Hate speech sells, and right now, hate speech is selling education.
The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has recently passed revisions for the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) social studies section changing what students learn in classrooms from kindergarten and high school. These new changes reflect anti-Islamic rhetoric, biased views of Middle Eastern history, changes to slavery and segregation, and highlighting American exceptionalism.
Unfortunately, the TEKS reforms aren’t all too surprising given the governor’s remarks on Muslim civil rights organizations, unfounded scrutiny over a Muslim development, and buzz around ‘Sharia law’ in Texas. Additionally, the right-wing dominated state government has also pushed for Judeo-Christian education in schools, like the Ten Commandments and Bible passages.
This is all a part of the conservative effort to remove expression unaligned with the right-wing government’s values and to enforce their own biased opinions into law as a means of preserving religious and minority intolerance in the state, which bleeds into higher education and campuses, including UTD.
Abdul-Rehman Asif, outreach director of CAIR-TX DFW, explains why politicians use hate speech rhetoric.
“Given our political infrastructure, it helps a lot for certain candidates or parties to ‘otherize’ and paint a false picture of a group or community, and have that be one of their central agenda items,” Asif said.
The pattern is clear. Texan government and key political figures create a rhetoric that gives lawmakers the boost to instill restrictions of expression into law, diffusing into how we as students may express, associate and dissent on campus.
Portraying Islam and Muslims in a negative light is extremely harmful because of the disconnect between actual history and Texas’ academia. When students learn hate in their K-12 education, they bring that same rhetoric to college classrooms.
“When [a student] reaches college and decides to explore [the topic of Islam] further, he’s already coming in with preconceived notions that are completely unacademic,” Asif said.
Second, hateful rhetoric blocks potential connections between Muslim students and other college students. That negatively impacts the higher education system, which are supposedly all about connection and curiosity. We change our minds about a lot of things because we have the ability to learn and meet with all kinds of people. Add social media and we create an incredibly polarized environment on campuses where people cannot educate themselves fully nor speak with others who are different from them. An individual who has been fed hatred through classrooms will distance themselves from students that are Muslim.
As students, we still have the power to educate ourselves and be involved in the very activities that may make us uncomfortable. Preventing the spread of hatred means taking the step to engage with others different from us. It also means to take charge of your education and be curious about why we learn specific parts of history or society in classrooms. Start by just talking to someone that may have different views and meeting them at the level they are at.
Talk to representatives, whether or not an election is taking place, and hold them accountable. Texas residents are able to elect and re-elect the SBOE members, and nine of them are up for re-election.
Additionally, the SBOE is considering proposals under the Instructional Materials Review and Approval (IMRA), including the TEKS changes. Folks are able to go to a public hearing and pressure the SBOE to remove anti-Islamic rhetoric in education and for better standards.