Senate opens debate on parents' rights bill

The Missouri Senate opened debate on a bill Wednesday that would give parents greater involvement in their children's education.

After several hours of debate and no votes even on amendments, the bill was moved to the informal calendar so that it can be brought up on another day.

Senate Bill 4 also would prohibit the teaching of critical race theory or similar concepts, require school districts to post curricula on their websites and allow parents to inject themselves into their child's education in several ways.

The bill includes a plan to create a state online portal for parents to access all the information they are entitled to as stated in the bill.

Nowhere does the bill define critical race theory, but it forbids educators from teaching several positions or viewpoints.

According to the bill, educators may not teach that people of one race are superior or inferior to people of other races. It also forbids teaching that people of one race should be treated advantageously or disadvantageously based on their race or that people of one race should bear collective guilt for past actions against other races.

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, said he did not want to see curricula based on the mindset of certain groups being inferior. He drew a comparison to Nazi Germany, where the government "morphed the curriculum" to teach children that Jews were subhuman.

"If you look at the definitions of what is prohibited types of teaching, (it) would absolutely mirror that of what the Hitler Youth program was," Brattin said. "Absolutely, emphatically, 100%."

Sen. Karla May, D-St. Louis, said teachers need to be free to educate without the restrictions in the bill because kids need to be prepared to face difficult topics in the real world.

"Kids with knowledge are empowered," May said. "Now the question is, what do they do with it? You know, (parents) are not going to be able to police what (their) kids learn because when they have to leave (the) house, they're going to encounter the world."

Sen. Steven Roberts, D-St. Louis, and Sen. Barbara Washington, D-Kansas City, pointed out that while the bill stipulates that it should not be understood to prohibit classes on Black, Native American or women's history, this stipulation might conflict with the topics the bill forbids.

Washington said that topics such as the Missouri Compromise inherently talk about one race being inferior to another and that teachers might fear teaching the topic out of fear that a parent will object.

Roberts added that this fear is especially salient because the bill provides a cause of action for parents to bring a civil suit against teachers who teach a forbidden topic, "as if our teachers don't have it hard enough already."

He said it should not be controversial to teach that there are "ongoing effects from slavery that are felt" by Black people today that put the community at a disadvantage. He said critical race theory does not teach that any race is inherently racist; it teaches how racism is integrated into America's history.

"Why wouldn't we want our kids, our adults, to be educated in this so we can figure out how to address those problems?" Roberts asked. "What this legislation is trying to do is to prohibit those conversations, those dialogues from even happening, just to whitewash over it."

February is Black History Month, and Washington and Roberts spent floor time discussing key events of Black history in Missouri.