Parents’ rights bill would hamper teaching hard truths, cripple honest education

Hello from a group of professors at public and private institutions in South Central Kansas.

In response to the “Parental Bill of Rights” legislation — Kansas House Bill 2662 — that claims “transparency” is lacking in public education, we have some thoughts to share.

As faculty, we affirm that “transparency” is a non-negotiable requirement. But the false claim that Kansas schools are not already transparent is meant to conceal a deeper agenda to silence public educators who would tell the hard truths of America’s past and present.

In our discussions about race with Kansas students, we see signs of erasure.

Students by and large have been presented with few facts or opportunities for critical thinking, and often express surprise and shock at the full historical record.

To take the period of 1877-1954, our students have heard of “Jim Crow,” but usually are shocked to see the full scope of the system of “slavery by another name” for Southern Black people. Although students probably know it was engineered by White Southern Democrats, they generally have not been led to reflect on how it was enabled by White Northern Republicans.

This under-exposure to difficult aspects of America’s history risks leaving students under-equipped to think critically about the present. And the proposed legislation would keep it that way.

HB 2662 restates the rights parents already have, to “object to any learning material or activity on the basis that such material or activity harms the child or impairs the parent’s firmly held beliefs, values or principles and withdraw such child from the activity, class or program in which the material is used.”

But the proposed bill also undercuts professional teaching standards by giving parents a new “right” to “expect that each teacher and educator of such child shall work to eliminate coercion that forces teachers and educators to support actions and ideologies that violate individual professional integrity.”

Translation: teachers can opt out of teaching required content.

But the framers of the bill don’t tell us what specific “actions” and “ideologies” they mean.

Rather, they invoke the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that neither children, teachers, educators, courses of instruction or units of study “shall direct or otherwise compel the child to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any idea that violates the civil rights act of 1964.”

Sounds fine, right? The law then adds: “the right to expect that the child’s school shall not contract for teacher professional development with providers that promote racially essentialist doctrines or practices that have been held to violate the civil rights act of 1964.”

What “racially essentialist” “doctrines or practices” violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

“Racial essentialism” is the belief that inherent, immutable qualities or essence belong to specific races, some of which signify inferiority.

But HB 2662 writers’ strategy here is to flip the script by claiming that Critical Race Theory and equity and diversity initiatives racially “essentialize” white people as oppressors.

By twisting “racial essentialism” in this way, the bill could justify prohibiting any discussion of white supremacist ideology, which effectively silences the teaching of post-Reconstruction history.

If pointing out racial inequality offends a parent’s “firmly held beliefs,” then the prohibition against “racially essentialist doctrines and practices” empowers parents to stop instances of racial inequality from being taught to their child — whether they happened in 1876, 1963, or in 2022.

This is what the law does. As higher-education faculty, we cannot sit by as Kansas students are forced into a shadowy environment of half-truths and ideological carve-outs.

We hope that our voices will be heard, and the needs of all Kansas students put ahead of ideological agendas.

This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 12:00 AM.