LANSING, Mich, (WLNS) — The Senate Committee on Education and Career Readiness voted to pass legislation that would restrict the way racism is taught in schools 4 to 1.
4 Republicans and 1 Democrat.
The bill in question will now move to the legislature.
Senate Bill 460 is sponsored by Republican Senator Lana Theis from Brighton.
Under Theis’ legislation, school districts in Michigan would be banned from teaching critical race theory, material from the 1619 project or quote “Anti-American and racist theories.”
That includes teaching that the United States is a fundamentally racist country, or that the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution are fundamentally racist documents.
“Children learning to treat each other with dignity and respect regardless of race, color, or religion is where we should be going but CRT is training the next generation to divide people into categories and use oppression matrices instead and that should never happen in Michigan,” said Theis.
One senator on the committee who opposed the bill was Democrat Erika Geiss from Taylor.
Geiss says “We must be able to acknowledge and reckon with this country’s history of systemic racism which includes being able to teach and have age-appropriate discussions about these concepts in our schools without teachers having to worry about keeping their jobs or school districts fearful of losing their funding.”
One thing that’s important to note is that education officials in Michigan say no K-12 school is currently teaching critical race theory.
The bill now moves on to the Senate.
Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to attach video regarding Araceli’s story.
