Texas public schools no longer required to teach that Ku Klux Klan is ‘morally wrong’

In the state of Texas, the predominately Republican Senate just passed a bill that eliminates the requirement for public schools to teach that the Ku Klux Klan, a bigoted and racist organization, was “morally wrong.”

This cut from the curriculum is among the two dozen curriculum requirements dropped as part of the measure. Some of the other removals include Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Native American history, and women suffragist movement writings by Susan B Anthony.

Last Friday, Senate Bill 3, passed 18-4, dropped mentions of people of color and women from the state’s necessary curriculum.

This encompasses eliminating the need for students to be taught white supremacy’s history, but not restricted to the “institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong.”

This bill carves out more of their curriculum requirements from and already in the stated restrictive Texas Education law (H.B. 3979) that was passed in June of this year as part of a conservative effort to push fear around the critical race theory - or the teaching of institutional racism that is not really taught in Kindergarten to 12th grade.

The language from the bill last month remains constant in this new bill. It prevents teachers from requiring students to understand the 1619 project, which is a New York Times project spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for the outlet. The project seeks to examine how slavery has affected American history.

The bill also kept the rhetoric that teachers do not have the authority to be compelled to talk about current events or “controversial issue[s] of public policy or social affairs.”

If they do happen to do this, they can’t give “deference to any one perspective.”

According to the Dallas Morning News, Democratic state Sen. Judith Zaffirini spoke out against the bill.

“How could a teacher possibly discuss slavery, the Holocaust, or the mass shootings at the Walmart in El Paso or at the Sutherland Springs Church in my district without giving deference to any one perspective?”

But Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, favored the bill writing that citizens of the state reject “woke’ philosophies” that highlight one sex or race as better than the other.

“Texas parents do not want their children to be taught these false ideas. Parents want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism,” Patrick wrote, in part, in a statement on his website.

Check out some reactions to the bill below.

Now, the legislation has to be considered in the house, which also happens to be led by Republicans.

The house does lack the minimum number of members for any vote. Democrats in the state fled earlier this month in protest to block a restrictive voting bill.