Classroom Censorship
Public education should be a space where students can engage with a wide range of ideas, even if those ideas are controversial or challenge prevailing norms. Schools should serve as environments where a wide spectrum of ideas can be openly discussed and explored without restriction.
By this point, all members of our communities have likely heard about ongoing efforts to censor the instruction of history, especially as it relates to race and racism, gender and sexuality, and other topics that invite and encourage students to critically engage with the legacies of our country.
Rather than protecting students (as much of this legislation claims to set out to do), these bills would limit their education and rob students of imperative lessons about our past that will prepare them for our future. These bills also create a culture of surveillance that makes the daily work of teachers, librarians, and other public servants more difficult.
HB 805 (Anti-Trans/School Censorship Bill), which became law after the General Assembly overrode the Governor’s veto, impacts transgender and nonbinary people throughout the state, while also limiting the curriculum and materials schools can provide to their students. It also requires schools to house children on field trips according to their sex assigned at birth. This law allows parents to prohibit their child from checking out certain books in the school library for any reason and pull their child from any classroom activity or discussion that they believe burdens their religion.
SB 227 (Eliminating "DEI" in Public Education) was passed by the General Assembly, vetoed by Governor Stein, but could potentially be overridden and passed into law. It proposes to censor curricula on race, gender, and the lived experiences of marginalized groups in public higher education. We are closely watching this bill because classroom censorship efforts work to effectively erase the history and lived experiences of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, and censor discussions around race, gender, and sexuality that impact people’s daily lives.