To the Editor:
Hoosiers have had a 20-20 glimpse of what real courage looks like in the past several weeks. From watching an 83-year-old man signing up to fight Putin’s army, to sixty-year-old women making Molotov cocktails in a dim basement, to young mothers tearfully telling their husbands goodbye at a train station.
We have also had a 20-20 glimpse of what courage doesn’t look like here in Indiana. It doesn’t look like many of our Republican legislators. These folks politely listened and nodded as parents from around the state related to them what was happening in their children’s schools. Parents offered proof, not hearsay, that the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) were being taught, and assignments were made intending to leave the impression that all law enforcement officers are racist. Parents testified about schools disregarding their written directives not to give social-emotional learning (SEL) associated surveys to their children at school. These surveys are tied to individual students and are digitally preserved with little to no privacy protection. Parents provided proof of the pornographic “literature” that is present in many school libraries and available for young children to check out. They also provided examples of the not particularly subtle message underlying these activities to promote “accurate thinking.” That message is that school employees are the adults which children should trust, not their parents.
The Republican legislators listened, registered shock, asked a few questions, and promised their support. Cue the teacher’s unions. Education non-profits and other businesses, flush with money from billionaires who want to fundamentally reshape, perhaps eliminate, public education stepped up. They flooded social media with lies about the course correction bill that parents had asked for, House Bill 1134. The wealthy opposition was smart. Their media consultants had coached them well on exactly which emotional buttons to push to get the teachers, many of whom never actually read the bill themselves, to show up and show out. It worked. Our Republican legislators, who in private had been aghast at evidence of the inroads extreme ideologies had made into our public schools through teachers, texts, and our own Department of Education, tucked tail and ran. I question how many of our legislators even read HB 1134 themselves. Without knowledge of what the bill really said, they were left to be led by the propaganda campaign born in public education non-profit and business board rooms and beautifully executed by public school teachers. Just as they planned.
Money spoke. The loudest voices turned Republican legislators around, even though those loud voices very intentionally misrepresented the content of the bill. It is time for these Republican legislators, whose heads can be turned so easily by professionally produced propaganda, to be replaced by people who have a true north. People such as Brittany Carroll, who is running in District 60. Brittany is smart. She is a good listener. She is a hard worker. Her word has worth. She is more than capable of gathering information from many sources, examining it, evaluating the motivations of all sides promoting legislation, and then relying on her core principles to guide her decisions. The latter quality is one many of our current Republican legislators lack. We need someone with Brittany’s integrity, work ethic, and principled approach to everything she does in the Indiana legislature. It would be a refreshing change.
Gary Burke
Bargersville
