Story at a glance
- A new report from free expression group PEN America found that there were close to 400 “educational intimidation” bills introduced in state legislatures between 2021 and 2023.
- The group says these bills are aimed at making teachers feel uncomfortable discussing certain contentious topics in the classroom, like race and sexual identity.
- PEN America argues these bills are being used to censor what students are exposed to in schools.
State bills designed to scare teachers away from discussing race and sexuality in the classroom are on the rise, free expression group PEN America argues in a new report.
The report, released Wednesday, found that nearly 400 such measures, which PEN America has dubbed “educational intimidation” bills, were introduced into state legislatures between January 2021 and June of this year.
Out of those bills, 39 have passed into law.
These pieces of legislation don’t aim to directly censor what can and can’t be talked about in the classroom, PEN America says.
Instead, the organization argues, they expand on the already existing opportunities for parents, government officials or other members of a community to inspect or object to school curricula or extracurricular decisions.
“There is this kind of exploding array of legislative proposals being put on the table trying to accomplish self-censorship of teachers through intimidation,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of the free expression and education program at PEN America.
One example cited in the report is Florida’s House Bill 1467, which was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year.
Under the law, every elementary school must post a searchable list to its website of all its library and library media center materials, grade-level reading lists and instructional materials.
The law also requires Florida schools to submit an annual report to the state on all objections to school materials they receive and materials removed because of the objections.
In the report, the school must specify the grade level and course in which the removed material was used. And the Florida Department of Education is required to publish a list of all materials that were removed or discontinued due to an objection, the law states.
When paired with the recent surge in book bans, Friedman says these bills further create an atmosphere of fear among educators, causing many to “second guess everything that they are teaching.”
“Some are afraid for their job or their community reputations or getting a crowd mentality going of sort of the questioning of every single thing that they’re doing,” said Annamary Consalvo, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s Standing Committee Against Censorship.
While the bulk of the bills listed in PEN America’s report and accompanying Index of Educational Intimidation Bills focus on classroom and library materials, the organization also classifies many as aiming to restrict LGBT representation and expression.
An example of this it cites is Alabama’s Senate Bill 184, signed into law in 2022, which made it a felony for physicians to administer gender-affirming care to minors in the state.
Under the law, no “nurse, counselor, teacher, principal or other administrative official at a public or private school” can encourage or coerce a child into not telling their parents if they are experiencing gender dysphoria.
The law also states that if a school employee knows a student is experiencing gender dysphoria, they cannot withhold that information from the child’s parents or legal guardian.
Forcing teachers or other school employees to monitor students’ self-expression in this manner puts a “chill” on a school’s climate, pressuring students to “self-censor their expression” while at school, PEN America argues.
While the percentage of the “educational intimidation” bills listed by the organization that have been passed into law is small, they are growing in number.
PEN America found that seven such bills were passed into state law in 2021, the year the organization started tracking them. That number jumped to 15 in 2022, and 17 bills have been passed so far in 2023, according to the report.
The majority of the bills are sponsored by members of the political right. Out of the 392 bills introduced to state legislatures since 2021, 377 were introduced by Republicans, according to PEN America.
Students, teachers and even parents will suffer if nothing is done to address the uptick in this kind of legislation, according to Friedman.
He argued students in places where these bills are enacted will not receive as rich an education as they might have otherwise, while teachers may be pushed out of the field.
“There is a real risk that either more teachers leave the profession or, in general, people aren’t becoming teachers in the way they once were,” said Friedman.
And while many of the bills are introduced with the stated intention of protecting parent rights, he argues that they do not respect all parents’ opinions on how their children should be educated.
“One of the tremendous ironies of this moment is so much of what is being proposed is being justified using the rhetoric of parental rights,” said Friedman. “But what is emerging are a set of indications that this really isn’t about serving all parents or most parents.”
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