The Politics of Calling for No Politics: 2022 Edition (South Carolina)

My home state of South Carolina appears determined to join the misleading and misguided “anti-CRT” bandwagon that mandates curriculum gag orders, centers parental control over schooling, and legislates a simplistic and nonsensical characterization of “ideology.”

After weeks of deliberation and public testimony opposing a flurry of five bills (H.4325, H.4343, H.4392, H.4605, and H.4799), the SC House Education and Public Works Committee passed a unified bill that wasn’t made public until after the vote.

While maintaining much of the copy-cat language from similar bills being proposed and passed across the U.S., the bill appears to compile many of the worst features of these attacks on academic freedom — curriculum and instruction gag orders, parental trigger mechanisms, and vague as well as contradictory language.

The opening section on “intent” seeks to frame the bill in positive terms; however, the content of the rest of the bill directly and repeated contradicts those stated intentions, suggesting either they are insincere or that legislators, again, have no business prescribing and mandating curriculum and instruction.

[Please continue reading HERE.]