Steve QJ
2 min readAug 18, 2021

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You keep saying this, but I still have no idea what your actual concern is. As I said, parents can sue teachers and school districts already. These bills don't change that. They just give guidelines, that I still can't believe you object to, about ideas that shouldn't be taught.

You ask for evidence on the ground that these bills have improved education which is a little silly because you know that they've only been in effect for a very short time. But I linked to numerous examples of the real problems they're designed to prevent in the original article.

That fourteen-year-old boy who, in his words, was made to feel like "like worthless scum, undeserving of living", along with his white classmates? I bet he'd appreciate a bill that prevents teachers from teaching that "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of their race."

The bi-racial boy who's school tried to force him to confess his status as an oppressor because he has a white father (even though he also has a black mother)? I bet he'd prefer it if his teacher couldn't insist that "an individual by virtue of their race is inherently racist or oppressive."

Maybe you see these as theoretical arguments and so will dismiss them. But it's so staggeringly obvious to me that preventing teachers from teaching these ideas is a good thing that I don't know how to even begin convincing you. Many of these ideas are already strongly implied by the Civil Rights Act. Would you also have been concerned about the limitations on teachers when that was being passed?

If you want teachers to have the freedom to turn their children into racists or make them feel terrible about themselves, because you're worried about parents gaining the power to do something they can already do (and even then, only if the teacher is demonstrably terrible at teaching), I'd suggest that your priorities are badly out of whack. Shouldn't the concern be more with the wellbeing of the students than the freedom of the teachers to suck at their jobs?

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Steve QJ
Steve QJ

Written by Steve QJ

Race. Politics. Culture. Sometimes other things. Almost always polite. Find more at https://steveqj.substack.com

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