The Republican ban on critical race theory exposes the real flaw in our education system
Conservative law-makers are passing bills they claim put an end to "indoctrination," while progressives are calling them "censorship." Who’s right?
Late last week, Florida amended its education code to revise how American history and social science are taught in Florida schools. The amendment is only the latest in a flurry of bills introduced by conservatives in recent months, all of which seek to limit how concepts of systemic racism are taught in U.S. public schools.
It is, of course, not the first time politicians (and politically appointed education boards) have fought over what children learn. But this battle seems to be intensifying and spreading — the latest front in the national (and global) culture wars that are constantly heating up.
This latest episode was sparked when over 4,500 schools adopted educational materials from the New York Times’ 1619 Project. That project, which launched in August of 2019, looks at the effects of slavery in the U.S. since the first slaves arrived in 1619. Its focus is less on individual acts of prejudice and more on systemic racism — how white supremacy has been hardwired into U.S. institutions over the past 400 years. The view of history from which it draws — known generally as “critical race theory” — has become both widespread and controversial in recent years, though it’s been around for decades.
Republicans have been scathing in their response to the new curricula (as well as to a Biden administration proposal to create federal grants promoting it) labeling it a form of indoctrination by the left. During the lead up to last week’s vote, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the new educational materials teach that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”
And so DeSantis, along with Republican lawmakers across the country are banning both critical race theory and the 1619 Project from K-12 schools (as well as, in some cases, universities). Many other states, such as Rhode Island, are taking a broader approach: they aren’t banning specific materials or viewpoints from the classroom but “divisive concepts” more generally.
Liberals, on the other hand, view the spate of new legislation as censorship, an attempt to maintain white hegemony and to exclude crucial voices from history. In Texas, where their new law requires students to study a handful of “founding documents” (such as The Federalist Papers and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America), one of the state’s democratic senators, Royce West, reminded his colleagues that these materials were chosen “not by Hispanics, not by African Americans in (the Texas senate), but by Anglos. No input from us in terms of what founding documents should, in fact, be considered by all children in this state.”
While the new educational requirements are being framed by conservatives as objective and impartial — a balancing act accomplished by prohibiting teachers from “giving deference to any one perspective” — liberals see it as an attempt to sanitize the past, a continuation of what W.E.B. Du Bois observed in his 1935 book Reconstruction in America that “Our histories tend to discuss American slavery so impartially that in the end nobody seems to have done wrong and everybody was right.”
So how should we understand the new laws? Are they censorship — plain and simple? What about the fact that conservatives feel it’s indoctrination if students are forced to learn about the 1619 Project? Or the fact that progressives feel it’s indoctrination if students only read the writings of white men?
Unfortunately, instead of addressing such questions, everyone seems happy pointing fingers. The National Coalition Against Censorship (a sister organization to the ACLU) at least made an attempt, but without much success. Their message? — censorship is no cure for indoctrination, but is itself a form of indoctrination! …a message which feels somewhat thin coming from an organization that’s spent almost 50 years dedicated to fighting state overreach.
There’s clearly a good argument that students should hear the voices of those who have historically been voiceless. Generations of students have learned about America through the words of Ben Franklin and George Washington — maybe they should learn about it through the words of Ida B. Wells and Jovita Idár? But if you think so, the question still remains: why is such a teaching not indoctrination to those who disagree with you? To answer that question, let’s look more closely at what we mean by that term.
Most people probably have a basic sense for what educational indoctrination means: it’s the force-feeding of a certain viewpoint or ideology to kids.
The problem is, when teachers teach our viewpoint we’re OK with it, but when they teach our enemy’s viewpoint it’s indoctrination. This is clearly hypocritical but it’s not just hypocritical — we really feel that it’s indoctrination. Why? Because all of a sudden we see teachers being forced to teach things, and students being forced to learn things, that we despise. We feel the sting of that injustice.
And when it comes down to it, the other side’s viewpoint often does look crazy. How could anyone believe that? — You’d have to be indoctrinated. The term has a kind of negative religious undertone to it: you get indoctrinated into a cult. It’s basically just brainwashing.
So we find ourselves facing off with a bunch of extremists who are trying to make our kids drink their kool-aid. Their ideas are hate-filled propaganda and our ideas are simply factual. The problem is, both sides think this.
For decades, politicians and teachers have striven to make America’s schools “value-neutral” or “value-free.” To them, their ideas were so obviously true that they didn’t see them as a set of values at all, they were just an objective description of reality. But when we can’t see our own viewpoint, our own beliefs, it only compounds the problem.
Reading over education codes from the different states, it’s easy to be struck by the fact that they’re simultaneously commonsense and crazy, depending on which way you lean politically. They’re so sensible as to be put-you-to-sleep boring and, at the same time, so controversial, so supercharged with partisan ideology, as to be electric. Here’s an example from the Texas education code:
A primary purpose of the public school curriculum is to prepare thoughtful, active citizens who understand the importance of patriotism and can function productively in a free enterprise society with appreciation for the basic democratic values of our state and national heritage.
If you’re conservative, that might sound objectively good. We obviously do need to teach democratic values if we want informed citizens, and it’s just a fact that we live in a capitalist country (at least until China buys it). But someone from the left might disagree. They might not go for all that “rah-rah-rah, patriotism, capitalism, democracy” stuff. It might sound like fascist groupthink. So maybe they’d rewrite the education code to read more like this (changes in italics):
A primary purpose of the public school curriculum is to prepare thoughtful, active citizens who understand the dangers of patriotism and can help transform our current free enterprise society into an equitable economy that works for everyone with appreciation for the fact that we still need to realize the basic democratic promises of our state and national heritage.
Sure, not every liberal would agree with that rewrite, but some would. They might call it a more honest appraisal of American society, whereas conservatives might call it communism. Whichever way you lean, though, can you see that neither curriculum is value-neutral? They’re perspectives. They’re based on a set of values. They’ve evolved over time. I’m in no way saying they’re equivalent, just that neither has an absolute monopoly on the truth and neither is pure brainwashing propaganda.
At this point, it might seem like indoctrination is just whatever we think is extremist quackery, which is a big part of it. But there’s also another aspect. We feel that something’s indoctrination when it’s being force-fed, when teachers are being forced to teach it and students forced to learn it. Ideas become indoctrination when we think they’re a doctrine — like church doctrine of old — that can’t be questioned, that require our submission.
Of course, both liberals and conservatives say that their curricula can, and should, be questioned by students (“We’re teaching them how to think and not what to think!”), but the fact remains: teachers are forced to teach it and students are forced to learn it.
This is, of course, normal. Over the past two centuries our schools have become increasingly state-run and standardized. Has it been successful so far? The jury’s still out, but some see the imposition of a uniform education — one clear aim of which was to assimilate the diversity of Americans into a single American identity — as a form of cultural genocide waged against marginalized groups by the dominant group of European-Americans. (That history is a topic for another article.) Putting that aside though, should we hope for success going forward? The prospects don’t look great. As the culture wars heat up, further clashes are likely, as well as perhaps some strange and awkward situations.
Take, for instance, the Texas education code referred to above, and fast-forward a few years. The U.S. is becoming more polarized and both sides are becoming more aggressive. At the same time, demographics are shifting in Texas. Things are sliding left there and progressive senators could become the majority. In that case, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that the education code might get a makeover in Texas and look like the progressive rewrite above.
And what if Texas turns “purple” for good? What if the balance of power starts flip-flopping every two to four years from red to blue — Republican to Democrat — like we see at the federal level? Should we also imagine education requirements all flipping back and forth? Imagine what that would mean for teachers — the whiplash of the poor social science teacher who has to teach a “patriotic” view of America for a few years, then a more critical perspective for the next few.
Is this really such an outlandish scenario? As feelings grow more and more bitter between the left and the right, it can start to seem likely. One can almost hear the future angry cries of “indoctrination!” growing louder and louder.
As the new Florida law was being discussed last week, protesters at the meeting broke in with chants of “Allow teachers to teach the truth.” But the fundamental question still remains: who’s truth?
Like a lightning bolt, an answer to that question did emerge for one miraculous moment in a recent New York Times article looking at the new Texas law.
“The idea that history is a project that’s decided in the political arena is a recipe for disaster,” said Raul Ramos, a historian at the University of Houston who specializes in the American West.
In just a few words, Raul Ramos shines a light through the whole issue. His point is entirely obvious — history, including the teaching of history, shouldn’t be decided in the political arena — but somehow his point is also strangely obscure. The light disappears. The words drift away. After quoting him, the article quickly forgets him and goes on to inventory everything that’s wrong with the new history curriculum except for the fact that it’s being “decided in the political arena.”
But this is the real issue. In wrestling with the question — Who should decide what’s taught in U.S. classrooms? — everyone assumes it will be one group of politicians or the other. But why are we letting politicians edit history textbooks and curricula in the first place? They’re obviously just doing so based on partisan agendas. They’re not experts in history, or child development, or critical race theory. They probably know little or nothing about these things. So how does it make sense?
It doesn’t. Raul Ramos is right: The idea that history is a project that’s decided in the political arena is a recipe for disaster. But of course his insight isn’t just limited to history. The idea that truth is being decided in the political arena is a recipe for disaster. Any kind of truth. In science, in medicine, in religion, in journalism.
Americans have had centuries to understand this point when it comes to religion and journalism, to freedom of belief and a free press. A state-backed church would be abhorrent to most Americans, and state-controlled media would be an obvious tyranny. But why is it different with education? Why are state-controlled schools not seen in the same light?
We haven’t yet made the connection between journalism and religion on the one hand, and science, art, medicine, and education on the other. But they are connected. All of these activities are fundamentally cultural activities — they’re distinct from political and economic activities. Of course, all three interweave and dynamically affect one another, but they’re not the same thing.
The political arena is where we decide (and enforce) the rights and obligations of the community. The economic arena is where we meet each other’s needs, where we produce, distribute, and consume goods. And the cultural arena is where we cultivate our thoughts and ideas, where we push boundaries and make new discoveries.
These things require a free, exploring mind. They require freedom of thought. The state can’t direct them. Politicians can’t inspire new scientific discoveries, spiritual revelations, or artistic creations. Nor can they provide a true education — they can’t orchestrate those delicate moments when a student suddenly feels seen by a teacher and so sees themselves and their own calling a little more clearly. These things can’t be forced from outside, they can’t be legislated. When we try, we simply drain them of their vitality. We kill their living movement. We untune them.
And this is why the cries of indoctrination will never end so long as the state is in charge of education. It’s also why both sides are right in the current debate, because state-mandated curricula are, by their nature, indoctrination. Even if we agree with what’s being prescribed and think it’s simply the truth, still the fact remains: teachers are forced to teach it and students are forced to learn it.
So who should decide what’s taught in our classrooms? Well, how about the teachers themselves? They’ve been here this whole time, amidst all the clamor and commotion, but they’ve been voiceless. We’ve assumed the politicians and public will decide what they teach — that we know better than them about their own subjects. We’ve treated them like puppets and pawns.
It’s true that we don’t have much respect for our teachers. We lament the state of American education and think they’re probably to blame. So it makes sense that we feel we need to direct them: to prescribe their goals and standards for them, to design their curriculum and make sure they hold to it by scrutinizing their students with a battery of tests.
But does that sound like a recipe for success? Have you ever worked a job where the basic assumption was that you were incompetent to make your own decisions?
Imagine what might happen if we simply said, You’re welcome to use the old curriculum if you like, but from now on you can also just teach whatever inspires you. If that’s the founding fathers, great. If that’s critical race theory, fantastic.
Imagine what such freedom might look like, what creativity it might unleash. Maybe we’d find them competent in a new way, that if they weren’t bound by a thousand shifting requirements — so many chains and crutches — they could walk a little more upright and maybe even run. It’s hard to imagine our children ever becoming inspired, creative, and capable, when we keep their teachers, their role models, on a leash.
As the new Florida law was being discussed last week, protesters chanted “Allow teachers to teach the truth,” but whose truth? If it’s yours or mine, then we should be more honest — we should chant “Allow teachers to teach my truth.” And if they don’t want to? What then? Will we chant “Force teachers to teach my truth” or “Fire teachers who won’t teach my truth”?
Because that is the reality. If teachers stand up for themselves — refuse to be someone else’s mouthpiece — then they’re fired or forced to resign. We should expect more such resignations as the culture wars heat up and the struggles over education intensify.
Or, we could try a different chant: “Allow teachers to teach their truth.” The result wouldn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before. It wouldn’t be a uniform education system, but a pluralistic one — as many curriculums as there are teachers. Such an experiment might sound frightening, maybe even dangerous. It might feel like a dam bursting. But, if so, it would be bursting with creativity and culture. And we’ve held those waters back too long.
POSTSCRIPT: Of course, much is left unsaid in such an article. The largest question is, How can we do it? How can we institute a pluralistic education system that works for everyone? But that’s not really the main question. The main question is just, What’s right to do? What’s needed to bring about health? If we can see that, then we can figure out how to do it. If we can see we’re on the wrong path, that it won’t get us where we want to go, then we can decide to turn and find a new path. The first thing we need, though, is to try to think more broadly, to see the larger connections and dynamics at work in social life, such as that between culture, government, and economy that were touched on in this article. There is a lawfulness at work within these realms. Social life isn’t arbitrary, it’s not whatever we want it to be. We need to learn to see society whole.
Interesting article, thanks for writing it.
I would like to comment on the possible arguments that would arise if teachers are allowed to be in charge of their own curriculum.
Teachers are also political. Putting aside the questions of whether a teacher has the moral integrity to separate their own partiality from their content (or whether, in fact, they would deem in necessary to do so), it's a thoroughly rolled trope that teachers as a whole tend toward the left of the political spectrum. Can you imagine the uproar if each teacher was responsible for curating their own curriculum? Whether they were "communist" or not, such a move would certainly stir up controversy.
I guess one could argue that if parents were not satisfied with the content, they could enroll their students in another school, and the partisan teachers could potentially be "out-competed", but that just kicks the football to the economic realm in a sense.
Perhaps this supports your earlier question about the role of the state in schooling in general? However, if the state was not responsible for providing schooling for all children we would risk massive inequality as a society.
Unfortunately, the questions you raise do not exist in a vacuum. To create a brand new educational paradigm from scratch would probably be easier than the transition from the current one to whatever seems more appropriate.
For anyone further interested, I thought this new Banished podcast on CRT raised some good points (I also just think that Amna Khalid chooses some really interesting subjects to discuss). Unfortunately, she doesn't see the need for the teacher's freedom, but nonetheless, her framing of the whole discussion can't help but bring such questions up (at least to me :)
https://www.booksmartstudios.org/p/the-critical-race-theory-hysteria
(I also added a comment in her comment section - it's maybe an interesting place to discuss these things further.)