On January 19th, AR Senator Mark Lowery (R-Maumelle) and others introduced HB1218 and HB1231 to restrict what Arkansas public school educators can teach their students, especially regarding histories of different races in the United States.
Ostensibly these bills are aimed at protecting children from lessons and activities that are designed to ostracize individuals in various racial groups. In an interview with Roby Brock on January 27th, Lowery even went so far as to say that he intended these bills to safeguard children from abuse.
Despite his stated intentions, these bills are completely regressive, would hurt Arkansas students and educators, and are motivated by his own politics much more than a desire to protect at-risk children.
I should come clean before I go any further. I have a PhD in American History and was named the 2020 Gilder Lehrman history teacher of the year for Arkansas. If anyone has an interest in fair and accurate histories, it’s me. I’m that nerd.
Lowery’s bills would take control away from local schools and school boards and substitute his own naked partisanship for good scholarship. (I was previously under the impression that local control was a key Republican idea.) The bills also carry heavy potential penalties for violators—up to 10% of the institution’s state funding—punishing an entire school and all its children for a teacher introducing them to ideas Lowery doesn’t like.
Lowery is particularly taking aim at certain “woke” versions of U.S. history. The 1619 Project claims that the nation’s “true” founding should be considered 1619, the first year that enslaved Africans were documented in Jamestown. Lowery’s temper tantrum of a bill, HB1231, would reduce state funding for anyone who didn’t teach students that the “true” date is July 4, 1776.
The truth? Historians are less certain than the Senator on this point. Was the nation really founded on July Fourth? Or was it the day the Declaration of Independence was actually signed (August 2, 1776)? Or was it 1787 when the Constitution was written? 1788 when it was ratified? Or 1789 when it went into effect? Why couldn’t 1619 be the “spiritual” founding of the country, considering the centrality of enslaved labor to the early Republic and its pivotal role in causing our nation’s most devastating crisis, the Civil War?
Many scholars have rightly criticized the 1619 project for pushing its argument further than its evidence can fully support. But to take scholarly disagreements about its conclusions as proof that the project is fundamentally flawed misunderstands the back-and-forth nature of academic discussions. Academics rarely produce concrete “truths.”
HB 1218 comes off as an “anti-wokeness” bill to me, even going so far as to make it illegal to promote social justice for a race, gender, social class, etc. Call me old fashioned, but I think justice is a good thing, particularly since the preamble of our Constitution calls for a government to “establish justice.”
Teaching the uncomfortable aspects of history may not be fun, but it’s nonetheless vital. I have a great deal of admiration for our Founding Fathers, but many of them were brutal slave owners. Those same men also set up and perpetuated systems of government that, according to U.N. definitions, practiced genocide against Native peoples in the Americas.
To be blunt, women and racial and ethnic minorities are Americans too, and they deserve to have their fair and accurate pasts represented in the classroom.
The bill particularly aims to limit any teaching that might promote “division between, or resentment of” any race, gender, social class, etc. That idea is a bit ridiculous. Few-to-no public educators are looking to create resentment through our teaching. But we do want to broaden our students’ worldviews and cause them to consider how we can all work together to improve our shared world.
Telling students about hard realities is not about creating resentment or destroying their love for their country. But ignoring the parts of history that we don’t like risks turning history into a propagandistic vehicle for a government seeking to limit what its citizens are allowed to think.
Before the American Revolution, Thomas Paine criticized the “sunshine patriot” who would stand with his country in the good times but not the hard. Paine said that those were “the times that try men’s souls,” but that we should not “shrink from the service” of our nation. I completely agree.
History is the same way. You don’t get to avoid the nasty parts because those make you feel bad. In fact, you can’t appreciate all the good that this country has done within its borders and worldwide without acknowledging where we have fallen short of the great ideals of our founding.
Education should be left to those who actually want to educate our students. Arkansas students deserve the truth, not petty partisanship.
UPDATED 9 FEB 2021
Looks like the bills either failed in committee or have been pulled. Success!