Target: Bernie Sanders, Chair of Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Goal: Prevent attacks on academic freedom within public school systems.
The trend of politicians trying to find a second career as teachers and dictating school learning policies is rampant. Many states are attempting to “cleanse” curriculums of anything even hinting at diversity. Hand-in-hand with these mandates is the continued whitewashing of American history. Library book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric are also high on the list of priorities. As an example, a bill coming from the “enlightened” state leaders of Missouri would require any teacher or counselor who provides support resources for transgender students to register as a sex offender. And in a handful of states (states that actively lobby against any hint of sex education for younger students), full-color and medically inaccurate videos about fetus development crafted by anti-abortion groups may be mandated.
The politicians often claim that they are just respecting parental rights, but their true desire to act as de facto parents and morality police to youth is quite clear. Rants against “wokeness” and “indoctrination” are abundant. Sometimes the intent is even more direct, as in the aforementioned fetal development video mandate, which a Kentucky politician defended by stating that “for so long, women have been lied to by the abortion industry.” The complaints of parents who believe these hateful bills are overreach are almost universally ignored, and the pushback from educators who are concerned about the hijacking of the careers for which they trained are similarly dismissed. As a consequence, teachers are leaving their profession in record numbers. And children ultimately suffer for it.
Sign the petition below to call for an end to the political takeover of education.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Senator Sanders,
The outcome of the Scopes Monkey Trial (in which politicians attempted to ban the teaching of evolution) should have set a new precedent for the unwelcome intrusion of partisan politics into education. Instead, the United States is living in an era where its own history is oppressed, where its rich diversity is being deliberately dismantled in schools, where children are required to “learn” scientifically inaccurate information in service to a political agenda, and where teachers are literally being criminalized for supporting marginalized students. Too many state politicians are becoming dictators to the very public education systems they are attempting to starve to death.
Academic freedom—and the associated rights of teachers to teach and students to learn freely and unimpeded—should be a priority in all levels of American education. Please help stop the trend of politicians recasting themselves as educators by encouraging and backing federal legislation that fully supports academic freedom.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko
These pin heard politicians are training our country and its future. The future is up to the young but when trash goes in, trash comes out. We do not want that in our schools. America used to be at the top of student intelligence and learning skills, now it is mid way at best and failing! Politicians are just that and are not teachers, scientists, doctors, bankers although most are lawyers. Teaching is not a second carrier. Teaching is a main event! Allow our children to learn history, truthful history, along with science, poetry, literature, economics and more. School is for learning, but learning the truth!