Last Sunday, The Telegraph published an excellent letter by Jean Lewandowski about the problems with the NH GOP “divisive concepts” bill, which didn’t get out of committee, but is now attached to HB2, the budget bill. That hearing will be on May 4 at 6 p.m.

The proposed bill would ban the teaching of what the GOP legislators call “divisive concepts,” banning even discussing the concept of systemic racism or sexism.

What troubles me about this bill is what it assumes about the nature of education. The word education comes from the Latin root, “educere,” which mean ‘to lead out” and not “to put in.” In my 35 years of teaching, including teaching, among other subjects, college-level Critical Thinking, I felt that in every course, my job was to help students learn how to think critically – to receive new information and to analyze, question, make decisions and apply their new knowledge. The opposite of that is indoctrination, where students are fed information that they must memorize and spit back, without analysis or thought. As students become functioning adults, they need the ability to analyze and question in order to reach their own informed opinions. Otherwise, we are creating a nation of sheep.

In my critical thinking class, for example, students debated the question “Does race exist?” They formed a working definition of the word “race,” studied the biological and sociological research on the issue and wrote papers defending their conclusions. It was not my job to tell them “the answer,” but to encourage them to think and to create a strong argument for their conclusion. Even young children are capable of critical thinking, if given the chance. It just means allowing for their natural curiosity and helping them to reason things through. Then learning actually becomes exciting, not a boring chore.

So, I agree that teaching, as a fact, that systemic racism exists or that any one group of people are inherently oppressive would not be a good practice. We need to give students information about how the US has treated non-majority populations, including the laws we’ve enacted. Red-lining is historically factual, as are Jim Crow laws, and Affirmative Action laws. The civil rights movement is historically factual, as is the setting of dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors. We have current statistics about pay and wealth inequity that are open to analysis. We can teach students the definition of systemic racism and sexism, provide them with facts without bias, encourage them to question and analyze and then allow them to reach their own conclusions about the question.

But, to sweep it all under the rug and refuse to even discuss it because some lawmaker has deemed the question “divisive?” Then we may as well ban any discussion of our history of immigration, our history with indigenous populations, the labor movement, the holocaust, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, climate change, and any other topic that some lawmaker, somewhere, decides is too uncomfortable. Of course, this will leave our students woefully unprepared for the world they are about to enter. They will be indoctrinated; knowing only what lawmakers want them to know and unprepared to form and defend their own opinions, a skill that is desperately needed in today’s world. Please ask your legislators to choose education over indoctrination and to trust students to think for themselves.