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Willie Carver| Opinion Contributor

I have been a public school teacher since 2009, and Ive seen plenty of silencing. Im not proud to say that Ive even partaken in some, when I thought I had to keep quiet myself just to keep my job. But the censorship persists: I have been chastised directly by male colleagues for being too feminine, Ive been pulled aside by a principal who said that if I chose to be open about being gay I would be crucified and undefended, and, most recently, Ive been bluntly told that people felt that my LGBTQ student advocacy lending a listening ear, or sponsoring student-led clubs was being shoved down their throats.

Still, none of this comes close to the silencing we are now experiencing in the Kentucky classroom. It is so bad that the future of free speech and our students empathy and self-image hang in the balance.

Whereas most of my silencing has been behind closed doors, whispered only to me, this new censorship is boldly proclaimed as moral or even best practice. And it goes far beyond squelching LGBTQ experiences: It silences huge swaths of people and entire eras of history by banning discussion of anything related to race.

All of this is framed in the controversy over critical race theory, a term hyper-conservative politicians have hijacked to try and censor the painful truths of our nations history. Although CRT is a concept limited to university-level study, that has not stopped the introduction of legislation that is preventing K-12 educators from teaching honest history or discussing its connection to systemic racism and discrimination today.

Censoring tactics like the Krause list, a list of 850 books Texas state Rep. Matt Krause wants schools to track because of content related to sexuality, race, or anything that may cause discomfort or psychological distress, and Kentucky House Bills 14 and 18, which hope to outright ban certain topics and books from schools under the guise ofavoiding division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social classor class of people are causing major damage to free speech. In the schools themselves, local decrees, made in fear of these proposed bills, are just as damaging, if not more so, due to their vague nature. My schools English department has been instructed by multiple administrators in the last year not to teach anything racial, and our superintendent has requested anything sexual or racial be discussed with administrators before being presented to students.

The people behind this censorship are firmly rooted in the current zeitgeist, and their views are shared by administrators across the country: They believe the presence of race, genderand LGBTQ identities to be potentially problematic or disruptive. That silences teachers who want to be team players or just keep their jobs.

Given these circumstances, how willing is a teacher to read excerpts from The Bluest Eye? Not very. Why? Because Black author Toni Morrison describes racism through the eyes of a little Black girl. Might the same teacher read The Great Gatsby? Yes. Why? Because white author F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses on privileged white people. Herein lies the issue.

The censors say they are offended that race should matter at all. But if we eliminate all discussion of race which censors equate with all discussion of anything Black we whitewash the entire curriculum and erase the students in our classrooms, our own communities, and history itself. We deny our students the tools they need to see the world clearly.

More: Kentucky lawmakers file dozens of education bills each year. Ones to watch in 2022

I worry most about the students. In a system that disincentivizes even references to race, gender, or LGBT identities, in which two-thirds of the books on Krauses list are LGBTQ-centered and one-tenth discusses racism, how can students learn about themselves as part of a system? And how ourwhite, straight, cisgender students to learn about the experiences of people who are different from them experiences that are, essentially, illegalized in schools?

The First Amendment ensures that freedom of speech may not be abridged, and our understanding of speech has evolved tremendously since its writing. Legally, speech has been expanded to mean actions, workand even the free use of money by corporations. Academically, we also understand that speech involves the opportunity to listen: Hearing and reading are essential and fundamental aspects of free speech. Censorship denies students this very right: to hear someone talk about themselves, to know more about the human experience, to better understand their place in relation to each other, to partake in the sharing of the marketplace of ideas.

I urge teachers, administrators and stakeholders to become aware of the extent to which curricula include people of color and LGBTQ people, and I urge them to speak up when voices would silence that inclusion. I fully support legislation and am thankful for advocacy by groups like the American Federation of Teachers that guarantee and fight for students rights to access voices in their classroom regardless of their gender, sexuality, raceor political beliefs and that protect those teachers who share them. I believe strongly that when any of us is not allowed to be heard, all our voices are threatened.

Willie Carver teaches French and English at Montgomery County Schools in Mount Sterling, KY. He is the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of theYear.

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Hyper conservative politicians have hijacked critical race theory to try and censor painful truths | Opinion - Courier Journal