State legislatures these days tthjnkbthat they should pass laws telling teachers how to teach reading and what to teach in social studies. The latest example comes from Ohio, where the far-right legislature is in the midst of mandating a course on capitalism.

Denis Smith, retired educator, writes:

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, our republic is on fire. And that’s not being hyperbolic.

Incendiary language is now the norm in Congress and across the nation, further fanning the flames of overheated rhetoric in an election year. Indictments pile up against a former president, along with criminal trials looming in multiple jurisdictions. Perhaps even more ominous, jurors, judges, and election workers are being threatened with harm by extremists across our land.

But that’s only the short version of a narrative about a country at the brink, where democracy is threatened by the specter of authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, the legislature has examined the state of the state and determined that in today’s volatile world, there is a pressing need to modify public school curriculum by teaching … capitalism.

That’s right. Ohio Republicans have decided that teaching about capitalism is more important in troubled times than strengthening student learning opportunities about democracy. Yes, learning about capitalism is more important for Ohio students than the critical need for media literacy and increased research and critical thinking skills in an age of artificial intelligence and fake news.

Add to that the importance of teaching about character and caring about others, a key cornerstone of character education. 

To Republicans, whose former House Speaker and former state party chair are now serving prison sentences, along with their twice-impeached presidential front runner facing 91 felony criminal counts, there appears to be no pressing need for young people to learn more about personal ethics, citizenship, and the importance of character. 

But we probably should know that when it comes to Republicans, caring about the needs of others might be tantamount to socialism.

After the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 17 by a margin of 64-26 on Feb. 7, a measure which calls for the addition of teaching about capitalism in high school financial literacy standards, one Democratic legislator told the Cincinnati Enquirer/USA Today Network that adding capitalism to carefully crafted financial literacy classes only dilutes the amount of content students can learn in this important course of study designed to prepare students for assuming adult roles and functions. 

‘This bill is one part partisan message, one part ideological warfare and one part a poor fix’ to Ohio’s financial literacy class requirement, said Rep. Joe Miller, D-Lorain, a former social studies teacher who instructed students on the principles of capitalism.

The educator and legislator, now serving his third term in the Ohio House, is quite savvy in knowing the usual lockstep behavior of Republicans, none of whom voted against the bill. An additional observation by Miller might have also been influenced by knowing the tired rhetoric of one of the bill’s co-sponsors in the Ohio Senate, Andrew Brenner, who famously said in 2014 that public education was “socialism” and should be privatized. 

The Enquirer piece continued, saying Miller worried opponents of the bill would be labeled socialists in future campaigns.

With Brenner and Senate President Matt (“we can kind of do what we want”) Huffman, it’s only a matter of time before they use the words socialism and socialist, along with other Republicans, as tired descriptors for the noun Democrat. 

Come to think of it, if the titular head of the Republican Party is constantly complaining about witch hunts, what if we soon find out that the latest supply chain issue generated by the GOP might result in a shortage of witches?  If they do run out of witches, look for socialist hunts in this election year.