Monday, October 18, 2021

From the Texas Tribune: The law that prompted a school administrator to call for an “opposing” perspective on the Holocaust is causing confusion across Texas

Seems to be a consequence of attempts to censor discussions of race in K-12.

- Click here for the article

A new Texas law designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools comes with so little guidance, the on-the-ground application is already tying educators up in semantic knots as they try to follow the Legislature’s intent.

In the most striking instance so far, a North Texas administrator informed teachers last week at a training session on House Bill 3979 that they had to provide materials that presented an “opposing” perspective of the Holocaust. A recording of the Oct. 8 training at Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, obtained by NBC News, has reignited the debate over the so-called “critical race theory law.”

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Gina Peddy, Carroll ISD ’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, is heard telling teachers on that recording. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing — that has other perspectives.”

It’s not the first time the Carroll school district in Southlake — the affluent suburb that sits between Fort Worth and Dallas — has made news with its interpretation of the new law, which is an attempt to keep critical race theory, or CRT, an academic discipline usually taught at the university level, out of schools. Critical race theory's central idea is that racism is not something restricted to individuals. Instead, the theory contends that bias is something embedded in policies and legal systems.

Two weeks ago, the Carroll school board voted 3-2 to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racist book in her classroom after a parent complained about it last year. And Southlake’s earlier struggles with a school diversity and inclusion plan — as well as how parents opposed to the plan started a political movement there — were the subject of a seven-part NBC podcast released earlier this year.

The Texas law states a teacher cannot "require or make part of a course" a series of race-related concepts, including the ideas that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or that someone is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” based on their race or sex.