WASHINGTON—Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee say the panel’s ruling right-wing Republicans are trying to censor—whitewash might be more accurate—history teaching in U.S. schools.
And they’re doing much of it in the name of assassinated far-right influencer Charlie Kirk, whom the radical right has set up as a martyr. Kirk was the founder of Turning Point USA. His widow now runs it.
HR8705, the Charlie Act, as right-wingers call it, would permit federal education money for schools only if history teachers avoided certain subjects. The committee approved the measure on May 21. Panel Democrats tried and failed to knock the bans out of the bill.
Instead, the GOP banned federal funds to schools whose teachers discuss slavery and its impact, civil rights, immigration, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and attempted pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, LGBTQ rights, and sexual exploitation by the late financier/sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the panel’s top Democrat, “strongly condemned” the murder of Kirk but said HR8705 “would prohibit federal funds from being used for what the bill defines as ‘discriminatory equity ideology’ or ‘gender ideology,’ and would also prevent the Department of Education from prioritizing race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or immigration status” when awarding grants.
“Moreover, this bill is named to honor Charlie Kirk, known for regressive politics and hateful rhetoric, including statements such as: ‘We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s’ and ‘Large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.’’” Scott also reminded colleagues that Kirk said transgendered people offer a “throbbing middle finger to God.”
And if you’re going to honor a murdered anti-trans right-winger, Scott added, honor Harvey Milk and Marsha P. Johnson, too.
Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor (councilmember) was the nation’s first openly gay public official. A gay hater gunned Milk down in his City Hall office in November 1978. Johnson was a pioneering New York lesbian rights advocate. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River in January 1992. Her death is officially a suicide, but some LGBTQ community members are still skeptical of that.
The Charlie bill is part of a pattern in the GOP side, especially from the highly ideological bloc on the Education and the Workforce Committee: Offering “messaging” bills which may hit the House floor and even pass on party-line votes, but which then sink from sight in the Senate. They’re designed to be red meat for the party’s MAGA base.
“I strongly condemn the manner in which Charlie Kirk’s life was taken. But he is not a role model for our children, and we should not be advancing legislation inspired by his legacy. This bill is part of a broader political agenda targeting how history and identity are discussed in educational settings,” Scott stated.
Democrats offer similar bills, knowing the Republican-run Congress won’t even bother with hearings or votes on them, unless GOP moderates from swing districts revolt.
Measures such as raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, enacting equal pay for equal work, codifying a national right to abortion, and strengthening the Occupational Safety and Health Act are part of a party “platform” House progressives are assembling to take to voters this fall. So far, however, the voters haven’t grasped the ideas.
Earlier this year, the Democrats and the swing district Republicans defeated four GOP “messaging” bills in one day, all from the Education and the Workforce Committee.
That same day, Scott came close to winning a House vote on labor’s #1 legislative priority, the Protect The Right To Organize (PRO) Act, a massive pro-worker rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act to make organizing unions and winning first contracts easier and to increase fines for corporate labor law-breaking. By one vote, Scott lost a move to call it up under the chamber’s rules.
The nation’s two big education-oriented unions, the Teachers/AFT and the National Education Association, had no immediate comment on the Charlie bill. NEA commissioned a study, released last April, from the Rand Corporation, a think tank that usually tackles defense issues, on the impact of such censorship in the nation’s schools.
“Over the past few years, many K-12 public school teachers across the country have been subjected to state laws and restrictions on teaching social and political topics. Even many teachers who work in states with no formal restrictions feel compelled to self-censor in their classroom,” Rand reported.
“Topics that are explicitly covered in state restrictions include racial inequality, stories or histories about people of color, stories or histories about people who identify as LGBTQ+, and gender identity and expression.” Other topics Rand asked teachers about were climate change, election integrity and religion.
Huge majorities of teachers, especially in secondary schools, taught social-emotional learning (90%), stories or histories about people of color (80%), and racial inequality (69%). The least common classroom topics were pro-life or pro-choice positions (16%) and gun control or gun rights (30%).
The catch to all this history teaching is that, regardless of how many teachers taught a topic, except for social and emotional learning, none taught any of those ideas very often. The example Rand cited: Telling stories and histories of people of color: 80% teach it, but only 18% do so weekly.
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