Bill pre-filed to require Ky. middle and high schools to teach history of racism

A Kentucky lawmaker on Monday pre-filed a bill for the 2022 General Assembly requiring the state’s public middle and high schools to offer instruction on the history of racism in the United States.

Under state Rep. Attica Scott’s legislation, every public middle and high school’s curriculum must include instruction on the history of racism.

The subject matter would include the transatlantic slave trade, the American civil war, Jim Crow laws, laws governing the conduct of blacks, desegregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, redlining, and residential segregation.

“I pre-filed this education bill in 2020 and again in 2021 at the request of” Jefferson County Public Schools students, Scott, D-Louisville, told the Herald-Leader.

Bills have also been pre-filed for the 2022 session that would ban the teaching and promoting of critical race theory in Kentucky’s public schools. Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass previously told state lawmakers that he is not aware that critical race theory is being taught in the state’s K-12 schools.

In July, at a meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Education, Glass said critical race theory is a decades-old legal and academic theory that seeks to explain why racism continues to exist. Glass said it’s a theory intended to provide a framework for the study of potential causes and effects of racism in society and how those might be mitigated.

Glass has said critical race theory is typically a graduate-level academic theory or concept taught in law school. Discussions of some concepts related to the theory might appear in a high school elective, though its developmental appropriateness for high school would be narrow, Glass said. It would likely not be appropriate for middle or elementary students.

Glass later recommended to lawmakers that they enact a statute that forces conversations on race to have balanced perspectives.

His proposal would require any classroom discussions or lessons on the issues to also share the critiques and criticisms of critical race theory that have been offered. That would help students make their own informed decisions on the theory, he has said.