The NPR Politics Podcast - In Florida and Indiana, Republicans Are Trying To Limit What Kids Are Taught

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

In Florida, a law limiting discussion of sexual orientation will take effect this summer. In Indiana, Republican lawmakers debated how to constrain discussion of sensitive topics, including race and ethnicity. Similar efforts are ongoing in statehouses across the country, a manifestation of the right's new focus on what and how kids are taught ⁠— something they hope will motivate parents ahead of the midterm elections.The episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, WMFE reporter Danielle Prieur, and Indiana Public Broadcasting reporter Jeanie Lindsay.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Caitlin. I'm sitting in my office here at the University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, France. I just used a clip of this podcast as a listening exercise for my students. This podcast was recorded at 2.07 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 30th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be using NPR Podcasts to teach my future teachers English. We've gone international. Look at that, Domenico. Yeah, man, we need to do a school's tour. Honestly.

And preferably overseas. A reason to go to France. I'm just going to say, you know, why not? Bordeaux, I hear, is nice this time of year. Well, hey there. This is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, parental rights, public schools,

and why some lawmakers are trying to change what gets taught inside classrooms. We are going to visit two states, Indiana and Florida, where this issue has been hotly debated in the state legislature. Both states are led by Republican governors, and in both states, Republicans control the state legislature. But conservative efforts in both of these states met with very different fates. So let's begin by talking about Florida, because you all might have heard some headlines just this week about the bill there. And to make sense of this story, we are joined by Danielle Pryor from Orlando's member station WMFE. Hey there, Danielle. Hey, how are you guys doing? Good, good. Welcome to

the podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. Danielle, I want to begin with the news on Monday that Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that prohibits discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools from kindergarten through third grade. Yeah, that's right. You know, the law, which some people call Don't Say Gay, the real name is parental rights in education, is a thing now officially in Florida starting, oh, I want to say July 1st in the state. So what's the Republican case for this legislation? What is the reasoning here?

This kind of goes hand in hand with the Stop Woke Act, which was trying to ban CRT, critical race theory, in the classroom in Florida. But yeah, the goal is to just let parents know what kids are learning and talking about in classrooms. You know, what's so strange about this, though, as a former teacher, I feel like parents do know what goes on in the classroom. You know, kids come home with homework every day. There's communication between teachers and parents. So there has to be this feeling among people on the left who are parents or teachers or

otherwise that this is a bit of a cover, parental empowerment to something that's more about trying to stop the kind of cultural conversations that we're seeing more broadly in society among adults. I've spoken to a lot of lawmakers and parents and kids that say, you know, this could really make it harder on these most vulnerable student populations. These are kids already that have really high rates of anxiety and depression and even suicide. And so telling them that there's essentially something, you know, wrong with them or characters that are LGBTQ in books or, you know, something in a textbook about Harvey Milk, I think is potentially really problematic and dangerous. But, you know, I was talking to the Florida Education Association president today, Andrew Spahr. He runs the big statewide teachers union here in Florida. And he was telling me that, you know, the law very clearly states that, you know, you can't talk about gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade. But beyond that, a lot of it is pretty vague, and it leaves some things up to kind of, I guess we'll see kind of what the first lawsuits are. But he was just telling me about a teacher who's afraid to even put up a picture of his

husband in his classroom right now. Kindergarten kids are curious. Elementary kids are curious, and they want to know about you. So they want to know if someone's married. They want to know if you have kids. They want to know what you do on your summer vacation. And so you don't go into a lot of details, but absolutely it's not uncommon for kids to question that there's a picture of you and another man and who is that guy? And if you say that's my husband, now have you opened the door to violating this rule? And is that really something we if you say that's my husband, now have you opened the door to violating this rule? And is that really something we should be doing that we shouldn't be allowed to talk

about families? There are clearly a lot of questions here. And it seems like the enforcement piece of this is what's going to be the real problem or the real thing that winds up landing people in court, whether it's on the side of saying, I don't like that someone's talking about gender identity in class, or on the opposite side of that, where I'm sure we're going to see plenty of counter lawsuits of people saying, my personal rights to express who I am have been violated. You know, Danielle, presumably there are parents who are pleased with this new law, who feel like it's the right decision for their

kids and their families. And have you heard from them? Yes, I have. I've actually spoken with several conservative groups like Moms for Liberty here in Orange County, and they're the ones that are kind of pushing a lot of the book banning that we've been seeing as well at schools. And basically their argument is just that these conversations should be had at home in the safety of one's home with somebody's parent, right, that they shouldn't be happening at school. So there are some parents and families that think that, you know, these conversations are just very private and very personal, and that sometimes when they're had at schools, they're not notified. I feel like there are still so many unknowns and so many questions about this

particular law in Florida that we'll probably really not know answers to until some of these legal challenges that are bound to pop up get resolved. But Domenico, it does feel like in some ways schools have been the front lines for political activism for years now. You know, you can think of Brown versus Board of Education, fights over busing, teaching of evolution in schools. And it's a lot of cultural issues that are just this really big fight right now in schools, whether we're talking about teaching of race, books being banned, say, from libraries in schools, or what's going on right now in Florida. And I'm just curious what you make of that, both of you. I mean, you both have been teachers in the classrooms yourselves.

Well, if there's one common denominator across cultures, no matter what country you're in, no matter what language you speak, everybody cares about their kids, right? And now we're at a point where that piece of education, because people feel so strongly, culture and kids is becoming this new battlefront. And there's so much access for parents, for activists, for anybody with any idea to be able to show up at any municipal school board meeting and be able to voice their opinion. And we're seeing that in a very hot way and in an organized way that's also being used for politics. Tomorrow is International Transgender Day of Visibility all throughout the country. And it's interesting because it's a day that for a lot of kids, they're going to be trying to celebrate things like trans joy and who they are and the history of, you know, LGBTQ civil rights. And I just wonder if they'll be able to talk about it at all in the classroom. I mean, the law doesn't take effect until July 1st, but I think it's interesting to think about the fact that this could very much already have a chilling effect on what teachers

feel comfortable talking about or even teaching about. All right. Well, Danielle Pryor of WMFE in Orlando, thank you very much for taking the time to join us on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back in a moment, we will have the view from Indiana. And we're back. And we are joined now by Indiana Public Broadcasting's Jeannie Lindsay. Hi there, Jeannie. Hello, how are you? Great. I'm so happy that we have so many different perspectives and voices from around the country on today's show. So thank you. So in Indiana, Jeannie, Republicans have full control of government there. And it seems like they were considering limiting how certain topics, including race, could be taught in public schools. But there was a lot being considered in these bills, my understanding is.

So help us understand, what was it that the legislature in Indiana was trying to do in terms of how so-called sensitive topics could be taught in schools? Yeah, so this bill, you're 100% right. It covered a lot of ground. It talked about curriculum transparency, posting learning materials online, you know, opting in and out of classroom materials. But there was a list included in this legislation of eight so-called divisive concepts that were really targeted along the lines of race, ethnicity,

political affiliation was included in their religion, country of origin. And essentially, these eight divisive concepts, as they were described by the authors of the bills, they said had no place in schools. And so it was stuff like that schools can't promote or include lessons that, you know, indicate a student or a person is inferior or superior based on, you know, some aspect of their identity, you know, the sex, ethnicity, race, religion, politics language. And so it talked about not promoting discrimination. It talked about not saying that a person or a student shares responsibility for actions done by someone who shares some aspect of their identity. One of the concepts said that schools shouldn't include or promote lessons that would cause

a student anguish or discomfort. That's amazing because, you know, history is messy. And if we're going to be talking about what's happening in society, well, there's a lot of things that cause anger and discomfort, I will say. You know, and if you're, I mean, school is one of those places where it's always kind of been an open forum. You can have a discussion. You can come to a resolution maybe but try to get the facts, independently verifiable not to prevent the teachings of, you know, uncomfortable history or injustices or facts. They were very adamant that this bill would not do that. But, you know, Senator Scott Baldwin was one of the bill's authors, and he went viral for his comments about teachers staying neutral as they talk about things like Nazis.

He walked those comments back. But he also said that, you know, schools are there to offer information, not their takes on it. And his comments sort of set the tone for the arguments made in support of those bills. So Republicans did try to pass this more than once in the Indiana legislature. And can you explain to us just briefly what happened? Because my understanding is Republicans ultimately could not pass these bills. The House version of the bill ended up going through the House process, passing out of the House with a lot of Republican support. There were some folks that were not on board with it. But then when it got to the Senate, the concerns were so loud for

senators that they wanted to scale back the legislation. And so as the Senate was scaling back and reworking things, more people who really liked the House version of the bill got uncomfortable saying it didn't go far enough. They liked the House version of it. And so ultimately, the Senate killed the bill because they couldn't find agreement on it. Some said it didn't go far enough. They liked the House version. Others said it was just bad policy, kind of an overreach, not good for schools. And so just sort of disagreement on the fringes about what the legislation should look like. And I'll also say it had a lot of stuff in it. And so when you have a bill that is that jam-packed full of topics, I think it's harder to get more consensus on what that bill should look like.

We've heard so much from Republicans who feel like running on critical race theory or parents being involved in schools is this winning strategy. And yet we look at a state here where Republicans had full control of government, and they weren't able to pass these types of bills. And I'm just wondering if there's any lessons learned for how much of an actual winning strategy this could be for Republicans across the country. Well, this stuff is complicated. You know, when the rubber meets the road, this is not the easiest thing to figure out how to legislate for sure. Every school district in the country controls their curriculum and they're basically town by town or county by county. So it's one of the most decentralized things that you can imagine. So trying to make them all adhere to one thing that is then kind of vague, leaves a lot of things open to interpretation, is going to make it very difficult. But the bigger picture thing for me here is that there's always some other culture war item that Republicans seem to be pushing that then gets their base fired up

to try to help them turn out at the polls. To that very point, Domenico, there is a bill that lawmakers in Indiana passed. The governor then went ahead and vetoed it, though lawmakers seem like they still are trying to resuscitate it on this very issue. The law says it would prohibit, quote, a male based on the student's biological sex at birth from participating in girls' sports. You know, it's not an issue, as you say, that is going to go away, at least not in the near political future. Yeah. Well, all right. Jeannie Lindsay of Indiana Public Radio, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White

House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.