A top school district official in Southlake, Texas, advised teachers if they keep a book about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they should also provide one with an “opposing” view, an apparent caricature of the state’s recently-passed bill aimed at countering critical race theory in public school curricula.
Carroll Independent School District executive director of curriculum and instruction Gina Peddy floated inclusion of books denying the Holocaust as she spoke to teachers last Friday during a training session focused on which books may be offered to students in classroom libraries, according to an NBC report.
Four days prior to the training session, in response to a parent’s complaint, the Carroll school board reportedly reprimanded a fourth-grade teacher who kept what NBC News referred to as “an anti-racism book” in her classroom.
Left-wing activists promoting Critical Race Theory (CRT), and their allies in the media, have created a narrative that parents opposing the teaching of CRT, a Marxist philosophy that teaches whites are oppressors and blacks are their victims, are opposed to “anti-racist” concepts. Antiracism is a concept popularized by author Ibram X. Kendi, née Henry Rogers, who has demanded a constitutional amendment giving an unelected federal bureaucracy police power over “racist ideas,” or thought crimes, among public officials and even private businesses.
Despite widespread denials of critical race theory influencing K-12 educators, the National Educators Association (NEA) passed a resolution this summer affirming that CRT should inform curricula in public schools.
A Carroll staff member secretly recorded the training session with Peddy, who responded to teachers expressing “fears that they would be required to get rid of books about race,” and shared the audio with NBC News.
In her counsel to teachers, Peddy referred to Texas law HB 3979, which states “teachers who choose to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs shall, to the best of their ability, strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”
“Just try to remember the concepts of [HB] 3979,” Peddy is heard saying in the recording. “And make sure that, if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
“How do you oppose the Holocaust? What?” a teacher is heard asking in response to Peddy’s statement.
“Believe me,” Peddy responds. “That’s come up.”
“So, Number the Stars?” another teacher is heard asking. According to NBC News, it is unclear in the recording whether Peddy responded to that particular question.
