Why Have Educational Politics Become So Extreme? (Part I)

"Parental Rights" and the spoils of the culture war

This is Part I of II. (Part II is here.)

Published Friday, June 17, 2022. Updated June 19, 2022 to add a brief discussion of further comments by Ellen Weaver.

Note: Due to length, the following may not be fully readable through email. It looks better on the website (click here).

A post on Senator Josh Kimbrell’s Facebook page, June 13, 2022. By May 24, he was also calling for all “law abiding” teachers with concealed weapons permits to be able to carry firearms in class.

Representative Adam Morgan visited my AP Research Seminar class on February 24, 2022.

At the time, Morgan, as a member of the SC House Education and Public Works Committee, was in the midst of a series of long public hearings on a five anti- “CRT” school censorship bills that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund aptly called “anti-truth”. (I’m going to use “CRT” throughout this piece because, as experts explained to the commitee, the definition of “Critical Race Theory,” also frequently and incorrectly conflated with “Culturally…