Censorship of school curricula in the United States
In 2021, bills were introduced in multiple state legislatures to restrict teaching certain concepts, including critical race theory (CRT) and sexism, in public schools.
[4][5][examples needed] Other state-level efforts have involved state boards of education restricting the teaching of issues surrounding race and sex.
[6] Some of the first evidence of censorship of school curriculum in the United States comes during the Civil War, when Southern textbook publishers removed material critical of slavery.
[9][10] The movement censored any offending works and lead to "indoctrination of southern schoolchildren with aristocratic social values unchanged since the antebellum epoch.
[11] Legislation was considered and defeated in 1922 in Kentucky and South Carolina, in 1923 passed in Oklahoma, Florida, and notably in 1925 in Tennessee, as the Butler Act.
[12] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered to defend anyone who wanted to bring a test case against one of these laws.
The Court held: We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship.
[8] Historian Jonathan Zimmerman stated that in the 1960s, "there were history textbooks in this country, including in the North, that still described slavery as a mostly beneficent institution devised by benevolent white people to civilize savage Africans.
[19] In the 21st century in the United States, Republican lawmakers have proposed or enacted legislation to censor school curricula that taught about comprehensive sex education,[20] LGBTQ people,[21] higher-order thinking skills,[22] social justice,[23] sexism and racism,[24] and various left-wing political philosophies.
On the basis that "the limits violated students' First Amendment freedom to read and receive information," the district court reversed the board's decision and ordered the books to be returned to open circulation.
[27] In mid-April 2021, a bill was introduced in the Idaho legislature that would effectively ban any educational entity from teaching or advocating sectarianism, including critical race theory or other programs involving social justice.
[29] On June 10, 2021, the Florida State Board of Education unanimously voted to ban public schools from teaching critical race theory at the urging of governor Ron DeSantis.
'[35] As of July 2021, 10 US states had introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict how teachers discuss racism, sexism, and other "divisive issues", and 26 others were in the process of doing so.
[6] The Republican-majority North Carolina State Legislature passed a similar law, but it was vetoed by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
[48] An expansion was proposed in 2023 by Republican state senator Clay Yarborough, prohibiting teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade.
