Peter Greene believes that Arizona’s proposed gag law is part of a national reaction to teacher activism. If you can’t beat ’em, silence them, is the mantra.
He traces the trend towards silencing teachers to legislators in Pennsylvania and Virgina, and then back to fringe-right agitator David Horowitz and rightwing corporate bill-mill ALEC.
Greene writes:
All of the rules make sense when one considers the source– a racist authoritarian xenophobic alt-right wingnut. This is not just about shutting down teachers (it really is bigger than being anti-#RedforEd) but about making sure that teachers cannot interfere with the imposition of a white supremacist alt-right dreamland.
The second thing we can say with certainty about this proposal is that Rep. Finchem [of Arizona] did not whip it up himself after some conversations with concerned parents. HB 2002 is part of a wider attempt to shut teachers up so that they can’t exercise First Amendment rights– particularly not in ways that would contradict white nationalists .
It’s a bill that deserves to die. And Rep. Finchem is a man who deserves some extra attention, to see just who feeds him these kinds of anti-American anti-freedom ideas for bills.
It is a fascinating and ugly trail and worth your while to follow it to see where it leads.
Don’t forget the First Amendment. It is not fake. It is real.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great research, as usual, and this so-called “ethics bill” really does reek of Joseph McCarthy–whose loyalty oaths were widely adopted. As a first year teacher in 1957, I was presented with one of those loyalty forms to sign. Catch 22, if I didn’t sign, I could not be hired. If I couldn’t be hired, I could not pay off loans that were contingent on being hired as a teacher.
Am I missing something? I don’t see any “Loyalty Oath” in the proposed bill.
School Employee Sues District for Israel Loyalty Oath in Contract
https://truthout.org/articles/school-employee-sues-district-for-israel-loyalty-oath-in-contract/
Freedom of speech is more important than the zealous bigotry of AIPAC and the rest of the Zionist Lobby, which has much more influence on U.S. politicians than Russia can ever have.
Here’s another recent trampling on First Amendment rights. A Muslim teacher was fired in Texas for refusing to take an oath to support Israel. Some of these right wing red states are making teachers take an oath of support to Israel. https://www.newsweek.com/teacher-fired-refusing-sign-pro-israel-document-1262083
If that doesn’t violate the 1st amendment, nothing does.
And where is the ACLU? Didn’t they have a financial windfall after the 2016 election?
a good question for many years: where is the ALCU
The provisions, quoted from Peter’s article,
Teachers may not endorse, support or oppose any candidate or elected or appointed official.
Teachers may not bring up any “controversial issues” not related to the course.
Teachers may not endorse or participate in any actions interfering with military recruiter access to the school. Ditto for law enforcement.
Teachers may not advocate for one side of a controversial issue; they must always present both sides.
one way or another, are already part of many Southern state universities. We get special warnings during elections not to wear any kind of endorsements of candidates.
“Teachers may not advocate for one side of a controversial issue; they must always present both sides.”
I wonder if that means one must discuss and give equal weight to right wing fascist ideology when discussing the merits of a democratic system of government? It certainly would put a new spin on the study of the rise of the Nazi party among many other topics, I am sure. Do these people think?
I understand that advocacy should be reserved for private citizen time and not be subject to restrictions because of public employment. It reminds me why most of the teachers I know have chosen to live in communities other than those in which they live. It can be hard to always be subject to a community’s view of the life/beliefs that must be led/held by teachers. I remember my mother talking about meeting one of our elementary school teachers in the local club bar. The teacher greeted her with, “What a horrible place to meet your child’s teacher!” My mother responded, “What a horrible place to meet the parent of a student!” Thank you, Mom.
It does. If I teach about the Holocaust, I would have to “teach both sides.” There IS no other side–the Holocaust happened (that should go without saying, but there are a LOT of Holocaust deniers out there). If you read about the clown who is sponsoring this bill, he got the bill from some ultra-nationalist, right-wing, racist creep.
The part about this that scares me the most (I’m not in Arizona, but this will show up in Utah within a year) is the idea that if a teacher talks about attacks, genocide, racism, etc., that NO OTHER GROUP CAN BE BLAMED for the attacks. So I couldn’t that the Holocaust was caused by Nazis and their collaborators, or that Jim Crow was done by racist whites, or who caused slavery and the horrendous death tolls of Native Americans. History and civics won’t be able to be taught in any meaningful way if this passes. As a history, geography, and civics teacher, who also teaches a current issues class, I’m scared to death of this law.
OK, help me out here. “Gag orders” & “Loyalty Oath” sound horrible but is that what this is? The proposed AZ bill clearly restricts “controversial issue” to mean a point in a fed, state, or local party platform. It seems reasonable to discuss party platform points in context of opposing positions. How is Greene’s “imagine a class [where] a teacher must explain how Nazis and slave owners had valid points of their own” (& variations suggested in comments) pertinent?
There are lots of court decisions covering the issues spelled out in the proposed AZ bill. Here’s an article that goes into the details: https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/09/01/kappan_underwood.html
I don’t see where the AZ bill crosses those lines. It reads more like an abbreviated guideline on how not to run afoul of established law.
Granted this bill would seem unnecessary and probably unwelcome in my neck of the woods [NY/ NJ/ New Eng]. But there are plenty of state legislatures w/anti-public-ed, union-busting agendas whose citizens buy into propaganda about ‘liberal indoctrination.’ This sort of legislative clarity should make it harder to can teachers & bully them into not suing. It might even encourage admins/ teachers to dispense w/ pusillanimous PC pussy-footing.
You are correctish, bethreefive. Normally, I am all for controlling completely free speech. A freedom which is not controlled, one way or another will become a freedom only of the few. But I admit, I have no concrete proposal for how to do that.
The bills in the post can and will be exploited against teachers because there have been precedents. I think a single example can get us all going.
“Today, we are going to talk about evolution and Darwin’s evolution theory which gives the best explanation for how the diversity of life on Earth has come to be.”
“I hope, teacher, you will also talk about alternative theories such as intelligent design.”
“No I won’t, since alternative theories such as intelligent design are not scientific theories.”
“But I was told at Sunday school that intelligent design is a very good alternative to evolution theory.”
“Well, Sunday school is not about science, so I do not want to discuss this further.”
“I then will report you to my mom who is an attorney and she will sue you for not giving space for alternative views in your class, and you allow discussion about Nature only from a leftist point of view.”
So I think the problem with the bill is that it wants to make something law which should be left for a school as a local policy, or, rather, advice to the teachers. Indeed, it is reasonable for a school to ask teachers not to promote extremist personal views, since it’s not part of a teacher’s job to brainwash kids. The proposed bill allows anything to be viewed as extreme. For example, many people do believe that evolution theory is an extremist view.
In a reasonably-run state, a professional code of ethics would be promulgated by a professional organization, not dictated word for word by state legislation. Or handled in any number of ways (as you say, a memo from sch admin would suffice!) AZ is apparently a state unreasonably run by authoritarian extremists. However, the bill does not “allow anything to be viewed as extreme.” Paras C.5 & 8 could be misused in that way except for Para F: “FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, “CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE” MEANS AN ISSUE THAT IS A POINT IN A POLITICAL PARTY PLATFORM AT THE LOCAL, STATE OR FEDERAL LEVEL.” Teachers will no doubt continue to be hounded in this way w/ or w/o the bill, as it merely restates established case law. Just seems to me a suit challenging e.g. unfair firing would take far less time/$ to succeed under these guidelines.
As Peter mentions in his blog, the same guy introduced a so called “free speech law on college campuses” which is directly inspired by this ALEC template bill
https://www.alec.org/model-policy/forming-open-and-robust-university-minds-forum-act/
This bill has been making its way to states’ lawbooks and hence influence how public universities treat “free speech” on their campuses. Here is an article from ALEC itself bragging about how the Louisiana “free speech on campus” law was influenced by the ALEC bill.
https://www.alec.org/article/alec-influenced-free-speech-legislation-becomes-law-in-louisiana/