Colyer says he’d sign bill to outlaw critical race theory in Kansas schools, universities
Former Kansas governor and current governor candidate Jeff Colyer said Thursday that he would sign a bill to ban the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools and state universities if elected.
“What it’s become is, it’s become an ideology that race is the only thing that has happened in America,” Colyer said. “America has been a great country where we’re constantly striving to have more and better equality, not that we’re shackled by the sins of generations ago. We need to look forward.”
Colyer was the headliner at a press conference in Wichita’s College Hill neighborhood where he and three other candidates signed the “1776 Pledge,” the first plank of which is to “restore honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love of country.”
The pledge also promises to “promote curriculum that teaches that all children are created equal, (and) have equal moral value under God, our Constitution, and the law,” to “prohibit any curriculum that pits students against one another on the basis of race or sex,” and “prohibiting any curriculum that requires students to protest and lobby during and after school.”
Colyer clarified that he’s not against teaching about racial issues per se, but “when it becomes the underpinning of what textbooks do you use and the entire approach, that’s when it becomes ideology. It is happening in other places and we don’t want it to happen here.”
Colyer, in a tough race for the Republican governor nomination with Attorney General Derek Schmidt, was joined Thursday by state Reps. Patrick Penn, R-Wichita, and Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center, along with Kathleen Garrison, who’s running for the Clearwater school board after losing a 2020 primary for Sedgwick County commission.
The Schmidt campaign issued a press release on Monday that he’d signed the 1776 Pledge and Thursday tweeted he was pleased others are signing it.
In May, he joined 19 other attorneys general in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, criticizing what the letter called a “thinly veiled attempt at bringing into our states’ classrooms the deeply flawed and controversial teachings of Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project.”
The 1619 Project is a curriculum developed by the New York Times Magazine offering lessons examining American history from an African-American perspective. It draws its name from the year the first African slaves were imported to what was then the British colony of Virginia.
Critical race theory refers to a decades-old academic discipline analyzing the effects of racism on American law and institutions, from the era of Black slavery through segregation and into current times.
Once confined to law schools and relatively obscure corners of academia, it burst into America’s mainstream public consciousness in the counter-reaction to protests over racially charged incidents such as the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
It has been adopted as an issue particularly by Republican lawmakers and candidates who have characterized it as reverse racism, anti-Americanism and Marxism.
Garrison, who owns a wedding venue in Haysville, first made local headlines in 2018 when she turned away a gay couple who wanted to get married there.
“Do you remember when you were all in about fourth grade and you started learning about your country and how it was formed and the people who fought those heroic battles that were so famous?” she said. “I remember even at that young age being in awe . . . I did feel privileged. I did feel pride. And I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
She questioned how the country could survive.
“Do you really want the next generation apologizing for who we are? How is that going to make anything improve?” she said. “The fact is divisiveness and divide and conquer is what they’re after, and when I say they, I mean the extreme left. They do have a game plan, make no mistake. We have to be on the offensive and understand that this is serious.”
Huebert, a former Valley Center school board member and the current chairman of the House Education Committee, sponsored a bill this year to require a civics exam to graduate from high school. It would have been made up of 60 questions drawn from the tests that immigrants take to acquire citizenship.
The bill passed both legislative chambers but died on a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who argued that it improperly usurped powers reserved for school districts and the state school board.
“I’m looking for candidates like Jeff (Colyer) that, you know, when we get something good sent dealing with issues like this, that it gets signed” into law, Huebert said.
Huebert also expressed opposition to the 1619 Project.
“Even last year, 1619 was really bubbling up as an issue that needed to be dealt with, and trying to revise the history of this country in a way that was divisive,” Huebert said. “Identity politics has no place to play in our schools.”
Although legislators won’t face re-election until 2022, Huebert vowed to try to get like-minded people elected to school boards in the elections later this year.
“As parents and as grandparents, we’re not going to allow divisive politics, divisive educational issue like critical race theory to further erode the government we have,” he said.
Penn, who is Black, offered himself as an example of the invalidity of critical race theory and similar educational models.
“What we’re seeing are people standing tall and taking a bold stance (against) everyone that would tell us that our social fabric needs to be erased, that our history needs to be revised, that our children are locked into a lot in life based on the color of their skin, either always to be an oppressor or always to be an oppressed,” Penn said.
This story was originally published June 25, 2021 at 4:09 AM.
