Sunday, February 28, 2021
Compelled
The problem is compelled speech. To be compelled to assert belief in what you do not believe is a severe intrusion on individual free speech, and that seems to be what is happening in these workplace training sessions. Is there some way to present the insights of Critical Race Theory as ideas to be understood and weighed against other ideas and debated instead of compelling attendance at events where the ideas are dictated and participants are forced to attest to the dictated beliefs?
Also, from John Sexton:
Hopefully, you see the problem here. It’s the one that Michelle Goldberg is studiously ignoring. Free speech exists on the street, in the newspaper op-ed page, at a university where professors have academic freedom to pursue their interests and students are largely free to add and drop classes. But when it comes to the curriculum that gets taught to elementary and jr. high school students the situation is somewhat different. Not only are those kids a captive audience, most aren’t yet equipped to consider what they’re learning as provisional or subject to interpretation. They certainly aren’t in a position to argue with the teacher.
Even in high school, where many on the left hope to see the 1619 Project introduced to the curriculum, there’s appropriate concern about what is being taught to students who are mandated to be there. On the right there’s a real concern that this isn’t being treated as one possible interpretation of American history but as the unvarnished truth. And to put it bluntly, teaching every American high schooler that anti-black racism is the most fundamental aspect of their country’s entire history, that even the Revolutionary War was about protecting slavery, seems like a pretty significant thing to force on students who, again, have no choice in the matter.
