Meeting Public Comments

Sandy Wilson [Citizen Engagement 411]

Citizen Engagement is IN FAVOR of HSB 258.

Chandlor Collins

I have concerns about this legislation and how in practice it will limit understanding between students and for facility. This bill appears to want schools to teach an "ostrich" approach to these topics as opposed to educating students and allowing them to ask tough questions and receive important answers.Without those conversations, I worry that my son will get to college and "get" to have some of the same conversations that I "got" to have with classmates of different cultures. Classmates who did not know certain words were wrong, or who thought all black Americans did certain things. These classmates often lacked even the frame of reference for why they thought certain things about black Americans, or why it was wrong to think that way. In the aftermath, they were often thankful they learned these things at 19. But often, they were disappointed they did not learn them at 10. This is not a story that is limited to one race and is shared across gender. But it is a story that this bill seeks to prolong. The stated goal of this legislation is to remove racism and sexism from what students are taught because of their "divisive nature." On the face, anyone would agree with this attempt, but this is not the intended goal.One result of this legislation appears to be the removal of trainings such as implicit bias. Where individuals learn that people, of all walks of lights have biases that are formed and developed based on their race, sex, gender and any other number of factors. Under that legislation, could that be used in a school? Is this a goal?The last thing that I will add is that this bill seems to be targeted at the 1619 project and similar works that look at history in a different perspective. A perspective often overlooked previously. I have not read all of the materials related to that project. But I know that countless history texts and tools have problems and I am yet to see legislation aimed at their shortcomings. As a history major one of my upper level courses focused on how history is transcribed and shared. And every account of history is told from a perspective. For Christians, a great example of this comes from the the first four books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Imagine what is missed if you just have Mark and Luke? Now imagine what our schools miss when they are missing a perspective too. I do not support this legislation.