New Hampshire’s Republican legislature passed a bill banning teaching about racism, and Governor Chris Sununu signed it. The bill also included funding for vouchers and cuts for public schools.
Ten of the 17 members of the governor’s Diversity Council resigned in protest, citing censorship.
“It should not be taken lightly that nearly every member of the Council that is not part of your administration is resigning today, as we collectively see no path forward with this legislation in place,” the resigning members wrote in their letter to Sununu. The group includes the executive director of the New Hampshire ACLU, educators, doctors and children’s advocates.
Sununu established the council in 2017, with a mission to “combat discrimination and advance the ends of diversity and inclusion.”
Last week, he signed House Bill 2, a policy-focused “trailer bill” that passed along party lines in the GOP-controlled legislature. Among other provisions, the legislation bars public schools and government employees from teaching about systemic racism and bias. It also bans abortions beyond 24 weeks gestation, with exceptions only to save the life of the mother. Doctors who perform those abortions could face up to seven years in prison.
State Rep. Jim Maggiore (D) told HuffPost that he voted against the bill because he “could not in good conscience support language restricting the free speech of Granite Staters.” He was one of the 10 council members who quit Tuesday.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The preferred narrative works for the right wing. How’s it working for the left wing?
So, there’s no connection between conservative religion and abortion bans, no connection to vouchers and, no connection to denial of LGBTQ rights?
Related to the sentence above, Comey Barrett was rendered a “conservative Christian” in the telling by Terry Shoemaker (or, his editor) last week at The Conversation website (reposted at TPM). This week, it’s Vox talking about Hungary’s rise of authoritarian government. “How Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ law” shows “culture war”, “Christian family values”… “hatred for gay people key plank in Hungary’s authoritarian turn”. Despite a 54% single religion majority in the country, not one mention in the article of the media-cloaked sect.
An unwillingness to name the opposition thwarts the fight for public education, for LGBTQ rights, for women’s rights, and for democracy. The preferred narrative provides cover for the alliance between one specific libertarian and one powerful, well-organized, well-funded, media savvy religious sect in particular which appears to have a disproportionate number of members in the throes of tribalism.
“Among other provisions, the legislation bars public schools and government employees from teaching about systemic racism and bias. It also bans abortions beyond 24 weeks gestation, with exceptions only to save the life of the mother. Doctors who perform those abortions could face up to seven years in prison.”
The level of cynicism is amazing.
The same people who screamed about public schools being closed are now planning on spending the summer making it impossible for the schools to get any work done.
Not contributing anything of value to any public school or public school student is one thing, but we have now moved to them actually harming the schools they didn’t and don’t attend, and don’t support or value. Can we pay them not to come to work? It might be cheaper.
Religious fervor and the oligarchs’ greed for authoritarian power – “paying them not to come to work” doesn’t get at the root of the problem.
“The new official contents of sex education in Mexico: laicism in the crosshairs”, the article is much broader in scope than the title indicates. The article provides specificity about the world wide plot.
Reading ed reform echo chamber directives for post-pandemic public schooling and noticing there are no public school representatives on their boards:
https://www.future-ed.org/covid-playbook/
How does it happen that so many ed reform groups that are supposedly about public education yet completely exclude anyone who comes from a public school?
Future Ed has two national representatives of charter schools and not a single public school person. If you’re wondering why these folks never seem to get anything done for public schools or public school students it may be because they rigorously exclude any public school input from all their policy prescriptions.
Should public schools accept policy directives from an ed reform echo chamber that doesn’t respect or value public schools enough to put public school leaders on boards, and instead carefully hires only from within the echo chamber?
What if public schools broke away and got advice from people who actually value their schools and students? Better or worse for public school students?
The echo chamber has a long history. The question is what strategies and tactics will disrupt their stranglehold.
Maybe “Future Ed” within the ed reform echo chamber envisions a country where all the public schools have been replaced with a low value voucher and a list of contractors so they don’t need any input from people who work in one.
That would explain the odd absence of actual public schools in all ed reform discussions of “public education”.
When Bellwether advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals, the reformers’ sales message must have been different than you speculate.