Re-Inheriting the Wind

We’ve been here before

Governor Lee has now signed into law that curious bill wherein he and the legislature instruct Tennessee’s teachers on what they are not to teach our children about race, bias and our nation’s racial history.

The prohibition is to take effect on July 1. After that point, any parties who otherwise might deign to inform young Tennesseans about such unpleasant notions as prejudice and discrimination - e.g. school boards and superintendents - will pay a cruel price. They will see reductions in their state funding.

There was something about this bill, aside from its utter nonsense as policy, that I couldn’t put my finger on as it was being rushed to judgment in the general wreckage of the 122nd General Assembly.

Then it dawned on me: We’ve been here before.

It happened nearly a century ago in Dayton, in the hot summer of 1925 at the Rhea County Courthouse. There the folly of the state telling teachers what they cannot teach got its most famous and lasting display.

The central dispute then was religion not race: The Tennessee legislature had thought it best simply to prohibit the teaching of evolution. Not so simple, as it turned out.

The so-called ‘Monkey Trial’ of teacher John T. Scopes was the first result. It drew national attention - no, call it ridicule - and Tennessee became a laughingstock. That longer-term result still echoes across our hills.

The Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, site of the Scopes trial

The central issue then was different, yes, but in my view the principle of legislative intrusion into schools and what teachers must not teach is still much the same.

You can look up and read the final conference report on Senate Bill 623 and House Bill 580 here. Also, Marta Aldrich has an excellent summary of its significance here over at Chalkbeat Tennessee. The bill is long, touching on a lot of educational policy categories. The real trouble is over in Chapter 51: There you will see more than a dozen concepts that teachers are no longer permitted to discuss.

Literally hundreds of Tennessee educators have spoken out about this legislative mischief which Gov. Lee has signed this week. Legal scholars have questioned it, also. And well they all should complain. It is an unnecessary law, like others that the Republican supermajority has embraced this year.

This measure is not about improving education for children across 95 counties. It’s meant to help old white men up in Nashville, who have no patience with public discussion of unpleasant subjects, feel better about themselves. They prefer to keep our educators from talking with students about race - a rock-hard reality of our national life - and what the true legacy of racism has left us all to this very day.

But stay tuned. This ain’t over. A hundred years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union became a party to the resolution of that Scopes case in Dayton. The ACLU is opposing this current nonsense, too.

And while you’re at it, go read any of the books and plays that came about in the wake of Tennessee’s intrusive folly in the Twenties. The most famous were the newspaper dispatches of H.L. Mencken of Baltimore, then the novel Inherit the Wind, and the 1955 play and 1960 movie of the same name.

© 2021 Keel Hunt