Tennessee’s Senate has happily just passed Senate Bill 1890 (SB 1890) by a large majority. SB 1890, sponsored by Senator Janice Bowling, would require Tennessee public schools to provide extensive instruction on the history of Communism, including substantial instruction on the atrocities conducted by Communist regimes. The National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance endorse this fine bill. We urge the Tennessee House to pass its companion bill, House Bill 1805 (HB 1805), and we urge Governor Bill Lee to sign the bill into law.
SB 1890 is a good and necessary reform. Far too much of the education establishment minimizes, or completely fails to teach, the bloodstained history of Communism. Radical activists who promote an agenda that more or less closely resembles Communism (usually now with race or sexual identity substituting for the working class as the revolutionary avatar) prefer not to teach about Communism’s track record of mass murder, destruction of liberty, and economic disaster. Far too many younger teachers are simply unaware of what Communists have wrought—and reforming Tennessee’s public K-12 instruction will require accompanying salutary reform in Tennessee’s professional development for its teachers, so that they can teach the newly required material. State legislation is a necessary means to restore Communism’s history to our public K-12 education.
SB 1890 doesn’t specify precisely how this new material will be introduced into Tennessee’s schools. One section states that,
The department of education shall develop guidance to assist LEAs and public charter schools in providing the age- and grade-appropriate instruction required in this section, and may seek input from any individual who was a victim of communism or any state- or nationally recognized organization dedicated to the victims of communism.
This suggests that Tennessee’s Department of Education might craft state standards in the History of Communism, perhaps with the assistance of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. This seems like an excellent idea.
If Tennessee does create state standards devoted to the History of Communism, we suggest that they look at the Civics Alliance’s model History of Communism Standards, at Florida’s History of Communism Standards, and at Oklahoma’s History of 20th Century Totalitarianism Standards (December 2024 draft). We also suggest that the Tennessee Department of Education contact the Florida Department of Education, determine how it selected a drafting committee for its History of Communism Standards, and follow that model. Social studies reform measures in both Iowa and Oklahoma have suffered from sustained noncompliance and sabotage by education department administrators. It is important that a mission-aligned committee be chosen to draft any History of Communism standards for Tennessee.
But all this is in the realm of “if.” For now, what matters most is that Tennessee policymakers ensure that the true history of Communism be taught in some fashion in Tennessee’s public K-12 schools. SB 1890 and HB 1805 would achieve this fundamental goal. The Tennessee House and Governor Lee will do a great service to Tennessee’s children if they make these bills into statute law.
Photo by RHF101 on Adobe Stock
