The Senate Education Committee advanced legislation on Monday that would update social studies curriculum to teach students about the “resiliency of the constitutional republic system adopted by the United States of America” and to create additional curricula that reinforces the failures of other systems of government, namely communism and autocracies.
On the surface, the bill, sponsored by Rep. Scott Richardson (R-Bentonville), sounds innocuous enough. But a glance at similar anti-communism education legislation passed last year in Arizona, Florida and in the U.S. House of Representatives, reveals more ideologically driven neoconservative motivations that carry the stench of McCarthyism.
The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, which passed the U.S. House in December, would direct the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to create curricula it could provide to school districts about the atrocities of communist regimes. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is a conservative nonprofit that has the support of other neocon organizations like the Heritage Foundation, and is behind a national campaign to up the ante with anti-communist propaganda in American classrooms.
Toni Rose, a member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, showed up at Monday’s Senate Education Committee meeting to support House Bill 1060. “I love this bill,” Rose said. “I believe that it is high time that we incorporate the education of the impact of communism on the people who labor and suffer under it.”
Rose cited surveys from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation that indicate more young people “view communism favorably” or think it is a “better system than capitalism.”
“So many youth are stating that communism and socialism are preferable to living under a representative republic, and the reason for that is that they do not understand the history of communism and its victims,” Rose said. “Our youth must remember the crimes of the communists.”
House Bill 1060 would require the Arkansas Department of Education to update public school social studies curricula for grades seven through 12 to ensure course materials “accurately compare and contrast the resiliency of the United States’s constitutional republic with the failures of communism and autocratic systems and other democratic government systems.”
Sen. Stephanie Flowers (D-Pine Bluff) was the only member of the Senate Education Committee to raise some concerns. “What prompted you to bring this billand did you even consider the U.S. at the current time being within any of this as subject matter?”
Richardson said he did not understand the question.
“Well there is debate right now about whether we are moving to an autocratic-type government,” Flowers said. “And we are a republic. So, what promoted this?”
“Well, our constitution stipulates how the government can interact with us,” Richardson said. “Our constitution protects our inalienable rights, so the idea of that is important to reinforce. Why did I bring it now? Because I hear too many people referring to us as a democracy, and I think it is incredibly important that we understand we are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic.”
According to the legislation, social studies materials would include teachings that emphasize “the general subservience of constitutional republics to the citizens, while other forms of government require subservience to a single government institution or a single government leader.”
Students would be required to learn about the “continued failure of communism and autocratic governments” including the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Argentina as well as the “natural deterioration of democracies into autocracies over history” including in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
“This bill approaches the ideas and concepts that other types of government systems have continued to fail, and we want to reinforce why they have failed,” Richardson said. “The purpose is to ensure that our students, as they graduate and go on to become citizens, understand that they failed because those government systems oppressed their people, killing tens – if not hundreds of millions – of their own citizens in the process.”
Jacob Oliva, secretary of the state Department of Education, joined Richardson. Oliva said that social studies materials have not been reviewed by the education department over the past couple of years while other subjects have.
“We feel like at this point in time, it would be a good time to review our standards to make sure we are highlighting everything we want to be taught,” Oliva said.
Flowers had more questions.
“The language in the bill is kind of troubling me,” she said. “Comparing the United States with these other systems, as if we occupy some superior status. I am concerned we are just taking for granted that we are superior and these other systems are not. It doesn’t seem to point out maybe some of the failures, or the disappointments or the issues with our government since its inception…slavery.”
“I do not know how to really process what is here, and what we are expecting to teach our children,” Flowers said. “And is this not akin to indoctrination of students?”
“I would not say this is about indoctrination,” Oliva said in response. “This is about teaching history and historical facts that we encourage our students to learn. The goal when you talk about indoctrination is allowing students to learn how to think and now tell them what to think.”
HB1060 will now advance to the Senate.
