Proposed critical race theory ban puts SC on dangerous path, state superintendent says
South Carolina schools chief Molly Spearman Wednesday reaffirmed her opposition to so-called critical race theory being taught in the state’s classrooms, but said any legislation seeking to restrict certain concepts or lessons must be clearly defined to ensure teachers aren’t constantly second-guessing their instruction or skipping important topics for fear of retaliation.
Spearman, whose term ends next January and is not seeking reelection, made her comments before a House panel tasked with transforming five proposed, but overbroad anti-critical race theory bills into passable legislation.
Critical race theory, or CRT, is a way of thinking about the world that posits racism is embedded in our social institutions, such as the criminal justice and education systems, and attempts to confront and challenge beliefs and policies that perpetuate systemic racism.
In recent years, Republican politicians and activists have transformed critical race theory into a catch-all phrase that, as Spearman put it Wednesday, serves as a stand-in for “any classroom instruction that individuals or groups do not feel is appropriate.”
For the purposes of the proposed state legislation, critical race theory will mean whatever lawmakers say it means, House Education and Public Works Committee research director Pierce McNair has said.
Spearman said that while she thought anti-CRT legislation was necessary and hoped lawmakers would work with the Department of Education to refine it, she feared a situation where educators could no longer teach aspects of history that make people feel uncomfortable.
“Some events in our state, nation and world’s history will make students and educators alike feel uncomfortable,” she testified. “But that does not mean that they shouldn’t be taught and students shouldn’t have the opportunity to discuss it.”
Spearman’s concern stems from a one-year state law passed last year in the budget and identical language included in several of the proposed bills that prohibits teaching students they should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race or sex.
That language is problematic, she said, because it could potentially be used to forbid teaching about the horrors of slavery or the Holocaust.
Spearman spoke of her own experience visiting China several years ago and realizing the government there had wiped from the internet all information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which Chinese military troops slaughtered several hundred to several thousand pro-democracy demonstrators.
If South Carolina were to prohibit teaching about the most troubling aspects of our nation’s history, she said, it would make the state “no better than the communist dictators that our men and women … have fought in the armed forces to protect us from.”
“This is a dangerous path that we may be going down,” Spearman said. “We’ve got to be very, very careful.”
The state Department of Education has no current or proposed academic standards that include teaching the concepts of critical race theory, does not apply for funding that requires or incentivizes the adoption of CRT concepts and does not offer professional development opportunities to educators that promote such concepts.
Yet over the past year, the South Carolina Department of Education has received several hundred complaints from parents about so-called critical race theory being taught in public school classrooms.
Upon investigation, the department confirmed that only a couple dozen of the complaints involved situations where teachers may have taught something inappropriate or politically biased, although not technically critical race theory, spokesman Ryan Brown said.
The perpetual threat of being accused of bias and indoctrinating children through their lessons has had a chilling effect on teachers, according to Spearman.
“Right now teachers are scared to death,” she said. “They really are worried that they’re gonna say something wrong and get in trouble.”
Spearman said South Carolina could not afford to further stifle and alienate educators, who have been leaving the profession in droves and exacerbating the state’s teacher shortage.
A record 1,063 teacher and service positions statewide were vacant to start the school year, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement, which conducts an annual educator supply and demand survey.
“We need every teacher we can find and we need to be supporting them,” Spearman said. “So we need to give some direction, but it’s got to be something that’s reasonable.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 2:44 PM.