The Anti-Civics

Yesterday the Assembly passed a bill to make Critical Race Theory (dubbed “ethnic studies”) a high graduation requirement. The vote was 58-9, and I gave the only speech in opposition. Video and excerpts below.

When the first version of this curriculum was released, it was universally condemned. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus wrote that it “echoes the propaganda of the Nazi regime.”

You’d think our response would be to scrap the whole thing. Instead, we said let’s make a few tweaks. Let’s make some edits, tone done the Nazi propaganda a bit, and then impose it on every high school student in California.

The inadequacy of this response is clear from the continuing opposition of Jewish-American groups, even on the curriculum’s fourth draft. It’s “tantamount to putting an even larger target on the back of every Jewish student,” one group wrote.

And anti-Semitism is just one manifestation of what is so fundamentally wrong with this curriculum. Its overt purpose is to impose on students a particular worldview, rather than giving them the tools to construct one for themselves.

What I find particularly offensive is the notion that this curriculum is about “equity.” In truth, it’s a smokescreen for corrupt education policies that have produced the greatest inequity – the widest racial and socioeconomic gaps – in the entire country.

Since being elected, every attempt I’ve made to fight for true educational equity has been snuffed out by the dominant Special Interest as this Capitol, whose business model is to keep kids trapped in failing schools. That’s why we rank 49 of 50 in educating poor students, and it’s why we’ve been dead last in reopening our classrooms.

Yet there’s an even more fundamental issue, which explains why this curriculum has been able to traction. It’s that we’ve lost touch with the true purpose of education: preparation for citizenship, where civics is a unifying thread across all subjects.

As that unifying thread has unraveled, Critical Race Theory has filled the void, offering itself as the anti-civics. A failure to teach students how to build their communities up has created an opening for those who would have them tear their communities down.

Today I call on our Legislature to not only to reject this bill but renew the true meaning of civic education: one that gives young people a deep appreciation for American institutions and values. One that would make a curriculum like this inconceivable.

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