The committee tossed back and forth about how to answer Kelley’s concerns, finally agreeing to a simple word change in the bill that would resolve many of their concerns.

"Ethnic studies" includes, but is not limited to, the experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Native Americans and other racialized peoples

The original text, listed above, was successfully altered by the committee to remove the word “not” and change “but” to “and”, so that Ethnic studies IS limited to those specialized categories. This move was made at the behest of several representatives who wanted to make sure that teaching about Islam, or other faiths would not occur within Kansas’ schools.

Representative Lunn, however, was very sympathetic to the concerns of Representative Kelley and others, and decided that other changes needed to be made.

x .@sincpack Yes it did. Another by Lunn as well. No Muslims, no social justice. — Mark Desetti (@desettiks) February 15, 2016

The amendment that had them up in arms? It reads as follows:

Textbooks and supplemental materials that contain substantive information but do not promote social justice remedies

will be approved for the future of coursework. In other words, teaching about social justice remedies in the classroom will likely run afoul of the proposed standard. This puts forward a serious risk, as teachers in the room had significant concerns. How do you teach about desegregation, Women’s Suffrage, or Civil Rights?

Without being able to reference texts and material which discuss a social justice solution, teachers may be stuck.

While Representative Kelley and others may be concerned about what they perceive as disproportional time allotted to Black History, the ability today to significantly impact how we teach it may be good enough. Representative Valdenia Winn (D-Kansas City), pointed out “I don’t think social justice means what you think it means,” pointing out she would offer searches from Google to the committee.

But making sure “Sharia Law” and “Social Justice” do not get taught in schools today became far more important than the goal of the bill, to teach young students about diversity in the history of the world.

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