Stanley Kurtz at the National Review is utterly convinced that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are conspiring to introduce Critical Race Theory into every public school in the country. He has an elaborate plan to stop this. The plan involves state legislatures taking preemptive measures

The cure for this is state-level legislation based on the model bill I have published with the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the Partisanship Out of Civics Act (POCA). (Here is my explanation for the various provisions in the initial version of the model bill.) While the initial version of the model POCA bill blocked both action civics and Critical Race Theory-based teacher training, I have now expanded the model to keep Critical Race Theory out of the K-12 curriculum as well. This includes some new language aimed at the most pernicious claims of the 1619 Project.

Down in Louisiana, here’s how that looks:

The chairman of the House Education Committee shelved his own bill Tuesday that would ban colleges and public schools from teaching “divisive concepts,” including that Louisiana or the United States is racist or sexist or that students should be made to feel guilty about their race.

“The problem is politics in the classroom,” said Rep. Ray Garofalo, R-Chalmette, chairman of the committee and sponsor of the legislation. “It is important that we address the issue.”

If this issue is so important, you might reasonably ask why Chairman Garofalo shelved the bill. It appears that he didn’t have the votes. He also didn’t have support from House Speaker Clay Schexnayder who “expressed concerns, including whether the Legislature can tell colleges what they can teach.” But after announcing a vote on the bill would be put off for another day, Garofalo went ahead with the scheduled hearing. That was probably a mistake.

“This bill does not say anything about teaching facts,” Garofalo said.

“You can teach the good, the bad, the ugly,” he said. “But you cannot say that theories are facts. You can teach facts as facts. You can teach theories as theories.”

In one exchange, Garofalo said there could be a classroom discussion of slavery, for instance.

“You can talk about everything dealing with slavery. The good. The bad. The ugly.”

Said Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-Metairie: “There is no good to slavery, though.”

Replied Garofalo: “You are right. I didn’t mean to imply that. And don’t believe that.”

This exchange earned the chairman a rebuke for the Louisiana Democrats’ twitter account:

From there, it became a national story, with Garofalo cast as a defender of slavery. Based solely on his comments in the hearing, that’s an unfair characterization, but then one still needs to question the motivation behind holding the hearing at all.

In Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina’s official response to Biden’s Wednesday address to Congress, he insisted that America is not a racist country. That, too, was a response to this new obsession on the right with defending the historic virtue of the country be preventing discussion of race and slavery in public schools and universities. Garofalo says his bill is a response to his constituents’ concerns:

Garofalo said changes are needed because classrooms are being filled with ideologies promoted by teachers, including critical race theory that he said stems from Marxism and a view that “furthers racism and fuels hate.”

“Critical theory weakens the family, the education community and the work environment,” he said.

The lawmaker said he has heard from countless parents and students complaining about what is being taught but they are reluctant to say so publicly because of concerns about retribution.

I very much doubt that Garofalo knows much about critical theory or critical race theory, but I want to be clear that they aren’t synonyms for teaching students the history of slavery and racism. Critical Theory is a school of historical analysis that prioritizes societal structures and cultural assumptions in its explanations of persistent social problems. The Biden administration is not pushing this particular school of thought, but it has become shorthand on the right for anything that might conceivably make white students “feel guilty about their race.”

If there is anything to Garofalo’s claim that teaching racism and slavery in school “weakens the family,” it is by making white kids question the racism of their parents. With a more rounded education, these kids might not accidentally talk about the “good” side of slavery and become a national punching bag.