Op-Ed: Critical Race Theory is just a red herring. Here is the real issue.
House Bill 1134, filed recently with the Indiana state legislature to curb the presumed use of critical race theory in schools, has the potential to alter the nature of education as we know it.
The bill goes so far as to limit and prohibit certain language and teaching practices in classrooms. While popular sentiment and Indiana politicians seem to focus on the details of critical race theory in the design and promotion of this bill, I suggest that CRT is just a red herring for the real issue at stake in this conversation: the unprecedented regulation of teachers and teaching.
Measures like HB 1134 and the now-stalled Senate Bill 167 are just another battle in the war that teachers have been fighting since the inception of public schooling: the de-professionalization of teachers and the teaching profession.
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More than any other profession, teachers have continually needed to defend themselves against courts of public opinion that claim to know better than they do.
Teachers find themselves in this situation, unfortunately at the hands of those who have traditionally been their biggest allies and supporters — parents and the government.
Rather than limiting teachers and tearing them down, we should invest in ways to build them up as the public intellectuals they are so they can continue to form students who are nuanced thinkers of a democratic republic, not threatened by multiple perspectives and points of view.
Compared with similar state bills under consideration across the country, this bill aims to extend governmental oversight into curricula, teaching practices and even language use. This type of on-the-ground regulation could force some schools — many of which are already dealing with staffing shortages — to seek alternative measures in educating children.
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Under this bill, teachers and schools could be sued if found in violation of language parameters, and they are required to use only approved classroom curriculum through a committee of community members, including parents, to be sure all teaching materials align with parental and community values.
This surveillance moves so far away from academic learning goals and is so draconian and drastic in its politicization and regulation of the classroom that no reasonable teachers, regardless of their views on CRT, would tolerate it.
The implications of such measures are egregious. First, they imply a complete lack of trust toward teachers, undercutting their expertise and stripping them of their professional judgment. While teachers have always been scrutinized, this bill undermines teachers’ expansive knowledge and decision-making about their own students, classrooms, curricula and contexts and suggests that others know more about teaching and learning than teachers do. If we can’t trust our teachers to do good for our children, then we have forfeited a fundamental pillar of our society.
Second, education at its best positions parents and teachers as allies, working with one another to support students’ holistic formation. The proposed parental oversight perverts that relationship, potentially pitting parents and teachers against one another in the pursuit of what was once academic excellence and learning for the fleeting winds of societal discourse.
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Third, the bill completely misunderstands the nature of schooling and sees subject matter as the end of education when, as all teachers know, the subject of education is the student.
I question the perception and commitments of those who propose these bills now — at a time when teachers are stretched too thin, trying to keep schools going as they juggle the still-lingering consequences of the coronavirus: remote learning, staff shortages, student and teacher absences, altered curricula and so on.
Perhaps members of the Indiana state legislatures could sign up or volunteer to be substitute teachers so that they might alleviate the stress and burden teachers and schools are already experiencing. It’d be a better use of their time.
Michael Macaluso is a faculty member in the University of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education and a fellow in the University's Institute for Educational Initiatives. He teaches education-related courses at Notre Dame and holds a Ph.D. in curriculum, education and instruction.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana CRT bills' real goal: harming teachers
