![]() ![]() Similar to Tennessee, eight other states, including Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas approved educational gag orders in 2021. Twelve of them have been signed into law. Sixty-six of these orders were introduced in 26 state legislatures or other governmental venues throughout 2021. ![]() And at a time when school board meetings have turned into contentious forums in one place after another, these inappropriate gag orders reflect a prevailing belief among conservatives that an alleged liberal agenda must be identified and eradicated before its young would-be victims are indoctrinated. Simply put, Republican legislators around the country are setting limits on subjects they believe are tilted against conservatives, guiding debates over how to interpret past events and reframe progressive topics like women’s rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.Īs noted by PEN America, the firing of Hawn is emblematic of a movement to control what happens in the nation’s classrooms. And a few weeks later, an educational gag order officially banned lessons like the one Hawn had taught throughout Tennessee, theoretically enforcing the sentiments of his community.Īn educational gag order, a term coined by PEN America, typically takes the form these days of a state law that aims to curb the teaching of “divisive concepts” in public schools, including race, gender, and dark moments in American history. ![]() Hawn’s community of Blountville, Tennessee, a rural town near the Virginia border that leans strongly conservative, accused him of forcing a political agenda on his students and said he had failed to provide “diverse perspectives” in his teaching.ĭespite insisting that he regularly urged students to challenge class content if they disagreed with anything, Hawn found no success in getting his job back. In April 2021, during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd the previous year, Matthew Hawn, a Tennessee public school teacher, taught in his “Contemporary Issues” class at Sullivan Central High School that white privilege is an established fact, sharing a poetry performance on the subject. ![]()
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