10 Georgia State Senators—All Republicans—Want To Expand Government Control of Private Schools

Ten Republican Georgia state senators have signed onto a new bill that would prohibit the teaching of controversial race and gender subjects in schools. The twist, in this case, is that the senators are specifically targeting private schools, not public schools, and attempting to forcefully control what they’re permitted to teach children regardless of parents’ wishes.

This is not what it means to support “school choice” and “parents’ rights,” senators.

The bill, S.B. 613, was introduced Tuesday. Titled the “Common Humanity in Private Education Act,” the bill asserts that “a growing number of Georgia’s private and nonpublic schools have embraced curricula and programs based in critical theory. … Additionally some teachers and other personnel in private and nonpublic schools and programs have inappropriately discussed gender identity with children who have not yet reached the age of discretion.”

The bill requires that private schools affirm that they will not teach a list of charged concepts that are associated with Critical Race Theory: that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”; “that an individual, solely by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex”; “that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race”; and other similar Critical Race Theory concepts. It forbids teaching students that the introduction of slavery to the United States constitutes the country’s “true” founding (the controversial and eminently debatable 1619 Project). It further forbids segregating classes or programs or excluding particip