Mother and fellow: Kids being 'used as pawns by Republicans who favor a revisionist history'

Our children’s schools have become the nation’s latest political battleground.

Recently, Ohio joined 23 other states where lawmakers have introduced bans on curriculum which teaches an honest account of U.S. history related to racial and gender justice.

According to the African American Policy Forum’s #TruthBeTold campaign, 14 of these states have already passed curriculum-ban legislation.

More: What is critical race theory and why do Ohio Republicans want to ban its teaching?

Ohio joins at least nine other states considering similar bans with the introduction of HB 322 and HB 327, which are currently pending at the Ohio Statehouse.

These bills are not unique to Ohio.

They are part of a nationwide coordinated effort to ban teachers from telling the truth about real historical events.

More: Thomas Suddes: Ohio Republicans stoking base with flames that will burn history

I am a parent of two young girls preparing to enter our educational system and I am deeply concerned about these bills.

If passed, they would prevent teachers and school officials from teaching students and training staff honestly. Together, they hold the power of rolling back great progress that has been made in reckoning with our historical blindspots, banning age-appropriate teaching about anything they label as “divisive concepts.”

This definition is so broad that it could apply to banning teachers from acknowledging and discussing:

● the various laws, policies, and regulations that have been unjustly racist and sexist throughout our history;

● the ways the U.S. economy and infrastructure has been built from the labor of enslaved people;

● the ways unconscious biases influence our perspectives;

● the practice of prejudicial policies such as redlining, the war on drugs, segregation of schools, and more.

Additionally, these bills would punish students, refusing them credit for courses focused on women’s studies, Black history, and other topics.

Furthermore, teachers would be forced to engage only in “impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history.”

Impartiality, in most cases, is to be admired.

But impartiality is not possible when discussing human rights violations such as the cruel treatment and physical, sexual, and psychological abuses of enslaved people, the murder, genocide, and displacement of Native Americans, or the horrors of the Holocaust, for example.

Our children deserve to, in age-appropriate ways, engage the truth about these painful realities, think critically about them, and reckon with how to build a better, more equitable and just society for all of us.

More: Opinion: White children should not be shielded from learning of 'darker chapters in the American story'

Yet instead, our schools are being turned into political battlegrounds and our children used as pawns by Republicans who favor a revisionist history, believing honesty will harm our children.

I am a white woman with a Master’s degree, and I grow increasingly disheartened by my regular discoveries that many basic pieces of our shared American history were excluded from my own education prior to graduate school.

My children, and Ohio’s children, deserve better. Our children deserve an honest, accurate, diverse education, and the opportunity to listen to stories that have been silenced, reckoning with our country’s mixed history of both triumph and failure.

If teachers are banned from discussing historical events with honesty, we will never uproot the racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia that remain deeply embedded in our society. As the statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke once famously said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We are Ohioans — we are strong enough to remember the past honestly, to face the realities of our shared history square-on, and to dig deep, working towards better solutions and a more just and equitable Ohio for all.

We must allow teachers to do what they do best — teach accurate, honest information that forms the minds of our children to become kind, respectful, honest, engaged, passionate citizens. It starts with telling the truth.

Heidi Weaver-Smith is a junior fellow with Innovation Ohio and the operations director of Little Bottoms Free StoreHer policy interests include racial justice, workplace equity, accessible and affordable childcare, and ending violence against women and girls.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio mother, fellow says kids, teachers are being used as pawns by Republicans