By Stanley Kurtz
Monday, March 29, 2021
Texas is target number one in the Left’s play to turn the
red states blue with a radicalized version of “civics.” What is variously
called “action civics,” “civic engagement,” or “project-based civics,” requires
K-12 students to engage in political protests, lobbying, and internships with
advocacy organizations, all for course credit. The protests and lobbying are
virtually always for causes on the left. In any case, it is totally inappropriate for schools to require
extracurricular political activity, particularly when it subjects
impressionable school children to teacher biases and peer pressure, as “action
civics” invariably does.
The menu of practices that make up action civics has
already been imposed by law in Illinois and Massachusetts. The coalition that
brought action civics to Massachusetts gutted that state’s top-quality history
standards and is currently leading a movement to impose leftist history and
civics standards on the entire country. The Democratic bias of this coalition is painfully
obvious.
The 2015 Illinois civics law, a Chicago-based application
of Alinsky-style community organizing to school children, has recently been
supplemented by statewide teaching standards that force critical race
theory and “white fragility” training on even conservative downstate Illinois
school districts. Now, iCivics, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based organization
at the head of the national effort to impose the Illinois and Massachusetts
models on the nation, is working overtime to conquer Texas. If Texas falls, the
remaining red states cannot be far behind.
Several civics bills have been introduced into the Texas
Legislature and they run the gamut from 1) a bill that would impose leftist
political indoctrination patterned on the Illinois and Massachusetts models on
Texas; 2) stealth bills that would do the same over time; 3) a bill that would
do no immediate harm but would offer no protections against the encroachments
of action civics; 4) bills that would encourage civics, properly understood,
while also protecting against the abuses represented by action civics and
critical race theory.
I will treat each of these bill-types in turn. Given the
clear and present danger, the moral is evident from the start, however. Texas
needs to pass a law that not only supports genuine civic education but that
blocks the dangerously politicized practices activists are currently trying to
impose on the state’s schools under the misleading name of “civics.”
Texas state senator Judith Zaffirini, a
Democrat firmly on the left, has introduced S. B. No 1740, a radical bill that would import the
Illinois and Massachusetts models to Texas. Zaffirini’s bill would have civics
teachers discuss current political and cultural controversies. This is the
first plank in the action-civics platform, and it effectively permits a
left-leaning teacher corps to import its political biases into the classroom.
Zaffirini’s bill also mandates training in “media literacy, including
instruction on verifying information and sources and identifying propaganda.”
In practice, teaching materials on this topic push students away from
conservative sources and portray mainstream media outlets and fact-checkers as
fonts of truth. “Media literacy” teaching materials almost always avoid the
issue of media bias and instead push what amounts to the Democratic Party’s position
on “fake news.”
Most importantly, Zaffirini’s bill mandates the
completion of a “civics practicum” — twice — first in eighth grade and then in
high school. The term “civics practicum” is a euphemism for organized student
protests and lobbying for course credit. In effect, the legislature would here
be authorizing the state’s public-school teachers to organize students to lobby
the legislature itself for (invariably liberal) legislation, all under the
guise of “civics.”
The other key plank of the action-civics platform is
“service learning,” a euphemism for after-school student internships at
(overwhelmingly leftist) community organizations for course credit. While
Zaffirini’s bill doesn’t mandate “service learning,” it does create an opening
for it by listing a series of “civic skills” to be inculcated. One of the
approved “civic skills” is learning to “collaborate and engage in community
organizing.” Here the Texas legislature would turn students into unpaid
laborers for Alinsky-style community organizing groups (with indoctrination
thrown in free of charge), already a routine practice in Illinois.
While these troubling practices are openly authorized,
there are also stealth provisions in S.B. No. 1740 that could easily be used by
state education bureaucrats to import Illinois-style teaching standards based
on critical race theory. Zaffirini’s bill mandates that teachers be trained in
techniques for “educating diverse student populations,” including the
“educationally disadvantaged” and those with “limited English proficiency.” For
many, this might call to mind remedial English programs, and such. This
legislative language, however, could easily be used by education bureaucrats to
impose “Culturally Responsive Teaching,” a pedagogy grounded in critical race
theory and focused on battling “white privilege,” “Eurocentrism,” and “white
fragility,” while promoting “gender fluidity,” and grading based on student
participation in political advocacy rather than classroom performance.
To top it off, S.B. No. 1740 creates a dedicated funding
system that would allow leftist private foundations to gain control of civic
education in Texas. This is modeled on Illinois, where the private funding of
civic education is permitted by law. The result has been de facto management of
civic education by foundations dedicated to leftist activism and critical race
theory. You can bet that rich donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley will take
advantage of this law to turn Texas blue. In the guise of “free” private money
that would ease the burden on Texas taxpayers, woke out-of-state donors will
effectively wrest control of the state’s education system from voters.
This bill is being pushed on Texas by Massachusetts-based
iCivics, and its allies. As I hinted in my public exchange with the head of iCivics, Louise Dube,
iCivics has made a concerted effort to fool Texas Republicans into sponsoring
this clunker of a bill. That effort failed and the bill has been picked up by a
Democrat instead. The handful of conservative educators and policy wonks who
have foolishly allied themselves with iCivics in search of “bipartisanship”
need to understand that this is what their names are being used for — to trick
red-state Republicans into backing this pernicious bill, and others like it.
I wish this were the only bad civics bill proposed in
Texas, but that is far from the case. The other bills are worse for being even
stealthier than the already misleading Zaffirini bill. Representative James Talarico and
Senator Nathan
Johnson, both Democrats, have introduced identical bills, H.B. No. 57 and S.B. No. 229, which direct the state to offer courses and
develop curricula in “project-based civics.” The problem is that almost no one
understands that “project-based civics” means group protests and lobbying by
students. These bills are filled with anodyne-sounding phrases that require
students to “work cooperatively,” “identify issues in the community,” “develop
solutions,” and create public policy “action plans.” Unless you already know a
lot about action civics, it is almost impossible to recognize that the bill is
authorizing group political protests and lobbying by school children.
In the last session of the Texas Legislature, what is now
H.B. No. 57 cleared the House almost unanimously, largely because it looked
like a harmless, non-controversial civics bill. At that point (and even today),
almost no representatives had even heard of “action civics” or “project-based
civics.” It wasn’t until the bill got to the Senate that anyone recognized the
legislature was about to authorize after-school student protests and lobbying
for course credit. The advocates of action civics are well-practiced at
deception.
The most devious and potentially damaging bill of all may
be Keith Bell’s H.B. No. 3211. Bell is a conservative Republican, and I can
well understand how he might have been lured by lobbyists into carrying this
bill. H.B No. 3211 authorizes the establishment of “civics academies,” schools
dedicated to promoting civic education, and the language doesn’t overtly
mandate action civics. Sounds okay. If you know the history of the
action-civics movement, however, this bill is clearly recognizable as a stealth
attempt to plant action civics in Texas.
Illinois remains the purest and most radical model of
action civics. The groundwork for the 2015 Illinois action civics law was laid
by the creation of “democracy schools,” also called, “civic readiness schools,”
precisely like the “civics academies” established by H.B. No. 3211. Those
Illinois “democracy schools” adopted the whole panoply of action-civics
practices, from discussion of current controversial issues, to internships with
leftist community organizations, to mandated student protests and lobbying via
“action civics.” All of this came under the innocent-sounding heading of “civic
skills.”
Bell’s H.B. No. 3211 includes a directive for civics
academies to discuss current controversies and teach media literacy. The rest
of the action-civics menu is covered under the vague heading of inculcating
“civic skills” like learning how to “effectively engage.” You have to be pretty
knowledgeable to realize that “civic engagement” is another common euphemism
for action civics. In short, H.B. No. 3211 sets up a little kingdom within the
Texas school system that will be run on the same radical principles Zaffirini’s
bill tries to force on the entire state system immediately. In Illinois, the
“democracy schools” ended up as a kind of trial-run for the law that eventually
forced action civics on the entire state. No doubt, the same endgame is planned
for Texas.
As in Illinois, there are even provisions in H.B. No.
3211 that allow “private providers” to “assist” in setting up the civics
academies. That is an open invitation for liberal foundations, including the
“experts” from Illinois, to come down to Texas at the invitation of
left-leaning state bureaucrats and set up civics academies on the Illinois
model.
Perhaps most disturbingly of all, H.B No. 3211 gives the
state education bureaucracy virtual carte blanche to revise the state’s
education standards in line with the latest civics “research.” There’s plenty
of “research” done by highly interested advocates of action civics for state
bureaucrats to draw on. That means this bill is an open invitation for
left-leaning state bureaucrats to import action civics materials from Illinois
and Massachusetts, free from legislative oversight (a process I’ve warned about before).
Texas Senate Education Committee Chair Larry Taylor’s
civics bill, S.B. 2026, provides welcome relief from the aforementioned
legislative disasters-in-the-making. Taylor’s bill directs the Texas State
Board of Education to draw up a curriculum around the core features of a proper
civics course, with specific direction to focus on documents such as the
Declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, the first
Lincoln-Douglas debate, and the writings of the Founders. Although state
bureaucrats have some scope for interpretation, the directives are admirably
specific and on the mark. In my ideal world, curricular issues would be handled
chiefly at the local, rather than the state, level. That said, this is a
workable civics bill.
Although Taylor’s bill has merit, overreaching leftist
bureaucrats (and Texas does have some) might still find a way to get around it
and impose action civics. It would not be difficult to take advantage of a
provision in existing law calling on educators to “keep abreast of the
development of creative and innovative techniques of instruction,” to start
sliding action civics into the schools.
Given the raft of bills trying to quietly impose action
civics on Texas, not to mention the scope for bureaucratic manipulation and
overreach, the only real solution is a legislative ban on the whole menu of
action civics techniques. That is exactly what is proposed in identical bills
offered by Republican State Representatives Steve Toth and James White, H.B. No. 7979 and H.B. No. 4093. These bills contain the “positive”
provisions of Sen. Taylor’s civics bill, while adding provisions that bar
action civics and critical race theory. With one exception, the “negative”
provisions of these bills are based on the “Partisanship Out of Civics Act,”
model legislation I have published with the National Association of Scholars
and explained here.
Like the Partisanship Out of Civics Act, the Texas bills
by Steve Toth and James White protect teachers from being forced to discuss
current political and social controversies, and encourage teachers to explore
divergent and contending perspectives when they do choose to raise current
debates. The Toth and White proposals also bar extracurricular political
activity — like internships with lobby groups or out-of-school student protests
— from receiving course credit. Training based on critical race theory is
barred for teachers and other educators. Private funders are barred from grabbing
control of the state’s civics programs as well.
The Toth and White bills add an additional provision not
in the model Partisanship Out of Civics Act, however. This provision bars
critical race theory from the K-12 curriculum. I am both deeply sympathetic to
this provision and concerned about unintended consequences. This is not
fundamentally an issue of free speech. K-12 teachers have an obligation to
impart officially approved curricula and do not enjoy academic freedom on the
university model. Nonetheless, banning ideas from the classroom, even where the
right to do so exists, invites abuse and blowback. Beyond that, I worry about
state curriculum bans overriding local authority. On the other hand, state
education bureaucrats in Illinois have already imposed outrageous critical race
theory-based teaching standards on the entire state, and without proper
legislative warrant. Moreover, just as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act bars
federal aid to colleges that discriminate by race, making school children feel
guilty or ashamed of their skin color and its supposedly inborn “privilege” is
well into the territory of intolerable discrimination that any state ought to
be allowed to ban. The complex challenge raised by state-level curriculum bans
on critical race theory is something I hope to take up in greater detail in the
future.
That issue aside, Texas needs to pass the matching civics
bills offered by Steve Toth and James White. If one of the action-civics bills
on offer passes instead, or if overzealous education bureaucrats find a way to
impose action civics on the sly, Texas classrooms will be irrevocably
politicized, and leftist indoctrination will surely turn this great state blue.
One more point. A broad coalition has now
organized to oppose action civics. Up to now, legislators could not be expected
to recognize or anticipate this stealthy education initiative from the left.
Henceforth, however, the stakes are out in the open. Should legislators impose
leftist protests and indoctrination on K-12 systems in their states via “action
civics,” voters will hold them responsible.
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