of history at the University of Houston–Downtown, told NBC News. “Many that are condemning critical race theory haven’t read it or studied it intensely. This is largely predicated on fear: the fear of losing power and influence and privilege. The larger issue that this is all stemming from is a desire to deny the truth about America, about racism.”
