The Republican party continues the legislative crusade to bend history to its warped view of America. Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed a few education bills into law, including one that targets “divisive concepts” in the classroom, as reported by CNN.
House Bill 1084 or the “Protect Students First Act” outlines divisive concepts as being “those that teach “the United States of America is fundamentally racist; an individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently or consciously racist or oppressive toward individuals of other races,” and “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.”
The ACLU of Georgia fired back and said parents want their children to be taught accurate curricula.
“Whether you are white, Black, Hispanic or Asian— most parents want their children to learn about history the way they learn about math— as accurately as possible” Andrea Young, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
Kemp also signed HB 1178, or the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which provides greater transparency to parents and legal guardians regarding what their students are being taught, and SB 226, which bans literature or books deemed offensive from school libraries. HB 1084 will set up “an athletic executive oversight committee” in the state that has the authority to establish a ban on transgender women participating on sports teams consistent with their gender at high schools in the state.
In a statement, The Democratic Party of Georgia said new laws will “will pit parents against teachers, attack educators, politicize Georgia schools, and jeopardize kids’ education – all for Kemp’s own political gain.”
“From the moves to censor what’s taught in classrooms, to the efforts to make it easier to ban books and to attack the parent-teacher partnership, it’s clear that for Kemp, this is about politics and inserting a partisan agenda into our classrooms,” Elaine Padgett, a Forsyth County parent running for the local Board of Education, wrote in the statement.