PHOENIX — A Senate committee voted Tuesday to dictate that Arizona schools must teach students how communism and totalitarianism are in conflict with freedom and democracy.
House Bill 2008 spells out in some detail what this new civics education would include.
The measure was written by Rep. Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, who told the Senate Education Committee of his own family’s experience escaping Vietnam as communists took over after the war there.
His bill, already approved by the House, now goes to the full Senate, after being approved by the Republican-led committee on a 5-3 party-line vote.
It does more than mandate a comparison. It would also require the state Board of Education to develop standards that instruct students about “the civic-minded expectations of an upright and desirable citizenry that recognizes and accepts responsibility for preserving and defending the blessings of liberty inherited from prior generations and secured by the United States Constitution.”
The state board also would have to establish and maintain a list of oral history resources to provide “portraits in patriotism based on first-person accounts of victims of other nations’ governing philosophies” who can compare those with the United States.
Nguyen said more than 100 million people have been killed in a century of communism.
“And the voice of these victims and survivors, such as myself, need to be heard,” he said. “We have so much to share with those who live in the greatest nation God has given to humanity.”
Barbara Jennings, a Scottsdale parent, said the proposal makes sense.
“It’s very disturbing, what we are seeing with our young people today, their lack of appreciation for where we live,” she said.
Jennings had some other reasons she thinks curriculum changes are needed. “We know the Chinese government has infiltrated our higher education,” she told the committee.
Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, said she agrees that communism should be taught.
“It’s part of our history and it’s part of what my brother went to go fight in the Vietnam War,” she said.
But Gonzales said lawmakers are being disingenuous by saying they want students exposed to more history, even as they have taken actions in the past to curb what’s taught. She said those include a 2010 vote by lawmakers to outlaw ethnic studies programs, including one on Native Americans, “a very powerful and effective program that was open to everybody at the high schools in Tucson.”
Gonzales, who is Native American, said it didn’t stop there.
“This Legislature is currently prohibiting the history of the U.S. being taught to our children and what happened to the Indigenous people of this country,” she said. She was referring to current proposals to limit how certain subjects can be taught, in ways she believes are designed to limit how racism and its history can be taught.
“And it hurts me because, as an Indigenous woman, I live through that discrimination on a daily basis,” Gonzales told her colleagues on the committee, saying people of color face discrimination not only at grocery stores and banks but even in the halls of the Legislature. “And yet, we do not want to hear the truth and allow schools to teach the history of the U.S.”
Sen. Teresa Hatathlie, D-Coal Mine Canyon, went a step farther, saying there has been bias and discrimination even on the dais of committee hearings.
And Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, who is a teacher, questioned why legislators believe it is their role to dictate exactly what has to be taught and how.
She said lawmakers are free to make policy decisions. But the details, she said, are best left to the state Board of Education, which regularly brings together educators to review and alter curricula.
But Sen. Tyler Pace, R-Mesa, said the legislation simply spells out what he believes to be true.
“Communism and democracy are at odds with each other,” he said. “Totalitarianism is at odds with freedom.”
Migrants march on second anniversary of Title 42. Video by Danyelle Khmara/Arizona Daily Star
