Indiana state Sen. Scott Baldwin stirred outrage when he told a committee hearing that teachers must be impartial when discussing Nazism or fascism. He later walked back his shocking remarks.
The right-wing senator made his remarks during a hearing Wednesday on SB167, a controversial bill that would require teachers to be impartial in their teaching of all subjects. The bill would also require schools to establish curriculum committees that would include parents to review all education materials used in classrooms and create portals that would allow parents to view everything being taught in their children’s classroom.
Many teachers showed up at the hearing to express opposition to the bill. Teacher Matt Bockenfeld said his history class was now studying the rise of fascism and Nazism. “I’m just not neutral on the political ideology of fascism,” he said. “We condemn it, and we condemn it in full, and I tell my students the purpose, in a democracy, of understanding the traits of fascism is so that we can recognize it and we can combat it.”
Bockenfeld said that, even if it wasn’t the intent of the bill, he feared it would require teachers to be neutral on all topics. He said teachers should obviously be neutral on the political issues of the day, but should not be neutral on Nazism and must “take a stand in the classroom against it.”
Baldwin replied that that may be going too far, even in teaching about Nazism and fascism. “I have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those isms,” he said. “I believe that we've gone too far when we take a position on those isms. ... We need to be impartial.”
Baldwin said that even though he agreed with Bockenfeld “on those particular isms,” teachers should “just provide the facts.”
“I’m not sure it’s right for us to determine how that child should think and that’s where I’m trying to provide the guardrails,” Baldwin said.
After facing strong criticism, Baldwin walked back his comments in an email Thursday to the IndyStar. "When I was drafting this bill, my intent with regard to 'political affiliation' was to cover political parties within the legal American political system,” Baldwin said. “In my comments during committee, I was thinking more about the big picture and trying to say that we should not tell kids what to think about politics.
“Nazism, Marxism and fascism are a stain on our world history and should be regarded as such, and I failed to adequately articulate that in my comments during the meeting. I believe that kids should learn about these horrible events in history so that we don't experience them again in humanity.”
Baldwin, a former police officer, has denied that he was a member of the far-right Oath Keepers, although he did admit to the IndyStar that he donated $30 to the group in 2010 during an unsuccessful campaign for Hamilton County Sheriff.
Keith Gambill, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, told the IndyStar that the bill would result in teachers being afraid to speak freely or go “off-script,” for fear of retaliation. “We don’t want to create a system where we stifle our students natural learning curiosity,” he said. “We want them able to explore and to study without fear of, ‘Well, you’ve asked a question I am not allowed to answer.’”
The Indiana bill reflects the controversy ginned up by the GOP and right-wing media outlets over critical race theory, which is not taught in K-12 schools. The bill prohibits schools from teaching that a variety of concepts are inherently superior or inferior, including topics related to sex, race, ethnicity, religion, national origin or political affiliation.
Last year, the Texas state legislature went so far as to pass a bill that dropped a requirement for students being taught that the terror campaign waged by the white supremacist KK was “morally wrong.”
The Texas bill sparked confusion among educators. A secret recording was made of a training meeting for elementary school teachers in Southlake. The school district’s executive director for curriculum and instruction told the teachers that, if their classroom libraries included books about the Holocaust, students should also be steered toward books with “opposing views.”
Here are some tweets from Bockenfeld about the Senate hearing:
