America's Talking - New Education Bills Would Block CRT, Back Parents

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

A new trio of House education bills would push back on Critical Race Theory and federal rules in local public schools, the latest in an ongoing battle led by Republicans to respond to curriculum and policy changes in education. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I'm doing well. I know you're feeling a little bit under the weather. I hope you feel better soon. We are recording this on Friday, September 8th.

Casey, the teaching of the divisive concept known as a critical race theory in schools has been a hot-button issue in recent years. Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Education has been pushing such concepts across the country. Simply speaking, critical race theory holds that United States is an inherently racist country, was founded on racism, and all of its institutions were built on and are, in fact, inherently racist. Republicans say that that concept in and of itself is, in fact, racist and are pushing back against teaching children such a concept. you wrote about a few bills that were filed this week in Congress that would block the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Tell us about it. Yeah, that's right. I mean, CRT has become, it's become a political football buzzword, but not without reason because it's become increasingly popular first at the collegiate level, but it's trickled down into K through 12, despite what

some proponents will tell you about that. You know, for instance, I've written at thecenter Square.com about programs, federally funded grant programs that train teachers in critical race theory, right? So if you're training K through 12 educators in critical race theory, for example, I wrote about a grant, and we broke this story, a grant from the Department of Education for $2.5 million to a Florida education program that taught teachers and other education professionals in critical race theory. That was back in like 2017 and 2020. But that's, you know, that's not the only one. There's similar grants like that. But, you know, I think your definition of CRT was good. And you can probably see why it's so controversial. I think on the left,

the Democrats would say, hey, this is our past and we need to reckon with it and not why wash it and to try to move forward and, you know, undo the pain of the American, America's racist history. And on the right, what a lot of Republicans are saying is this is taking, you know, one, I'll be serious mistake of American history and making it the only lens through which we view things. And of course, most of us, you know, who were educated before the last, you know, decade or so, we're taught mainly through the lens of American exceptionalism, you know, Declaration Independence, Bill of Rights being unique and better than pretty much anyone else and a beacon of light to the rest of the world. So that's kind of the landscape of the battle. And so U.S. Representative Bob Good, a Republican

out of Virginia, they tip me off to this. And I think we had really the only good coverage on this. Introduced three new education bills. So one is called the Defending Student Civil Rights Act, which, you know, basically codifies that teaching CRT is a legal discrimination because of, you know, some of the tenants of CRT. There's also, he also introduced the Empowering Parents Act, which gives parents basically avenues to hold schools accountable if they start to go all in on this kind of progressive racial or gender ideology in the classroom because the gender stuff does kind of start to play in here, which of course at school boards and school meetings around the country has become a hot button issue. And the third bill is the Empowering Local Curriculum Act, which flat out says that schools receiving federal dollars cannot be forced to include CRT in their curriculum. So, you know, I'd be curious to get your reaction to the stand, but it is a, bit of a difficulty to nail down what qualifies a CRT and what doesn't. When you're making rules

about such a big, broad ideology, you know, you can easily start implementing something and say, no, no, this isn't CRT. This is something else. But if it looks like CRT and smells like it, are they just trying to get around it? So nailing it down has been its own difficulty. And, but Republicans have been trying to put laws on the books to combat some of the Department of Education regulations that have been building up to back. these kinds of ideas for the last, you know, the last few years. Yeah, so just given my personal opinion here, Casey, and I would hope everyone would agree with me. Slavery was a huge evil in American history.

Big taint on our history. And it should be taught in schools. What happened in our past should not be whitewashed. It should be taught. But to teach current students in 2023 that, essentially Americans' institutions, the country is still a racist country. That's something a little, that's different than teaching our past, right? And I can understand, you know, why many parents in particular, this isn't just, this is, you know, yes, it's become in the media a divisive political issue.

But as a, you know, as a parent of young children, which I was a few years ago, my kids are older now, I would have concerns about this being taught to my children when they were in elementary school, when they were in middle school, when they were in high school, that essentially all American institutions are racist, inherently racist, created on racist concepts, and still are racist, and that something major needs to happen to rectify that. Is that essentially, what these bills that were filed, as you mentioned, by U.S. Representative Bob Good or Republican from Virginia, by the way, are meant to address? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part of it. And others are doing this, to be clear, you know, Tom Cotton has his legislation. There's, I believe, Rubio has legislation. Other Republicans have tackled this from different angles because there's Department of Education regulations. There's different ways to come at this because it's pretty, you know, in some ways it's

pretty widespread throughout the country. And then there's the whole parent side and parents rights, which has become a big issue. But I think you're right that it starts to feel political. When you stop talking about, you know, what happened during the Civil War and you start talking about what's happening today, it quickly becomes political. When you're teaching kids how to view current events, it's not really, it's not really history anymore, is it? I mean, history, you know, of course, is what happened and what formed where we are today. But I remember, I mean, when I was in school. We really didn't teach, you know, history passed like maybe you heard in 1980s. I mean, you heard about World War II and then it kind of stopped after that. And you maybe had one class

on Martin, and if you're old enough, one class on 9-11 or something. And that was it. So a lot of history kind of stops at World War II because at a certain point, it becomes social commentary, it becomes political commentary. And it stops being history. So I think that's part of it. And it just seems, I mean, this is a little bit, it seems like maybe there's just a lack of wisdom, a lack of nuance. When you view anything through one lens, it's really not the academic way. I mean, the academic way is to have an idea and to approach it objectively from several different angles and say it could be this way. And honest historians do that if you read history. And so to take everything and view it through one lens and to shoehorn all of a very complex

history of millions and millions of people from all around the world into one kind of worldview. It's kind of religious, actually. If it's kind of like what people hate about some, you know, religious education or something. So I think that's what we're bumping up against here is, you know, I think there's valid. Most Americans would agree there's a validity to it. But when you make it central and when you make it really the exclusive way to view history, you start to write it the issues. So in practical terms, Casey, we only have a minute or two here left. So my final question for you, in practical terms, these are bills that were filed in a very divided Congress. Republicans have a slight majority in the House. Democrats have a slight majority in the Senate. The chances of,

let's face it, the chances of these bills passing and then getting signed by President Biden are not even slim and none. They're pretty much none. Push back on me if you think that. No, you're right. You're right. And education is inherently local, for the most part, states oversee most of education. There are some, it's kind of amazed to me as I've written about it, how much federal funds have gone to back this stuff up. But even then, for the most part, if you're listening to this and you want to do something about it on one side or the other, you know, the way to do that is and get involved in your local school board because in many ways, you can have more influence. at the very least over your kids' education than somebody in Washington, D.C. can. Well, thank you. That's exactly what I was going for. This is more about bringing this conversation forward. The folks who, the Republicans who file these bills, know they probably have no chance of passing, but they at least put the idea, the conversation in front of Americans. So they're at least aware. And awareness is something that parent, particularly parents of current school children or future school children, which you are a parent of a future school. school child, I'm Casey.

You need to be aware of what's going on in your local schools. But that is all the time we have this week. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.