The conservative legislation circulating in the Missouri Senate censors education and promotes patriotism which fosters an educational environment of indoctrination for young students. State lawmakers continue to ignore the concerns of teachers and prioritize their own political interests over the education of students.
Tierney Kugel is a freshman journalism major at MU. She is an opinion columnist who writes about education and politics for The Maneater.
The Missouri state Senate is considering an education bill, sponsored by state Sen. Andrew Koenig, that would require the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop an American patriotism training program and offer teachers who complete the program a $3,000 bonus. This bill also aims to ban the teaching of so-called critical race theory, a concept that is not taught in grade schools. This program is a waste of tax dollars, a misuse of power and indoctrinates students by setting an unreasonable expectation that American education, as well as educators, must be patriotic.
Critical race theory has been explained as a theory typically taught in higher education — not in grade school — that seeks to examine whether racism in the United States is systemic and why it continues to exist in American society. This bill targets the concept despite its absence in Missouri’s public school curricula. A spokesperson for the state’s largest teachers’ union condemned the legislation, which reveals lawmakers’ disregard for teachers’ concerns during the creation of education policy.
Because this bill financially incentivizes patriotism training, it implies that education and educators should be patriotic. The state is promoting a patriotic education for students in grades K-12, which raises concerns because it is not the role of educators to instill patriotism in the curriculum or in students. Teachers have the right to reject patriotism, and young students should not be forced to adopt an ideology such as nationalism or patriotism that they cannot fully understand the nuances of due to their limited education and experience. Older students who do not agree with the patriotic lens of their education may also feel uncomfortable expressing their own viewpoints.
This implementation of patriotic ideology in the curriculum of public schools is an example of indoctrination. It disarms students’ ability to come to their own conclusions and positions about America’s history or current society by teaching a one-sided version of events. Much of the curriculum already centers on American exceptionalism, the belief that the U.S. is superior to other nations, and fails to highlight the country’s failures — this bill would only further the censorship of alternative perspectives.
CBS News conducted an investigation in 2020 revealing that seven states do not mention slavery directly in their state standards and eight states fail to mention the civil rights movement. State standards describe knowledge and skills that students should learn and be able to accomplish at each grade level. The American education system is broken — the public school curriculum that allows for the civil rights movement and the atrocities of slavery to be disregarded is a clear example of patriotic indoctrination and systemic inaccurate teaching of history. This inaccuracy enforces a version of history that spotlights a perspective approved by the government, one that celebrates American history and omits subject matter that paints America in an unflattering light.
The use of government overreach in public schools to censor positions opposing the approved narrative is unacceptable. This proposed bill is only one example of many measures that have been implemented. Since 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken alternative steps seeking to place restrictions on how topics such as race and sexism are taught, with 18 states imposing such limits. Additionally, PEN America reports at least 297 books have been banned in Missouri public schools as of November 2022 in response to a recent law criminalizing “explicit sexual material.” This law, although intended to ban books featuring sexual material, reveals itself as an overextension of power and the bill’s original purpose. Books that were intended to serve an educational purpose and do not have offensive sexual content have been banned pending investigation, including several educational books about the Holocaust as well as a graphic adaptation of the Gettysburg Address. The patriotism bill joins a trend of censoring access to education and information — in Missouri and nationwide.
This bill, which general state revenues would fund, is a waste of tax money. It financially incentivizes public school educators to participate in a patriotism training program, which means resources would have to be allocated for the development of the program. This bill should not be a priority for Missouri lawmakers, especially when there are more pressing issues threatening the strength of Missouri’s education system, such as widespread underfunding.
As college students in Missouri who value the principles of education and diversity of thought, we must take action against this concerning movement. One method of counteracting this is contacting state representatives and expressing disapproval of the bill. This will garner attention from the representatives voting on the bill, encouraging them to discourage this legislation and similar legislation that may be proposed in the future. During the next election cycle, voting for candidates who do not promote conservative education bills is an additional method of resistance. It is essential that legislation such as this, which continues to dismantle the objectivity of Missouri’s education system by indoctrinating students with a patriotic ideology and blatantly misusing state resources, be challenged and rejected.
Edited by Molly Gibbs | mgibbs@themaneater.comCopyedited by Shirin Rekabdar-Xavier and Grace Knight