Texas Law: Teach “Opposing View” of the Holocaust?

The Texas statehouse is responsible for a lot of volatile legislation this year, so when you are being dazzled by the voter suppression and abortion restrictions, it is easy to overlook HB3979, which seeks to counter “Critical Race Theory.” CRT is a widely misunderstood educational discipline that is usually taught at the university level. When the Texas GOP gets even a hint that someone wants to discuss anything other than the white perspective on the world, they flip out and pass restrictive laws like HB3979 that are so convoluted, most educators don’t know how to apply the law.

Case in point: a Carroll Independent School District administrator last week directed teachers to provide materials that provide an “opposing” perspective on the Holocaust. This pronouncement came on the heels of the school board disciplining a 4th-grade teacher for having the Tiffany Jewel’s book “This Book is Anti-racist,” sold through Scholastic Books, on her class library shelf. The Carroll Independent School District interprets the new HB3979 to mean that teaching the origins of racism is wrong and that teaching Holocaust denial is required?

This is why local elections matter – the representatives in your statehouse down to the school board members in your neighborhood have a direct effect on the quality of public education and can use the force of law to perpetuate dangerous and inflammatory viewpoints on race relations and historical events in our nation.  In seeking to handcuff teachers over how race-related content may be presented in K-12 public schools, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the confusing house bill into law in response to a nationwide parental movement against lessons on racism, history, and LGBTQ issues that some conservatives have erroneously called “Critical Race Theory.”

When the Carroll ISD’s Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Gina Peddy, spoke to teachers last week, she crystalized the deeply cynical nature of the bill, “Make sure that if you have one book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.” This is deeply unsettling. The result is that teachers in Carroll ISD are now too afraid to stock their libraries with critically acclaimed historical novels like Newbery Medal-winning Number the Stars by Lois Lowry that celebrate human decency in the face of war and anti-Semitism. How can teachers provide a book with an opposing perspective? Are they supposed to pull a novel from the Proud Boys Book of the Month Club? The Carroll ISD position is just a breath away from Trump’s declaration that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville protests.

If we leave the education of our children to the conservative GOP in states like Texas, Virginia, and Georgia, we will only see more and more restrictions on the discussion of critical topics like racism that affect our nation’s growth and development. We need Democratic turnout in every election, now and in 2022, to elect Democratic legislators and school board members who support clarity in educational policy and are not afraid to proclaim that systemic racism exists, is evil, and should not be promoted in our schools!   

At Rideshare2Vote we are calling on voters in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio and your generous support will help our efforts to getting these voters to the polls and build momentum for the midterms.

by Taryn Rayburn