Texas HB 3979 has unintented consequences leading to a bad interpretation

[lees1975]

3. I think that approach is exactly what a good teacher does

No coercion, just "know the facts" before discussing. Gosh, isn't that what education is supposed to be doing? Giving students the facts, teaching them how to think critically but not doing the thinking for them.

It's pretty easy to tell this law passed the Texas legislature almost completely the way it was written by the extremist element who drafted it. They passed it off on the anti-CRT agenda, but it can be used for a lot of other things. Maybe there are school districts in Texas that have CRT in their essential elements, but I can't find it in the state curriculum standards. And as liberal as Illinois is when it comes to a teacher's academic freedom, it's not in the state objectives here, either. Of course right wingers claim that the door is opened by "code words," but I haven't seen one of them actually provide any evidence.

Good teachers understand that their free speech rights extend into their classroom, but most of them know the difference between using their influence as an educator to coerce students into a specific posture, or encouraging them to develop their own critical thinking skills by examining all the facts and not withholding or deceiving them. It is unfortunate that the Republicans in the Texas legislature see everything through an extremist partisan lens, but from their perspective, letting students learn how to think for themselves based on facts doesn't lead to their expected political outcome.