Rep. Dan Frankel: Keep the culture wars out of the classroom, and let our teachers teach
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House Republicans passed a uniquely bad bill this month, aiming to ensure than anyone, anywhere can scrutinize the educational materials used in your child’s Pennsylvania public school.
The bill invites the same folks who have cast doubt on the moon landing and the 9/11 attack, the horrifying tragedy at Sandy Hook and the 2020 election to bring their armchair investigations into the classroom, investigating the materials used to prepare the next generation for the world.
It’s hard to quantify the consequences of allowing our schools to become the next front in the culture wars, and for the education our kids receive to be forced into alignment with the loudest, most disruptive voices or the winners of the most recent election.
I do know, as a Jewish American, how vital it is that children have access to an unvarnished version of history. My whole life, I’ve had to watch Holocaust deniers argue that the systematic murder of 6 million Jews was invented or exaggerated. We fight for accuracy and truth because we know they are our best weapon against repeating humanities’ worse mistakes.
That’s true of 1930s Germany, and it’s also true of the “founding” of this country on Native American lands, the enslavement of kidnapped Africans, the long road through women’s suffrage and civil rights, and the ways that the American dream has only been unlocked in pieces, through struggle. Our children are entitled to know what came before them so they may have what they need to build a better future.
House Bill 1332’s supporters argue that it is about transparency, but any public school parent knows they already have access to every single educational material in the classroom. In reality, educators are overjoyed to have parents actively participate in their children’s learning and will gladly walk them through the lessons, materials and homework.
Anyone who worries about less forthcoming teachers should know access to the curriculum and related materials is protected by state law and cannot be withheld. If you have a question about what’s happening at school, you’re generally entitled to an answer. If the school doesn’t provide it — something I’ve literally never heard of occurring anywhere — the law says you can make them.
So, if this bill isn’t about transparency for parents, what is it about?
We get a clue from the bill’s sponsor, who posted on social media that the measure would reveal the instruction of “heaven knows what,” to our children. Specifically, according to him, HB 1332 will pull back the curtain on “anti-American socialism.”
What?
Our schools are not made up of foreign agents, subverting your way of life. They’re filled with people from your community. Your kids’ teacher are your neighbors, often parents themselves, who are already asked to do a lot with very little. They aren’t the enemy.
HB 1332 is the brainchild of politicians, not parents. That’s not because parents always agree with teachers or the way that their children are being taught. It’s because there is already a system in place that allows for an understanding of what’s happening in the classroom and a process to have concerns heard and addressed along the way. That system is for parents and guardians, though, not for out-of-state keyboard warriors.
This bill exists to drag education right into the middle of the culture wars, bringing the fights that get started on Twitter into the kindergarten classroom near you. It’s about forcing our overburdened school districts to post every single thing they do online so that right-wing muckrakers, or for that matter left-wing muckrakers, can waste precious educational resources fighting their battles.
We can’t let that happen.
Let our teachers teach, so our children can learn.
Democratic state Rep. Dan Frankel represents Pennsylvania’s 23rd District.